Budget Sense

Imagine how banking used to be done just 10 years ago, never mind 20 or 30 years ago:

If you wanted to send money to someone or pay a bill, you would usually have to go to a bank, thus wasting time and even gas driving there to do your banking. Yes online banking has been with us for more than a decade, but it was for the select few that felt comfortable using it. It is only the last 10-15 years, after the invention and popularization of mobile apps, couple with online security becoming more solid, that it really took off and has become an essential part of our budgeting and finance management. This is just one example of how technology has simplified how we manage our money, save it, and by extension help us become richer. While there are countless ways that technology can be used to simplify our finances, below, we look at some of the most popular ones.

Using apps to manage your money

As mentioned earlier, apps are at the heart of this digital revolution of how we manage our money and finances. As they say, there is an app for anything you can think of, including banking, price comparison, online shopping, product reviews etc. One of the best features of online banking apps is your ability to manage your bill payments, transfers and sending money so much easier. One specific feature I use is to transfer money from my checking account to my VISA account as I make purchases. With all of these at our finger tips, they should be used extensively to get the most of your money.

Using online price comparison tools to decide your next purchase

Whether it is to book travel, buy a car or a household appliance, never buy an item that will cost you hundreds or thousands, without using 2 or 3 sites to compare price. For example, if you are booking a flight from Toronto to Los Angeles for 3 adults, the difference between two sites for the same flights could be anywhere from $100 to $200. Same goes with buying a laptop or other electronics: some sites may be running a promotion where you can save hundreds compared to buying from another site. So there is absolutely no reason to buy from one site without looking at other sites. While there are plenty of apps that will help you do this, there are browser extensions for doing it the old way from a laptop and desktop. Again, other than the need for a car if you are doing deliveries and transportation, the only other thing you need is a phone with an internet connection: technology will take care of the rest in helping you make a good and reliable income.

Robo advisors

This is a new feature that is becoming more and more popular with banks and investment firms: it is a technology that lets you automate your investment and have a computer do the work for you. In other words, it provides financial planning services through automated algorithms, without any human involvement. And what makes this service even more appealing in addition to making things more automated and less manual, is the fact that it learns and adjusts as you go. It does this using AI (Artificial Intelligence) . Most banks offer this service now, thus freeing you from having to manually check your portfolio and adjusting things every few months.

Side Hustles

Uber. E-Bay. Youtube. Etsy. Kijiji. TaskRabbit. DoorDash: these are some of the hundreds of apps and online platforms that you can use to create a side income; a fulltime one for many. What makes these platforms appealing is their flexibility, where you can create your own schedule for the most part, all by using your phone only. It is not uncommon for some people to have a combination of these various tools at the same time: for example, some could use DoorDash to make food delivery, Uber for ridesharing, TaskRabbit to complete small jobs in the neighborhood and E-Bay to sell books and other used items.

Of course, like with a lot of things, technology has been a double edged sword, where it has also made it easier for people to spend money online, using just a few clicks. In the past, you would need to get dressed, drive down to the nearest store or mall to be able to spend your money. Now, you can do it 24/7, even if you are in your pajamas or in your bathroom.

The various digital tools at our fingertips not only make it easier to manage our finances, they can help us save a lot of time if used properly. Take the time to go through your finances and investments and see if you are taking advantage of all the digital tools out there.

Imagine a device slightly smaller than a tablet that can literally free up real estate space in your home. A device that can eliminate an entire library of books from your home or room, giving you back much needed space to use for other purposes. I am taking about the Amazon Kindle E-reader!

It has been more than 6 years since I got my Amazon Kindle E-Reader and it is no exaggeration to say it has changed my life, at least from an education and reading prospective. To start, it has made it a lot easier to read, which resulted in being able to read more books per year. I went from reading 2-3 books a year to about 12 a year (1 per month) But the benefit don’t stop there, and touch other aspects of my life. Let me go through some and how this $100 device has made such a big difference.

Time saved

Kindle helps me save time reading, as it is all digital and makes it easy to go from one page to another, chapter to another or even book to book, all with a few clicks or swipes. More importantly, you can search through any book or the entire library, as well as make highlights and detailed notes on any page or section etc. As they say, the best way to retain what you read is to write your own notes or teach the material. With Kindle, you get to make notes as you read, and be able to review these later, even export them to other formats and be able to read them on other devices later. Speaking of other devices, as your books are saved on the cloud, you could pick up and read from anywhere, even if you don’t have your book with you. For example, you can download the Kindle app to your smartphone, or visit the Kindle website and be able to access all your books and notes there. Total convenience and a seamless experience to be close to your book anywhere and anytime. Imagine how hard it would be to do that with physical books, especially if you have more than a few.

