She is in debt.  A few years ago she got a consolidation loan for 20K.  She’s paying 9% interest on it.  I didn’t want to ask too much about the loan – but for her it seems more of a convenience, only making one payment each month, rather than an interest saver.  When I asked if it having the consolidation loan meant having a lower her interest rate, she thought about it a bit and said that for some of her debts (credit cards) it meant a lower interest rate, but for others (car loan I think was at 7%), it meant a higher interest rate.

So I really had to hold myself back with this.  Why on earth would you get a consolidation loan to pay MORE interest?  Couldn’t she have gotten the consolidation loan on only her credit card debt, and left her car payment as is?

She is also the one that I mentioned in a previous post has made us lose our weekly overtime (~$50/wk).  Which I don’t get because she is usually at work at that time anyways.

She also often leaves work early and doesn’t mind if her hours get cut.

She gets child support from her ex-husband.  And the way it works in her case is that when she files her income tax each year, that’s when she gets hit with a huge (2K) bill to the government because the child support is seen as an income that she needs to pay taxes on.  She figures she pays 35% taxes on the child support.  She asked her ex to cut the support down to one-third, and not have it declared.  He refused, more to spite her than anything else.  Another co-worker suggested to her that maybe you should open up a high-interest account, and each time you receive child support, put 35% of it in that account, and never take it out until its time for you to pay your income tax, at which point you’ll already have all the money.

Again, I really had to stop myself from blurting out how obvious that is.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like my co-worker.  I have realized that she really works hard.  And is very knowledgeable on a lot of things – just not money.  Nor math, for that matter.

Thanks for listening.  It felt really good to say these things, as I really try hard to control myself from telling her how un-wise her money decisions are.

I wish I could show her Gail Vaz-Oxlade‘s website, but she doesn’t speak or read English well.

A while back I discovered some sweet buns that they have at their bakery section … they are so good.  They are pre-packed and sitting on the counter of the bakery, so there’s no need to wait for your number to be called.  I was hoping to pick up a bag of these buns today, but there weren’t any left.  The only thing resembling my sweet buns was one lonely bag of donut-like buns.  It was the only bag, and it only had three donuts in it.  The label on the bag read Kaak au Lait – I loosely translated this to mean ‘cake made with milk’.

There was no price on my bag of Kaak, so I headed to the price check thingy, but my kaak wouldn’t scan.  No problem, I was sure it would be reasonably priced.

So I’m too busy bagging my own groceries to see what the kaaks ring up at, but here’s what I found on my receipt once I got home …

Notice the ’12UN’ written on the bill.  Does it look like I bought 12 units of Kaak?

I payed 4 times more for my kaak.  I feel ripped off.

Too bad I’ve eaten them all in the time it took me to write this post, otherwise I would surely have gone right back to the store to get my refund!

With all this happening, I forgot to get a cart from the entrance, and didn’t feel like seeing these two again.  So I picked up a basket, and only bought what I could fit and lift in the basket.

What’s happening to my neighbourhood?

What’s happened to me?  There was a time when I would give money to everyone, even though I new it would most likely go to booze and drugs.  Now I see someone asking for money and I feel anger towards them.  I feel they are probably too lazy to get a job.

Am I being too rough?

I’ll admit that I hate having to get up early one day a week.  It meant having to change my alarm clock just for one day, and I often stressed that I would forget to change my alarm clock,  But the extra money really made up for the stress.

Well, a few weeks ago my brilliant co-worker was complaining about coming in early.  She convinced everyone that we should move that weekly meeting to 8:30 am … which is the time we start our workday.  So no more overtime for us …. thank you brilliant co-worker!  Well, we had the first meeting at the new time two weeks ago, and guess what, that brilliant co-worker called in sick that day. I just find it ironic.

And this week was my first paycheque without that overtime…. ouch!  So $35 per week, I’m estimating that we had this meeting maybe three times per month, so that’s $1260 net less per year … WOW … I’m gonna feel that!

I guess I’ll try to take more online surveys and what not to make up for the loss in income.