Gail Vaz-Oxlade's Blog, page 2

I Love Me Some Worms

A couple of years ago I was listening to the audio book, The Earth Moved by Amy Stewart, while I was weeding. I was so enchanted by the worms’ stories that I decided to give myself worms for my birthday that year. I bought a vermicomposting kit, ordered some red wigglers and voilà!

Did you know that Charles Darwin devoted the last years of his life to the meticulous study of the earthworm? Small it may be (it’s also spineless and blind) but its role in the ecosystem is significant. I was hooked.

Two years later I’ve got two composting towers with four drawers each and I’ve produced enough “earth” to upgrade several of my pots’ soil and top-dress my entire front yard.

After the kids moved out I wasn’t producing as much veggie/fruit litter for my big composter outside. In the winter, in particular, it was a pain to haul the bucket out. With my friendly red wigglers down in my basement, it was a quick trip to get rid of my peels and the like. It’s estimated that in North America 30-40% of residential waste is organic, and 90% of mine now goes to the worms.

I don’t put in meat products, citrus (they don’t like it) or onions/garlic because I was told not to. Everything else goes in, including dried, ground up eggshells, tea (you can put in coffee too) tissues and lotsnlots of cardboard cut up into small pieces. Toilet tissue rolls, kitchen paper rolls go in too. A 4:1 mix of brown (dried leaves, cardboard, newspaper) to green (plant) is recommended to maintain a good balance in the composter. The browns provide carbon; the greens provide nitrogen.

Some things, I’ve learned, take forever to compost – think mango seeds, avocado skins and seeds, and potatoes, unless you cut them up (or throw them in the freezer so they start breaking down.) Some things are a big hit: melons of all kinds, berries, banana peels. If you put tomatoes in your composter, be prepared for tomato plants  in your pots or garden! (I just pull out the sprouts.)

In go the bits and pieces. The worms do their job and I reap the benefit: beautiful soil that is rich in micro-nutrients.

Worm compost is seven times richer in plant nutrients than compost created by fungi and bacteria. Studies also show that a small amount mixed into soil suppresses diseases, slugs and insects. Vermicomposting has even been shown to kill e-coli.

I bought a product call the Worm Factory for my worms. I had lots of space. When my daughter decided to try vermicomposting, she bought a Canadian product call the Hot Frog, which is very cute and works well in her apartment. I gave her worms from my bins (because those puppies procreate) and she was off to the races. She’s recently started working for a co-op supermarket in TO and they, too, use vermicomposting to manage their garbage.

I don’t really understand why more people don’t do this. As for managing city garbage (think restaurants and apartment buildings) vermicomposting is a fabulous way to take care of one problem (garbage) while dealing with another (fertilizing plants).

You don’t have to buy a composter, you can build your own if you’re handy. But make sure you follow good instructions so you have proper air circulation and drainage. And while it may take some getting used to (it took me about a year but only took Alex a minute and a half because she’s more into the science) once you get the hang of it, vermicomposting is a breeze.

If you’ve got some space, want to do right by the environment and your plants, consider vermicomposting. If you have kids, it’s a great project to do together. If you live alone, it beats trucking out to the composter in the dead of winter to get rid of your odds and sods.

 

War on Women*

I was in Toronto last week when the Yonge Street incident happened. It was all that filled the news cycle for days and days and days. The far right contingent tried to make it into a discussion about immigrants. Some people tried to throw Crazy and Autistic people under the bus. The media had to be warned off by the police for having the bad manners to insist on trying to get a quote from grieving relatives. And some news outlets gave air to the rabid bigots who think everyone is out to get them. But for the most part, Toronto remained calm, showed a big heart and remained focused on the people hurt, not on turning the incident into something it was not.

And then the discussion turned to what’s wrong with young men who think being undateable means they should mow down women in any way they can. They’ve given it a snappy new acronym, but I won’t use it because it doesn’t deserve it. It’s misogyny, plain and simple.

Regardless of what we wear – cute shorts and a halter or covered from head to toe – we are criticized. Half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical or sexual violence since the age of 16. HALF OF ALL WOMEN IN CANADA. How have we let this continue? How have we allowed a small percentage of men to bully and berate us, beat us, rape us, murder us? Why is this still a thing?