Space saved

Speaking of physical books, here is a quick calculation of how many books can a basic 8GB Kindle hold: approximately 3,000-4000 books, and probably more if they are smaller-sized books. To put that into prospective, take a look at the picture above, which contains around 300 books: Kindle would save 10 times as much space as this small room! Yes, you read that right! In other words, if 3,000 books are equivalent of one floor stacked from floor to ceiling, then a Kindle puts a full house worth of books into one small device, which you can fit into your pocket! Understand that for those avid book lovers , a physical library is a must as it adds that extra dimension to the whole experience of reading. In that case, you can still have a small physical shelf and put your classics and all-time favorite books there, especially those timeless hard covers. For everything else, best to get them over to the digital world on a Kindle. Just as music went from tapes and DVDs to being completely digital and on the cloud, the book experience is heading that way, even if books are understandably different from music and some still want that physical experience.

Money saved

If Kindle can save you space and time, then it sure can save you the on the third dimension that usually goes along with space and time: money! To begin with, most Kindle editions of a book cost less, since there is no physical copy to print and ship. This alone will save you money in the long term, especially if you buy a minimum of 10 or more books a year. According to some estimates, on average, a Kindle version is 35% cheaper than the hardcover version, and 30% cheaper than the paperback version of the same book. In fact, you can find a lot of free books and classics on Kindle, something you would still need to pay for physical books even if the cost is minimal.

While some people still prefer the look, smell and touch of flipping through a physical book and having that cozy home library feeling, a Kindle E-Reader has a lot of benefits when it comes to space, time and money you could save. One way to get the benefits while still owning physical books is to limit your physical books to hard cover, text books and classic ones that look better in a real physical book. For the rest, get them in a digital copy on Kindle. As you get more comfortable with Kindle, you will realize its other benefit, which is to make you a more frequent and committed reader, given the great technology behind it and the ease of use. And although this article is about Kindle specifically, there are other E-Readers out there. But Kindle has the dominant share of the E-Readers market, given its superior technology and the number of books available on its platform.

Finance books and literature love to use Starbucks and their expensive lattes (I admit, I don’t know what they cost and had to do some digging) as the perfect metaphor for money we habitually waste instead of saving it for something more useful in the future. And while it is not the end of the world to enjoy your favourite drink occasionally, especially on those cold snowy days where nothing else seems to do the trick to get you going, the steep price can quickly add up!

And while Starbucks and their lattes are used as metaphors for careless spending, we have others in this axis of personal waste. Netflix (and a whole host of other online apps like Instagram and Tiktok) , are starting to be blended into their own category: time wasters. AKA binge watching! A lot of you have been there: you watch Netflix or YouTube (me!) and before you know it, a whole hour (or half a day?) has passed by. And what do we have to show for it? Almost nothing in terms of productivity or return on personal development.

But here is a new one! What about Amazon (or your favourite online retailer) now being the ultimate space (and money of course) waster? With majority of our online shopping (proudly doesn’t apply to me other than buying books on Kindle that take no space) now taking place via Amazon, chances are a lot of homes and bedrooms are full of junk from Amazon. Ok, junk may be extreme as some of the stuff people buy on Amazon is useful (books, household essentials, new camera etc) but there is certainly lots of useless stuff that just sits there and doesn’t get used much, eventually becoming junk and taking up space. And this is even more prominent for Amazon Prime members (one of which happens to be a family member) . A friend of mine who also happens to be a Prime member, tells me that not a week goes by without one or more packages arriving from Amazon. And he has been a Prime member for years and years. Tell me his house is not full of Amazon junk by now?

As I said, I am proud to be the user of virtually none of this axis of money/time/space black-hole. Sure, there are the extreme odd times when I will use these sparingly or under special situations. Compare that to someone who uses all three:

($CAD pricing)

-Average of 3 Lattes per week (tall size) + 2 food item = $20 per week, or around $1040 or more a year

-Netflix: $17.99 a month = $216 annually

-Prime membership: $110 annually
Average of 1 purchase a week at $20 = $1040 annually

>>Total adds up to just under $2500! And that is not even counting money actually spent buying stuff on Amazon which is easily in the high hundreds, or thousands for a lot of people.

To some, this may be justified as it allows them access to three of their favourite things in life. But as we talked about earlier, these are more than just bad for your finance, but can be just as bad if not worse for robbing you of much needed time and space. And as we know, both are worth money. Time is money. And so is space, especially in our ever shrinking homes and condos.

There is time for everything. And while you can enjoy all the above, I feel like with these becoming a daily verb in our society and lexicon, some people are losing sight of how much they are wasting in terms of money, time and space to these big corporations.

This is the first time I am writing a critical review of any product. And unfortunately enough, it is a Canadian

Canadian companies are not doing enough to catch up to the competition: Blackberry, KOBO Touch E-Reader and others need to do more to enhance Canada's global reputation as a technology leader.

product. Being from Canada myself, it makes this review a little more significant.

