Spending those CAD: How She Did It in Canada

This transplanted contributor lives to travel and thinks Venice is a treasure beyond descriptive words. Pedestrian Florence is a very close second favorite. Rome deserves another visit, if the only to people-watch!

She now lives 3 blocks away from the mall that once was the biggest in the entire world…the northern frozen world, anyway.

If you are lucky enough, you just might see Northern Lights dancing in the sky on late summer nights. Around here, a moose might be seen crossing the backroads. A bear, if you are very very lucky.  Here and north of here, the snowy Christmas scene we so adore in the tropics is seen six months in a year. Beautiful, eh?

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I came to this permafrost nation 6 years ago having the same commonplace cattle’s reason, greener pastures. And indeed it is that. Or if we are to be technical about, oilier petroleum, or liquid gold, or however you want to call that sticky fluid you fill your vehicles’ tanks with. This land I am living produces that, gazillions of it. And is this land rich? Indeed it is!

You cannot die of hunger in this place. You may die with over consumption maybe, but never physiological hunger. Why not you ask? Because this land is rich enough to create social matrices that does not allow that. If you lost your job, you can avail of the employment insurance you have paid into while you were working.

You don’t earn enough? You can apply for social assistance and see if you qualify. Oh, you are discontented with you current salary and would like to improve yourself and go back the hallowed hallways of tertiary learning? You can borrow money from the government to do just that. And you don’t have to pay it back right away. You have 6 months after graduation to pay all those back. And sometimes, they waive a huge portion of that. Congratulations! You just upgraded your job potential and downgraded your student loans. Neat huh?

If only our needs stop there. Oh okay, the needs do stop there. Another sneaky player comes into the scene, our wants. In my previous life, what this is can be called success. Having met my needs is achievement. Not quite here. By virtue of being here, one entertains the myriad of possibilities that now seems reasonable: a brand new car, the latest widgets, even European trips.

All this can be had here, right here, right now. A lot of people do this all the time. Stretching their lines of credits, maxing out their credit card limits. I have been here once before. Never again. We can have these things, all of these things…maybe just not at one single pouring.

Definition of terms:

Line of credit – a huge chunk of change your bank purposely sets aside at your disposal. The better your paying behaviour, the bigger the chunk you have access to. The interest you pay is usually way less than your credit card…usually 5-7%. Amounts can be to the tune of 40% of your annual income. You do not have a plastic card for this. You can transfer amounts thru web-banking to your debit card for your spending pleasure.

Credit card limit – same as line of credit, only with higher interest rates. Interests vary starting from 7 to 21% annually. And access to this is masterfully delivered in that tiny but oh-so-powerful plastic card.

In this society, to be out of debt must be a conscious decision every waking moment. How society entices us to part with our money, and how easy it is to let them!

Let’s see how much in total money you can have access to at one moment. Let’s say you earn 40,000. And let’s assume you have a great credit history, meaning you pay your bills on time and mostly all of the amounts owing all the time. You earned yourself the title, best possible creditor. Your bank is beaming at you and in turn it offers (I know! The bank offers!) you 20,000 line of credit with 5% annual interest. And since you have your credit card (Visa, Mastercard, etc) with the same bank, they gave you higher credit limit too, say 5,000.

And of course you have to shop at Costco where they only accept American Express cards. And since you are fixated with Costco’s great deals, you just had to sign up! And since you so graciously told the truth on their application that you earn 40,000, they in turn graciously granted you another 10,000 credit limit.

So in total, with the line of credit 20,000 and the first Visa credit card 5,000 and American Express card, 10,000, that is a whole freakin huge amount of money! You will, with open mouth, realize, that you have just been given access to almost your entire year’s income.

Herein lies one of the greater challenges that makes men and women alike tremble. What do we do with this power? Indeed how you react to this abundance may surprise you. You will definitely learn so much more about yourself, more than you think you know.

*Traveling  to Canada?

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