Did you know that every week a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner? On any given night in Canada, 3,491 women and their 2,724 children sleep in shelters because they aren’t safe in their own homes. And if you think it’s hard being a white woman, Indigenous women are killed at six times the rate of non-Indigenous women.

The #MeToo movement has called out loads of badly behaved men, but there are plenty more still in hiding.  So what are we going to do about this? Seriously. What are we going to DO ABOUT THIS? If all we do is think quietly to ourselves, “Thank God it’s not my daughter, sister, mother, aunt,” that’s NOT good enough.

Remember when drinking and driving was considered okay? We fixed that. So why do we keep putting up with the war on women?

I’m not blaming any woman who has found herself in the position of being mistreated by a man. I am blaming men. Not just the abuser. I’m also blaming the men in that woman’s life who have not stepped in and STOPPED the abuser by any means necessary.

I have been physically abused. I have physical abuse in my family. And when one woman in my family attempted to leave her husband and return to her family home, her father took her back to her abusive husband: she was married and there she’d stay. Which she did, taking the beatings like a good girl. FFS! What the hell is wrong with us?

If we let the incident in Toronto last week just pass into our long history of assault and murder, we will witness more and more of these crimes against women as men get angrier and angrier with us.

There are all kinds of organizations set up to help women move out of abusive relationships. But that is not enough. We must attach so much stigma to abuse of women that men not only have to deal with the outrage of family and friends, but risk losing their jobs and their freedom for any form of abuse against women.

Most importantly, we must teach our girl children that abuse is not their fault or their future. And we must teach our boy children that to touch another in any way other than with their permission is WRONG.

———————

*Yes, I know some men are also victims of family violence, but not at the rate of women: the split is about 30:70. (https://www.canadianwomen.org/the-fac...)

Sticks & Stones

So this week I’ve been called “fat” (true), a cunt (technically, true) and a bitch (yeah, kinda)… and that’s just a sample of what’s been thrown at me as I work hard to make sure Doug Ford doesn’t become leader of Ontario.

Thing is, I don’t give a hoot. The rabid religious right don’t scare me. And if you come at me with both barrels, you’ve given me permission to respond as I wish. I’ve been living with Crazy for so long now, that there’s nothing anyone can say to me that Crazy hasn’t already said in triplicate. Who knew that being Crazy was going to come in so handy?

I have a thick skin. Not everyone does. Some people just disintegrate under the weight of disapproval. Some people don’t get the option to live true to themselves because they will be castigated by family and friends. My heart breaks for them.

If you belong to a tribe that doesn’t like change, won’t keep up with social developments, or adheres to the policy “not my tribe, not my problem,” I completely understand why you just can’t bring yourself to change your pronouns!

Like every great movement before, legislation had to come before implementation. And those on the front line of implementation took a lot of abuse. Think black people. Think ‘right to choose’ activists. Think the LGBTQ2 community.

When people scream about their “free speech” and what they’re really defending is old thinking, bigotry or hate speech, the rest of the world has to call them on it. I know, I know, we like to be polite in Canada. We don’t want to offend, to hurt someone else’s feelings, to fall to their level. And yet, we MUST.

To allow hatred to be spewed under the guise of “free speech” is the first step to letting the religious right push you around. It means you think their right to vomit hate and lies trumps all our right not to be buried in their puke.

Well, I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t watch as years of progress are undone. If you’re an old, white man, if you’re a religious zealot, if you’re a trans-exclusionary feminist, if you’re a pathetic put-upon that wants to turn back time, I’m going to call you on it. People who think profit comes before people, I’m looking at you too.

I’ve got a thick skin. I am determined not to let what happened in the US happen in ON. That self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, selfishness doesn’t belong in my province. So bring it!

Please Keep It to Yourself

I grew up with Judo-Christian education. Going to synagogue on Saturday and attending a Catholic school run by nuns Monday to Friday meant I was immersed in religion. By the time I was 12, I had read the Old Testament from cover to cover twice. I had also studied the Book of Luke at school. And I was 11 years old before someone told me I didn’t have to genuflect.

I’m done with religion. You might think that with that much religion in my upbringing I’d be a staunch believer, an adherer to the rules, a zealot. Nope. When I was asked whether I wanted to be bat mitzvahed or confirmed, I chose neither. I had seen hypocrisy in both religions and I’d have no part of it.

