It was announced recently that on November 16th of this year Canada Post will be introducing its new PERMANENT stamp which is going to eliminate the need for 1 cent stamps. Also, the new permanent stamps will cost 51 cents and when the new letter mail rate of 52 cents kicks in on January 15, 2007, those stamps will actually still be valid which means you can save some money by stocking up now. It’s not much, but every penny counts I suppose. Here was the full press release:
___________________________________________________________________

September 19, 2006

Canada Post Introduces New Stamp with Lasting Appeal!

Pennywise Canadians to benefit from new PERMANENT stamp

Ottawa -

Canada Post today announced the introduction of a new non-denominated stamp that will retain its value forever. The PERMANENT™ stamp will be accepted at the basic domestic Lettermail rate and replaces next year’s 52¢ domestic rate definitive stamps. The PERMANENT stamp will eliminate the need to purchase 1¢ stamps after a rate increase, doing away with the need for Canadians to worry about ‘using up’ postage stamps before a rate increase takes effect.

“The PERMANENT stamp will make doing business with Canada Post that much easier,” said Moya Greene, president and CEO of Canada Post. “Canadians can easily be pennywise with this customer-responsive initiative from Canada Post.”

Research indicates that 70 per cent of consumers really like the idea of a stamp that retains its value. The PERMANENT stamp will allow customers to purchase stamps in large quantities or coils, and use them anytime knowing they are valued at the going basic domestic Lettermail rate.

The PERMANENT stamp will go on sale at the current domestic rate of 51¢ on November 16 at postal offices throughout Canada. These stamps will be accepted at the new 52¢ rate effective January 15, 2007 when the basic Lettermail rate increases by one cent.

“Improving Canada Post’s responsiveness to customer needs and desires is a critical aspect of building the modern post office,” concluded Ms. Greene. “This initiative demonstrates our commitment to enhancing customer satisfaction.”

In addition to the PERMANENT stamp, Canadians will also be able to use up their existing stock of 51¢ stamps in 2007. 51¢ stamps will be accepted next year at the 52¢ rate (while supplies last), even after the January 15, 2007 rate increase.

JUST THE FACTS ABOUT THE 1¢ STAMP…

- Canada is not the first country to issue a stamp that retains its value (eliminating the need for many 1¢ stamps). Britain, Finland, Israel, Belgium, France, Norway, Monaco and Sweden are a few countries that also sell stamps that are always worth the going rate.
- In 2005, Canada Post printed 60 million 1¢ stamps. Though they will still be used as make-up postage for parcels and other lettermail, significantly reduced numbers of 1¢ stamps will be printed in 2007.
- The 1¢ stamp pre-dates Confederation by a number of years. The first 1¢ stamp in Canada (or the land that would become Canada) was issued in 1859.
- Talk about continuity! The 1¢ stamp has been in circulation since 1859.
- The first 1¢ stamps paid for what was referred to as “a drop letter rate”. This meant the penny provided sufficient postage to have the letter delivered within the town in which it was mailed or a similar local area.
- In the early days of postal service, the 1¢ stamp was used to pay for the delivery of circulars – in today’s terminology, those circulars would be Admail.
- The 1¢ stamp has been a canvas to commemorate many significant figures and a wealth of “Canadiana” — Sir. John A. MacDonald, members of the monarchy and the Northern Lights have been featured on 1¢ stamps.
- Had the cost of mailing a letter increased at the rate of Canadian inflation, the cost of sending a letter today would be approximately 62¢ — that’s a lot of 1¢ stamps.
- Since 2000, more than 430-million 1¢ stamps have been printed in Canada. Placed end to end, these stamps would cover a distance of almost 11,000 kilometres. To get a sense of how long that is, remember the Trans-Canada Highway – the longest national highway in the world – stretches from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Victoria, B.C and is only 7,604 kilometres long!
___________________________________________________________________

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.

It seems like every other day I appear to be the winner of some lottery jackpot that I’ve never heard of. This one says that I won a pool jackpot of £880,000.00. Of course, the real goal as usual is to try and get as much personal information about you as possible. To disguise itself as a legitimate prize, they put in all this fluff in regards to terms and conditions to claim the winnings in order to make it sound legit to the unsuspecting reader. The funny thing I always found with these lottery scams is the e-mail address that you are directed to reply to. For an organization that is apparently giving away so much money, you’d think that they could afford to get their own e-mail address as oppose to using free web based ones.
___________________________________________________________________

From - Mon Sep 04 17:18:25 2006
X-Account-Key: account3
X-UIDL: 1157346379.347.pt01
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-Path:
Message-Id: <200609021522.k82FMP5e027433@post.webmailer.de>
From: “Ladbrokes Online lottery”

Ladbrokes Online Lottery
P O Box 754
London, United Kingdom

(Customer Services)

ONLINE WEB LOTTERY WINNINGS OF £880,000.00

We happily announce to you the draws of Ladbrokes Online Lottery, an Online International Sweepstakes Program held on Thursday 1st SEPTEMBER, 2006. Your email address attached to ticket/serial number IE6098-05, with serial number IE535-29 drew the lucky numbers: 1-15-24-37-42-50 (bonus no. 33), With Ref. Number: IES/376O05/77, Batch Number: 05/507/IES360 and subsequently won the lottery in the 1st category. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £880,000.00 (Eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling) in cash credited to file ISPR/7563409218/05.

