The credit card representative handling my activation call was really hard-selling me on credit balance insurance. I wasn't too sure I needed it because I plan to pay the balance off in full each month, which is the proper way to use credit cards anyway. He was really pushing me to go for the 30-day review, but I was, like, ehh... Something about hard sells raises my hackles, and I was rather suspicious of the fact that I couldn't go without and just opt in afterwards.

So I Googled for "do I need balance protection insurance" and found the Government of Canada's helpful factsheet on credit balance insurance, which led me to the totally awesome list of consumer publications from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.

Hey, governments can rock after all. =)

On Technorati: money, finance, canada, credit

PCFinancial won't let me have more than one savings account, but I'm faking divisions with Gnucash, a personal finance program. Under Accounts:PCFinancial Savings, I have "Earmarked" and "True savings". Because I can set up automatic bill payments only from my checking account, I scheduled automatic transfers between my savings account to my checking account. This is tracked under Assets:PCFinancial checking:Earmarked and :Actual.

I need to talk to Mark at some point to figure out how my funding is structured so that I know what kind of budget I have and whether I can afford to cook for people more often. =) I _hope_ the increased funding from You-Know-Who translates into a raise in my fellowship, as it's quite a bit more than my previous funding.

Nice to have everything sorted out. =)

On Technorati: money

Random Japanese sentence:

猫が窓を引っかいているのが聞こえる。 I can hear a cat scratching at the window.