Alex, who was not raised with religion but has read the bible, has admired her friends’ faith. But not enough to join up. My son, too, was raised with no religion, which is a good thing since autistics are rule-bound and he would have ended up a fundamentalist. (I think a fundamentalist is anyone who chooses doctrine over love, regardless of denomination.)

My friends who are religious never preach. They are not homophobic. They have guns because they hunt game (I live in the bush); they are tools, not “collections.” They believe all genders are equal. Most are dual-income families, so the women haven’t been consigned to keeping home. Don’t get me wrong, if you choose to keep home, that’s your business. But if keeping home is your only option, that I have a problem with.

I believe you can belong to any religion you want. I also believe that your religion should remain under your roof, and under the roof of your house of worship.

We have a school board in Ontario that is funded with taxpayer money. Yes, I know, they choose to fund the Catholic School Board (CSB). But having two school boards means having to duplicate all the administrative stuff. Yup, there are twice as many people at head office because there are two head offices. Now, how ridiculous is that?

We’ve allowed religion to set the tone for some of our political agenda. We’ve watched where that has gone over the last couple of years since the Conservatives in the US won everything: the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency. Completely in charge they have ruined trade relationships, they have given the markets the willies, and they have made poor people poorer by removing their health-care and destroying social programs. If we let the Religious Ragers – regardless of denomination – get into the game here in Canada, religion will have over-stepped it’s bounds and we will have let it.

All this is to say I am glad your religion brings you comfort. I’m glad your religion works for you and your family. You’ll probably live longer than me! But while we’re both floating around in the same soup, that religion thing, please keep it to yourself.

A Rock and a Hard Place

A reporter recently contacted me for an interview about my views on the Ontario election. She was rude. I declined the interview. Since her agenda was flying like a neon flag, it was a no-win situation, so I didn’t play ball.

Since I made my position on the election clear – I don’t care who wins as long as its not a Conservative – I’ve been sniped at, called Miss Piggy and generally told that I’m a fake, a hypocrite, a liar.

It is a frustrating election. I’m frustrated. I bet a lot of you are frustrated. Every time Kathleen Wynn opens her mouth I cringe wondering what rubbish will come next. As for Andrea Horwath, she seems to not really be interested in the election.

I don’t like debt. You know that. I also know that personal debt and government debt are not the same thing. But watching the debt rise in Ontario scares me as much as the next guy… not so much for me, but for my kids. (Here’s a good article on ON’s debt.)

So this election has become, for me, a fight to make sure that the worst option doesn’t happen. For me, the worst option is Doug Ford. The whole #FordNation thing just creeps me out. These people applaud enthusiastically when Doug Ford declares:

not everyone deserves a livable wage,
women’s right to abortion needs to be re-opened,
LGBTQ has no business in the school sex-ed curriculum,
disabled people should not be seen nor heard,
transit funding is a waste of money,
rent control needs to be repealed,
market forces should drive everything,
global warming isn’t real and the environment will take care of itself, and
manufacturing is where we’ll find new jobs.

Oh for heaven’s sake. It’s like #FordNation has been living under a rock. How can anyone think that paying less than a liveable wage is okay? Once upon a time, bosses made 20 times their employees’ wages. Now they make 300 times what their employees make. But minimum wage is the problem?

How can anyone deny that LGBTQ people deserve to be recognized and referred to in a way that is comfortable for THEM. Remember when black people had to sit at the back of the bus? Why would we want to go backwards instead of forwards?

As the mother of an autistic child I am deeply offended by the “don’t let them out of the house” idea. My child not only shines academically (he’ll graduate from college this year on the Honour Roll) but he is a thoughtful, caring and honest man. I could not be more proud of him.

Global warming is real. Manufacturing is not coming back from the abyss.

Old thinking. That’s what all of the #FordNation malarkey is: Old thinking. We need new thinking, new ideas, new solutions to problems we’ve been facing for a long time.

Universities are taking heaps of money to graduate kids that can’t spell and don’t know grammar. Graduates can’t find jobs. Throwing more money at education, without changing the education paradigm, is ridiculous. Driving up debt to prop up old institutions is ridiculous.