Two years ago, I bought a Kobo Touch e-reader for my fiance as a birthday gift. She loved it and was using it on and off. After we got married, I decided to start using it as well. Unfortunately, this has been a very frustrating experience.  The product just refuses to work, mainly when it comes to flipping pages. Mysteriously, it just freezes after flipping a maximum of 4 pages, and then I have to shut it down or reset it completely.  At this rate, I will probably never be able to finish a book, let alone a collection of books I have to read (I have since found a solution for this: you have to disable the WiFi connection for this to work properly. Still not a perfect fix but at least I can do some reading without interruptions)

When I originally bought this E-Reader, I was sincerely doing my best to help a Canadian company. I could have bought a Kindle, and for almost the same price, but I refused, thinking I was doing my national duty to help the local Canadian economy. Not just that, but I have been a regular Chapters-Indigo customer, the company that owns the Kobo ereader (it has since been sold to a Japanese company) But unfortunately this economic loyalty to Canadian products is costing me a lot of frustration, money and time wasted. Googling this issue, it looks like I am not the only one with these KOBO problems, as there are thousands of other frustrated users experiencing the same issues. I understand all products can occasionally have bugs here and there. But they usually get fixed. There is no known fix for these Kobo errors. In fact, even the latest firmware release doesn’t fix the issue.

It is no secret that one of the reasons the Blackberry brand has been suffering and struggling a lot of late is due to their sub-par products. They used to be great but have since been left in the dust. If you ask ex-Blackberry users on why they replaced their device with iPhones or other Android-enabled devices, one of the main complaints was  about the hardware itself and how poorly designed it was, with certain parts not working after just a few months or device going dead for no apparent reason. I understand these devices are not manufactured in Canada-neither are iPhones and other leading mobile phone brands-but the engineering and design is the product of Canada. The software is the other major reason to blame for Blackberry’s fall from grace. The software was so behind the competition that even those that are not tech-savvy knew they can do better than this.

Which brings us to our main question: why is Canada not doing more to fix its image in the global tech industry? it seems like we start very strong and end up crashing to the competition and our own incompetence. We all know Nortel. A company that was once worth worth billions and was the leader in the telecommunication and networking hardware industry. It is now history. Gone. Bankrupt. Liquidated. The same thing could potentially and sadly happen to Blackberry.

If this was an Olympic marathon, Canadians would always finish first in the first half of the race but end up losing towards the end, overtaken by new comers to the race. We can start and build a great product but can’t seem to finish strong, especially when rivals are breathing down our neck.

We need better focus, more research and just better strategy to deal with a fierce global competition. And while we should always watch what what other industry leaders are doing and not fall behind, it is also important to stayed focused on your product and what made you successful. No need to panic and end up taking steps that lead to your further demise than catching up to the competition.

Canada has got the infrastructure, brains, education and all that it takes to be a world, if not of one of the top nations when it comes to technology. Be it in service delivery, hardware, software, networking etc. There is no reason why such giant Canadian companies, ones that make us proud to be Canadian, can fall behind so bad that we end up being ashamed of them being Canadian.

Twitter can help you save money, if not make money! That much is known, and it is a good way to get us started with this article.

How? Let us find out.

Twitter is arguably the hottest thing on the web at the moment. Even more so than Facebook for a lot of people (it certainly is for me) It is the collective heartbeat and cyber-trails of the web, all in real time. So it only makes sense that you can use Twitter to gain some advantage, tips and advise for your personal finance budgeting. Here are some of the best ways to use Twitter for financial gains and better savings:

-Twitter Search: The first and most effective way to use Twitter to gain a financial foothold is to use it in an active way through searching. Whether it is to look for discounts on a certain item, offers at your local mall, or advise on a certain product that you are researching, Twitter search is an invaluable tool. Best thing about it, the results are mostly  real time or fairly recent, so the deals are fresh and valid in most cases.

-Expert Advise: find a few finance and budgeting experts and start following them. You will learn a lot from their daily tweets, with as little time spent reading them as you can possibly spare every day.  You never know what tweet you will read that could be so important for your financial literacy. In fact, in my 2+ years of using Twitter, I have learnt a lot of what I know today by reading random expert tweets here and there and applying them to my own situation.

-Observing Twitter Users: as you read the tweets of other friends and people in your list, especially those that have to do with finance and money, you will have a better idea of how others spend and save money, and compare it with yours. You will be amazed how much this ‘mirror’ usage of twitter can help you have a better prospective.

-Follow your favorite companies and Brands: the best and fastest way to find out about special discounts and deals from your favorite brands and companies, is to follow them on Twitter.  You will be able to find out about special deals as soon as they are posted.

-Ask others questions: the beauty of Twitter is that it is a two-way street, with communication flowing back and fourth between the ones you follow and those that follow you.   So if you can’t find answers to what you are looking for, you can simply ask the Twitterverse a question yourself. Not only can you expect an answer from your followers, others who are not following you could also find your question and answer it. This could help in situations where you are researching a certain product, or want to find discounts in a certain store or even city.

These are just some of the hundreds of ways you can use Twitter to your financial advantage. If you don’t have a Twitter account, head to www.Twitter.com and create one. Once you have your account, Twitter will recommend certain people to follow from many different categories (Business, Politics, Technology etc.) And of course, we would appreciate if you can follow us too: @BudgetSense_ca

Given Twitter’s explosive growth in the last few years, a whole literature has been dedicated to it, and we encourage you read and learn more about it.  I just happen to believe that it is generally more useful than Facebook.