This is from a total cash prize of £8,680,770.00 shared amongst the first nine (9) lucky Winners in this category. All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 154,000 Unions, Associations and Corporate Bodies listed online. In view of this, your £880,000.00 (Eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds sterling) would be released to you by any of our payment
offices.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program. Deductions from WINNING SUM are not allowed until WINNING SUM has been handed over to the winner. Please be warned. To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:

Ladbrokes Online Lottery
P O Box 754
London, United Kingdom
(Customer Services)
Email:awardsoffice06@yahoo.co.uk

You are required to forward the following details to help facilitate the processing of your claims and certificate which will facilitate the release of your winnings.

1. Full names.
2. Phone number.
3. Fax number.
4. Occupation
5. Sex.
6. Age.
7. Nationality.
8. Complete mailing Address

All prize money must be claimed in ten working days. After this date, all funds will be returned as unclaimed.

NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please always remember to quote your reference and batch numbers in every correspondence with your claims agent. Furthermore, should there be any change of your address, do inform your claims agent as soon as possible.

Please include your private telephone and fax numbers while replying. Congratulations once again from our team of staff and thank you for being part of our promotional program.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Helen Woods
Lottery Coordinator

Note: Anybody under the age of 17 is AUTOMATICALY DISQUALIFIED and AnyBREACH of CONFIDENTIALITY on the part of the WINNERS will result to disqualification.
_____________________________________________________________

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.

While reading some topics about money and finance from a news site today, there was a section dedicated in allowing people to voice ways on how they manage their money. What caught my attention was a comment about someone who was earning around $30,000 to $35,000 a year and claimed that it is barely enough to get by and how he feared that if he did not find another source of income that he would be unable to continue living a comfortable lifestyle and will be unable to ever buy things like a car or a house.

These types of scenarios are always interesting as I’ve seen many people who get by with less than that and still they have things such as their own car and a house. In my opinion, the solution is pretty simple as you just have to know how you are spending your money and whether or not you are using it wisely. For example, I mentioned before on how one of the biggest culprit for most people in terms of spending a lot of money is constantly eating out instead of preparing their own meals. As an example, let’s pretend that a person went to a restaurant for all of their meals everyday. Based on a rough estimate of prices from fast food places and restaurants, a typical day could be like this:

Breakfast: $5.00
Lunch: $5.00
Dinner: $10.00

That makes it about $20 a day for food. Assuming the person did this everyday for the whole year for 365 days, that would mean one’s food bill would be $7300 for the year or $608 a month. I think everyone knows that with $608 a month you can buy a lot of food that will keep you going for more than a month. If I was to just use breakfast for example, let’s say you buy a 500g box of cereal for $5 with 4 litres of milk for $4 which lasts you one week. Basically, with roughly 4 weeks in a month, your expense for eating at home would be $36 as opposed to $140 if you were to eat out instead. That is almost 4 times less the cost in food expense. If you were to look at that for the whole year, that would be $432 for eating in and $1825 for eating out. With that extra $1393, it’s no surprise that a person who earns less overall can still save a lot of money.

Another important factor that I personally think a lot of people under utilize to help them understand their spending habits better is by getting assistants from experts or professionals who specialize in a certain field to help them make wise purchasing decisions. For example, a common scenario is a student who is not technically savvy needing to buy a new computer for school. So, he walks into a store and sees the prices for various models. After seeing the price ranges, he opts for what seems to be the medium price one and spends about $1100. After it is all said and done, he now has a decent computer while mourning over how much money he had to spend on the computer which as a result made him broke from buying any other things. Now if he was to give that $1100 to someone who knew a lot about computers, I bet most computer enthusiasts could create a monster computer for that price or on the other hand they could also create a similar set up of what they bought for much less. I’m positive that if you look around your social circle and networking contacts that there is a good chance that you can find an expert for almost every category and industry to help you in these types of scenarios.

You don’t have to be some kind of oil tycoon or lottery winner to be able to afford the things that you want. Regardless if you make a million dollars a year, it all comes down to how you spend your money as even millionaires can end up being broke.

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.