But here’s the rub. If my options are Doug Ford and his right-wing cronies or one of the women who heads the other two parties, I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure it’s #NotFord.

When Doug Ford said he planned to save money by cutting funding to the CBC I could have died laughing (since CBC is federally funded, not provincially funded) if there weren’t so many people chanting his name and praising his BS platform. Those people scare me. No matter what crap comes out of that man’s mouth, his acolytes have his back.

I’m getting my house ready so that if I have to sell and move because the worst does happen in Ontario, I’m ahead of the game. I will not live in a province that elects Doug Ford as premier since, for me, it’s all downhill from there.

Perhaps the thing that disturbs me the most is the people who, trapped between a rock and a hard place, won’t vote. People want a change but don’t like any of the options. So they’ll stay home. If enough people do that, FORD WILL WIN.

If you don’t want that to happen, you have to vote strategically. That means voting for the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservative candidate in your riding. Regardless of whether it is a Liberal or NDP candidate, if you don’t want Ford, you must pick the one most likely to defeat Ford’s minions.

If you’re standing on the sidelines waiting to see how it all shuffles out, I’ve got a lovely house in Brighton that might be going on the market as soon as the election is over.

Aliens

I’ve been thinking about our young’uns a lot these days: the soon-to-be-adults finally taking charge in the fight against guns in America; the youth of Black Lives Matter who are determined to change how their brothers and sisters are treated; the huge movement within the LGBTQ2 community to hold to their own truth.

To some of the people in the generations that have come before and are witnessing this upheaval in our society, these young’uns seem like aliens. They cannot even begin to conceive of their anger, their passion or their determination. And they seem to have forgotten their own youthful determination to carve their own way.

If I did not children who are fully embracing of the agenda of next generations I, too, might be a’feared. But I’m not. I am excited. And while, from time to time, I step into the poo of “old thinking,” I have children who are happy to quickly point it out and redirect me.

I remember commenting to my daughter about a girl friend who wore a tuxedo looking good in men’s clothes. I was quickly told, “Clothes don’t have a gender.” Back in my day they did. Men’s and women’s shirts buttoned on different sides and we dutifully wore the appropriate shirt. But the young’uns who will be in charge next have no desire to conform; individuality is their scaffolding. And what’s different this time – as opposed to the boomers who were all about “I” – is that they are firmly committed to individualism for all, not just for each of themselves. And they will fight for EVERY tribe’s right to the dignity and freedom they want for themselves.

If it is fear holding you back – change can be hard, and it’s coming at a ferocious speed – might I suggest you sit with some of these young people and listen to them describe how they see the world. If it is a lack of understanding, listening and asking questions will help set that right. And if it is straight out unwillingness to accept that the world in changing – and I believe for the better – then you shouldn’t be surprised that you’re seen as ‘old.’

I am turning 59 in June. More has changed around me in the last ten years than in the previous 49. And sometimes I feel like I’m running to keep up. But I am determined to keep up. I will not fall into that tribe of muttering, millennial-bashing, kids-should-shut-up old people (regardless of their age.) I will ask questions, risking the laughter that erupts when I say something that the young’uns see as so yesterday.

If millennials are killing whole industries as they seek to define their own futures, I’m fine with that. Some of those industries have been pulling our consumption strings for far too long and it’s about time they died. Their priorities are not the same as the priorities we had at their age. They’re not the same as the priorities some of us still cling to. And that’s a good thing. It’s what progress is built on.

Relationships are Fragile

It’s been 21 years since my mother broke up with me. She took her voice, my dad, and many of the people I called Aunty and Uncle with her. Why would they dump me like a hot potato on my mother’s say so? She is powerful in her fury and relentless in her retribution. If they wanted to keep her, they had to fall in line. And fall in line they did.

My mother and I had been, as we say in Jamaica, “batty and bench.” We talked every day, sometimes twice a day. But things started going off the track when I had my kids and my mother was no longer the centre of my world.

When it first happened, I was devastated. I cried and cried and cried and cried. And then I cried some more. It took about three years to mourn the loss of my mother and father. I still miss my dad. My mom, not so much.

