At least today on the way to the studio it was bright and sunny. Since the tax deadline is almost up that means a lot of people are already anticipating on what to spend their tax refund on. Therefore, I talked about what I felt would be the most ideal use of these funds and that if you really insist on spending it that you may as well use the tools available to you to try and get the best deal.

My first point was if you have any kid of debt then it is probably wise to put your funds towards that. In my opinion, it doesn’t make sense for example to keep spending or even saving if you have say a credit card debt that is incurring interest charges. Like with that, it’s better to use your funds to try and wipe out any outstanding debt or liabilities first.

If you do happen to have money leftover, then finding ways to invest that money to make more is probably the most productive use of it. I was even saying, if you want to play it safe then there are always choices such as placing it in high interest savings account. Here in Canada even things like a tax free savings account wouldn’t be too bad of an idea.

For the people that are insisting in buying say a new TV or computer, it was surprising to me that a lot of people don’t use price comparison sites. These will probably make bargain hunting a lot easier as oppose to you having to search every single store manually. The two sites I used as an example was http://www.shoptoit.ca/ and http://www.shopbot.ca/. I personally save a lot of time doing research this way personally.

As well, especially with electronics the other point I made was that you shouldn’t just focus in getting the best value for big ticketed items such as the main TV unit itself. Most of the times when it comes to those little accessories such as the cables to hook up the TV’s they are heavily marked up. For example, you can often find cables that companies buy for $1 only to be resold for like $15. I don’t think anyone wants to overpay that much when you don’t have to. A lot of these price comparison tools can help you see this too.

I then dove a bit into price comparison apps for smartphone users. I know in the US applications such as http://www.redlaser.com are really popular where you can simply take a product off the shelf, take a picture of the barcode and it then tries to scan prices from various sources for you to find the best deals. As well, if you are on the road shopping don’t forget that a lot of retailers nowadays are wiling to match online prices as long as you show them proof of the price from authorized dealers.

The example I used was that there was a DSLR selling at a retail store called Futureshop here for about $450 ass you can see:

Knowing that dedicated online stores like Amazon can often be cheaper I used its price checking app and sure enough the product was cheaper by like $50.

So this is a way too where if you are at a store and want to buy it now as opposed to online, a lot of stores will actually accept that as proof and match the price on the spot. A very simple thing you can do to save money. I know there are probably a ton of other apps and sites people use, but hopefully you do take advantage of at least some of these free tools so that you can save more of your tax refund money.

Who knows, maybe looking at all the different prices may hold you off from doing impulsive purchases and instead hold off until you truly find a killer deal.

Today a person asked me to help him setup a wireless Internet connection and for the most part I thought it was pretty straightforward. However, the interesting thing to me was that he wanted me to use his neighbors Internet where he would essentially be getting wireless Internet from them. At first I thought he was just leaching, but when asked if the neighbour knew about it he was saying how they have arranged to share the Internet connection in order to cut costs on the monthly bill.

In this case he normally paid about $40+ a month to get Internet. However, he often found that he doesn’t really need a super fast connection and he normally does very basic stuff such as reading the news. As a result, he made a deal with the neighbor where he would pay about $5 a month to get access to his wireless Internet. That way, he saves a lot of money and the neighbour gets some. If people are wondering how far apart they are, these two happen to be residents in the same condo.

In many ways it can make sense I suppose huh? Of course you have to factor in like here if the person is a bandwidth guzzler then you wouldn’t want to share, but in cases like this it sure can make a lot of financial sense. Are we generally too sensitive about sharing resources like these with neighbors though? I’m just thinking this could even work in ways such as buying food or necessities in bulk and then splitting it to save money.

It was a rainy day getting to the studio this morning. But as usual everything went smoothly and I got to meet interesting guests. Today on air I talked about filing taxes online here in Canada and how people can save money by doing so. At the same time, this year the government is trying to make it easier by eliminating a process where individuals were required to have a “web access” code to file a return in opes to encourage more people to file their taxes online.

I have read various comments too where some people prefer to use the traditional paper method as they find it unfair that they now have to pay money for software in order to file their returns. That isn’t entirely true as there are a lot of free options out there. For example, I know here most people may be familiar with products such as Ufile or Turbo Tax where these software can range anywhere from $9+. It was apparent to me that most people are unaware that these same companies offer people the ability to file for free such as if you make say less than $20,000 and have a basic tax return. Here are some examples of the free filing options that these two companies offer:

http://www.drtax.ca/en/UFile/tips-and-tools/UFilefreefiling.aspx

http://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-software/freedom.jsp

Despite this I have heard some people are still unhappy with this as they mention how they don’t qualify to use these products for free. There are still options for you as well. For example, there is a program called StudioTax that you can see at http://studiotax.com/en/ which allows people to file taxes for free online regardless of your income level. So there are definitely options out there.

As well, the last point I talked about is how you can manage your tax information online as opposed to the traditional paper route if you are trying to say setup a direct deposit so that you ca get your refund faster. You can find the site at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/esrvc-srvce/tx/ndvdls/myccnt/menu-eng.html Best of all, it is free as well. All in all, it’s not that intimidating once you try it out.

I found this conversation kind of funny today. Essentially, there was a person who was trying to find ways to save money. So the first step was to lay it out all to see where all of their money was going to and from there we would try and see where they could save money. As usually you saw things such as regular household expenses and non necessities. What I thought was interesting was how in the category of necessities the person had an attitude of since it is a necessity there is nothing you can do about it. For example, like the electricity bill.

However, after looking at the bill itself it did seem kind of high. Sure enough, if you looked at the person’s house he did so many things that was simply wasting a lot of money. For example, having chargers still plugged into the wall, which actually still uses electricity, or having a habit of leaving the computer or lights on even when he is not using it. While it may not seem much, it definitely adds up.

I suppose the same can be said for even like groceries. If you seem to be paying a lot, similar to hunting for the best deal for TV you should shop around. Thinking just because it is a monthly essentially that there is no way you can do anything to save more money is a mindset that should be fixed I think. If you spend as much time looking for the best deals when it comes to non essentials you can easily apply that financial savviness for your life essentials too.

Today I was presented with one of those offers for a credit card where by paying an annual fee of about $50 it mentions you can earn points for every dollar you spend. In this case though you need a lot of points to even get the equivalent of a real dollar. Ultimately you probably need to spend somewhere in the high four digits to even recoup the $50. And that is to simply break even when you think about it.

It does surprise me when people enroll into these types of credit cards and then mention how it’s so fantastic that they get rewards even if it is a scenario where they don’t use it enough to make it a good deal. I’m inclined to say most people should simply go with the no annual fee cards as most of them provide just as good rewards. If you think about it, for the average spender if you pay to get double the rewards to the point where you broke even technically you are still only getting one reward. Except now you basically guaranteed the company that you are going to spend another $50 with them when you wouldn’t have normally. Something to think about.

Unless you are using like a business credit card where you know you will be spending five if not six figures consistently then that would be a different story.