When my cousin committed suicide, my parents flew to Vancouver to her funeral. I told my husband I was sure my mom would contact me when she got back. Watching my aunt destroyed by the loss of her daughter, my mother was sure to feel the loss too. And sure enough, when she returned she said she wanted to come and see me. I said, “Sure.”

She came. She wanted to know if there was anything in my life for which I was resentful towards her. The woman who promised to love me forever, who preached

‘blood is thicker than water’ and ‘family first’ wanted to know if I had something I was angry at her for. Then she reassured me that if I needed anything, I could call her.

I reminded her that she had changed her telephone number and forbidden people from giving it to me. She laughed and nodded. Yes, she had. When she left, she still hadn’t given me her number. I was not surprised.

Because I am depressive, because my cousin killed herself while being treated for depression, my mother wanted to make sure that if I killed myself she wouldn’t be on the hook for pounds and pounds of guilt. My poor Catholic mother. If only she had known that having grieved for years for the loss of her heart I was so over her.

Relationships are fragile. Even the ones you think of as permanent aren’t. If anyone had told me even a year before our breakup that my mother and I would one day never speak to each other again, I would not have believed it. Yet, here we are, 21 years later and my mother is not in my life. She’s missed my children. She’s missed helping me with the challenges I faced when I found out my child was autistic. She’s missed watching me grow into a fierce, strong and determined woman.

My daughter was devastated by the loss of my mother. We went on holiday to the Bahamas and Alex, who was about four at the time, kept telling her story to every single adult she could corner at the swimming pool. She was working it out. And I let her. My husband would return from fetching us drinks, sit beside me on the edge of the pool and laughingly say, “Is she telling her story again?” Yes she was. Later on the same trip Alex said to me, “What kind of mother doesn’t talk to her own child?” My response was to explain that Grandma was nuts. There was no other reasonable explanation. Normal people do not withdraw their speech forever over seemingly trivial issues.

My mother was in fact mad at my husband for something he’d said, and furious at me for not choosing her over him. I chose no one. I told her I wasn’t doing schoolyard anymore. She chose to leave. When I finally separated after 18 years, she attempted a reunion, which I was happy for only because it meant I got my dad back. But it was short-lived, since I wasn’t down for the negativity and judginess that were my mother’s repertoire.

My son turned 22 this year. What a man he is: kind, gentle, strong. My daughter will be 25 in the fall. Another kind, strong and determined woman. I’ve been a great – seriously great – parent, thanks to my mother. She taught me about what was important and what wasn’t. And I’m grateful for the lessons because her betrayal, along with everything good she taught me, made me who I am today.

Four-year-old Alex and I made a promise on that holiday. We promised we would never let happen to us what happened to my mother and me. No matter how pissed we get with each other, even when we need a break, we never miss the opportunity to say (or text), “I love you. Give me few days.”

It was some years later that I discovered that my maternal great grandmother died not speaking to my grandmother; my grandmother died not speaking to my mother. Look! A family trait. And my mother will die not speaking to me. But Alex and I have promised, tested and held to the conviction that this will NOT happen to us.

Twenty one years ago my mother withdrew her speech and left me broken-hearted and angry. How dare she! How dare she break her promise to love me forever. And yet, in doing so, my mother gave me a lesson in what love is. And I am so grateful for that lesson.

Our EI System is Broken

When Alexandra Prue was suddenly terminated from her retail job in April 2017 — three years into her employment and two weeks after her best review — she applied for employment insurance (EI) benefits. Those benefits were declined.

Ms Prue contacted EI to inquire why. She was told that the reason given by her employer for dismissal was “illness.” She was instructed to get a doctor’s note certifying she was fit to work. After submitting the doctor’s note, Prue was declined for employment insurance based on the fact that she was not ill. What?

If your EI benefits have been denied, the Service Canada online portal suggests loads of stuff you can do. You can call to talk to a rep, which Prue did to no avail. You can visit your Service Canada centre. After waiting an hour, Prue finally met with a Service Canada employee who, after asking three or four questions, took Prue to a phone, dialed a number, and left her while the hold-music played. It turned out to be the same number that Prue called from home weeks before. They had no answers.

If the Service Canada centre doesn’t work, you can file a Request for Reconsideration through the mail. These, it turns out, are processed fairly quickly. It took only a week to get the message, “We re-evaluated your claim and revised the dates that we considered you failed to provide a medical certificate to support your incapacity for work. Employment Insurance benefits are not payable to you for this reason.”

Her last resort: Me. She waived her privacy rights and I contacted EI to see what the hell was going on.

It’s amazing what can be accomplished when a) the media get involved and b) people can feel a hot, angry breath on their necks. I submitted Ms. Prue’s release and my questions on Christmas day. Guess what? I got a reply that night telling me they’d be back to me in a couple of days. On December 28 I received another email affirming that the issue was being looked into. That same day, Prue received a call from an EI representative seeking to clarify her twice-declined claim. On December 29, $9060 was deposited to her account. Another $4704 would appear as a pending deposit days later. Who says you can’t get anything done between Christmas and New Years!

When Ms. Prue asked the gentleman who contacted her, we’ll call him Kevin, what she should have done differently to get the right outcome he assured her she had done everything right. She pressed the issue, asking, “So why is doing everything right not enough?” Kevin was silent.

So I wanted to know why someone would be denied sickness benefits if their claim was for regular benefits? The response from Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) was, “Ms. Prue was not denied EI sickness benefits, because she did not apply for EI sickness benefits.” Nice deflection.  So what was the problem then with her claim?

I asked why, if someone qualifies for regular benefits, the claim would be denied. ESDC replied, “Ms. Prue was initially considered entitled for EI regular benefits because medical proof was required in order to confirm her availability because she declared that the reason for separation was sickness and not dismissal.”

Oh, bite me. In addition to being untrue, doesn’t that second answer contradict their first? Now I’m really confused.

It appears Ms. Prue’s case may be less of an anomaly than ESDC would like us to think. When I put out a call on Twitter for people who were confused by their EI claim denials, I heard some interesting stories.  Because of privacy issues, I will refer to these people only by initials.

AL wrote: When I asked about speaking to an EI supervisor she told me that she doesn’t have the ability to transfer me to the EI group and made it clear that my questions were not appreciated.  Herein lies the crux of the matter. The people to whom I was able to speak didn’t have answers and the people with answers were unavailable to me.

CV wrote: I was approved for EI in early August and was getting payments but my claim went under review from October 22 to December 25 and I did not receive payments because of vacation pay that my employer and I both reported in mid-August. I received a large EI payment in late December, which got me caught up … the 9/10 week wait felt long and uncertain. I didn’t sleep well and I was very anxious.

LS wrote: I filed on November 22 and still have no decision and am unable to reach someone for clarification.

DT wrote: I applied in late 2017. …my claim seemed to be approved (it was the first time I have applied after contributing for 18 years) however I have not heard anything since nor have I received any money.

BV said: I applied mid January. It took until April for me to get the money I should have received in January. If it wasn’t for my father’s ability to support me, I would have been homeless.

Homelessness might have been Ms. Prue outcome too. Instead of receiving the weekly payments to which she was entitled so she could pay her rent and buy food, she got nothing.

Interestingly, ESDC waited until the money was in Ms. Prue’s bank account so that in answer to my question, “…why you took her premiums but paid no benefits when she needed them?” they could respond “As of December 29, 2017, payments for 20 weeks of EI regular benefits were issued.”

All this is to say that ESDC is seriously messed up. If you’ve made an employment insurance claim and can get no good reason for your claim’s denial, it seems you must turn to the media to get answers. I am appalled at the obfuscation in ESDC’s responses. And, BTW, where’s the “We’re sorry?”

Ms. Prue was able to survive only because she could borrow money from friends and family. The system that exists to keep unemployed people like Ms. Prue off the streets failed to the tune of 31 weeks and $13,764 in missing benefits. Surely the whole point of employment insurance isn’t to leave people destitute after years of paying into the plan?

Alexandra Prue is my daughter. I’m not related to any of the other people in this story. If you’ve experienced a run-around from EI, it’s time to yell about it. The social safety net isn’t a government handout; you’ve paid into the system and you deserve to be treated with respect. If you aren’t, shout. I’m listening.

 

PS Alex hasn’t received another penny from EI since the beginning of January, which means they are three months behind. AGAIN. Despite repeated calls to “Kevin,” she hasn’t had any joy. I’m sure there are more of you out there who are frustrated with the system. I want to hear from you because the system is broken and we have to do something to fix it. 

 

 

So Long, And Thanks for All the Fish

Hello all. This is my final post for a while. I’m taking some time off. It’s been a very busy first quarter and it’s time to do some reassessing about life, the universe and everything.

There’s lots of info on this site and I’m past wanting to regurgitate what I’ve already said a dozen times. After blogging for eight years, five days a week — that’s over 2000 blogs, never mind all the questions answered and articles written — I’ve said it and said it again. If you want to hunt it out for free it’s here, somewhere, on this site. I have search functions on both the site and the blog that will help you find what you want.

If you want the information laid out in a systematic way so you can implement it 1, 2, 3, it’s in one of my books. Just find the right one, read it and then DO IT! It’s not enough to know, folks. To have a different outcome you have to DO something different.

I’m off to spend more time in my garden, painting, writing my kids’ fiction, and travelling with my children while they still want to hang out with me. I’ll still answer some of your questions — the ones that I haven’t yet answered or that strike me particularly interesting. And I might post them on the site from time to time.

I’m going to leave MyMoneyMyChoices.com up for as long as I can but someone has been trying to hack both this site and the MMMC site, and as soon as they’re successful, all of it will come down. I have no desire to spend loads of effort/money defending these sites.

It’s been a blast. I hope you’ve learned what you need to make your life just the way you want it to be.

g

This & That: Money Management Edition

M Wrote: Your book Debt Free Forever completely changed my thinking and attitude towards money. For the first time in my 28 years, I know the worth of a dollar, and how to make my money work for ME, not the other way around.

I have a question about irregular income. I get paid bi-weekly, and as a Nurse who works 80%, my pays are largely irregular (due to what type of shift I work days/nights, overtime, holidays, weekends, they all have a different hourly wage). One pay could be $2,000, the next pay could be $800. I am trying to make a monthly budget, but due to my irregular income, it never works out, so I start over every pay day, trying to come up with a new budget, depending on how much I made. Is there an easier method than this? So far I am doing ok with making a new budget every two weeks, but I figure there must be thousands of other people with an irregular outcome that can make monthly budgets. I would like to know your two cents on this issue.

Gail Says: If your work efforts bring in $800 one month and $2,000 the next you have to smooth out your cash flow. Do up a budget that covers all your basic monthly costs: basic food, housing, transportation, medical. The we-can-live-without-it items like clothes, toys, and partying don’t make it to this list. However, savings and debt repayment do. This is your “A” budget. Your “B” budget covers things like extra nice food, home maintenance… needs that can be dealt with less regularly. Your “C” budget includes money for wants like clothes and entertainment. In your skinny months — when you bring home less — you concentrate on the A budget. When you make more, you can use your B or C budget.

Now you could have a big fat A Budget total if you’ve weighed yourself down with big fixed expenses – like that $800 a month car payment or a home that’s way too much for your wallet. Ditto if you’re carrying tons of debt. But I’m going to assume for the purposes of this discussion that if you have those things you can pay for them. (If you can’t, this may be the time to reassess your priorities.)

So in the month you make only $800, you can only spend on A items. When you make more, you can spend more on B and C items. You should have a pretty healthy curveball account (read this: http://gailvazoxlade.com/blog/archive...) so that if your A budget requires more than that $800 you bring home, you have an account from which to draw the extra you need. Over time, it’ll all smooth out.

 

D Wrote: We have received an inheritance of 230,000k. We have been struggling for years to make ends meet. And we barely have enough income to cover our monthly expenses. We have been making ends meet but it is tight. No wiggle room at all. We have no debt other than our home. We own a home in Toronto that we bought 3 years ago with the help of my father for a down payment and legal fees. We owe $430,000 a 2.89 % at 30 years. We make 110kgross between my husband and me. We have 2 children, 8 and 3. We are older parents. My husband and I are 48. We have no RRSPs or TFSAs. We have an RESP for our 8 year old daughter since she was born. Nothing for our 3 year old son. I have life insurance and my husband has some thru work. My husband has a pension thru his work.

My father is advising us to put all the inheritance down on our mortgage then get a Line of Credit for the balance and use the Line of Credit to increase our monthly budget. And continue to make our $2000/month mortgage payment to the Line of Credit.

I have talked to a financial advisor who recommended us to put 40k in RRSPs, 30k TFSAs, 2500 into RESPs and invest the rest to gain a monthly draw that would improve our life style and allow us to save for vacations and home improvements. She also said that the RRSPs and putting them and other investments in my name would help us get more money back on our income tax. My husband is in a 46% tax bracket.

We would have to pay the financial advisor 1% of our investment per year. The financial advisor said that we can’t eat our house if we need money. She said if we had enough to live monthly then she would advise us to put the inheritance on the mortgage. But since we don’t, she said don’t worry about the mortgage, you need money to live. I would like to follow the financial advisors advice. But is that too risky? Is she just trying to make herself money?

Gail Says: Good heavens. Such a blessing. So much confusion. Okay, so here’s what I would do if it were my money:

 1.  I’d open up a high interest savings account and put the $230,000 in it.

2. I’d make enough of a contribution to spousal RSPs (since your hubster already has a work pension) to reduce his taxes. You should see an accountant but if you put $30,000 in a spousal RSP for you, you should reduce his taxes by about $10,000.

3. That $10,000 a year can be used to:  a) Fund your children’s RESPs … $2,500 each to max the CESG grant money,  b) Supplement your income.

4. I’d max out any unused TFSA contribution room. Since neither of you has contributed, you each have $41,000 in contribution room. And you’ll have some room as soon as the calendar clicks over again in January (hard to tell right now if it’ll be $10K each of $5,500 each, depends on who’s running the country!) THAT’S YOUR EMERGENCY FUND.

5. In March 2016, make another $30,000 RSP contribution (assuming you have the room) again so that you’re building retirement assets for the future. If you both work until 68, you have 20 strong years of potential growth ahead of you, so this is a good plan.

Okay, so we’ve allocated $30K to the first RSP contribution, and $30K to the second RSP contribution, and $82,000 to your TFSAs plus at least another $11,000 for next year’s TFSA contributions for a total of $153,000.

Now, to the mortgage. Just trying to pay off a chunk of mortgage won’t work since the mortgage comes with rules and you have to play within the structure of the mortgage. You should have a principle prepayment option on your mortgage. Usually you can pay off anywhere from 10% to 20% of your original mortgage amount. Find out how much you can pay off and when (some mortgages say on the anniversary date, some at any time during the year, you have to know which). I’m going to guess you can make a principal prepayment of 10% (more is better) and tell you to slap $43,000 against your mortgage as soon as you can.

That leaves you with $34,000 that you can use to supplement your income over the next few years.

Keep in mind a couple of things:  

You can’t just spend that money willy-nilly. That’s your curveball account that helps you cope with your very tight budget. You must still live carefully and,


You still have to decide how you’re going to invest the money you’ve put in your RSP/TFSA. Those are just umbrellas that tell the tax man to keep his sticky paws off your money. You still have to put that money to work. My golden rule is you can’t buy anything you can’t explain to a 12 year old. I’d look at indexed investing if it were my money.

 

T Wrote: I have been using your budget spreadsheet and the Jars method since about 2011. I found that your system has really reduced the stress and worry and has helped us manage spending so much. My question is actually about forecasting and finding ways for including that with our budget. Can you think of a way to take your current family budget template and incorporate a forecast and actual variance so that we can take our budgeting to the next level?

Gail Says: Sounds to me like you’re ready to take your money management to the next level, incorporating planned spending, tracking with a spending journal and posting to a cash flow budget.

If there are things you spend money less routinely – think car insurance, property taxes, gifts, sports fees, and the like – you should include a line for each of those things in your budget and set money aside monthly. Let’s face it, if it’s costing you $800 a year to keep your kid in hockey, it’s far easier to come up with $67 a month than to scrape together the $800 all at once. And $100 a month for holiday gifts makes way more sense than heading into a new year with a shopping hang-over on your credit card.

Whenever you need to accumulate money for a particular buy, that’s planned spending, and you should have a separate savings for that money. Each month you total up the amounts going to planned spending and transfer it to your Planned Spending savings account. (For heaven’s sake, use a high-interest savings account. Don’t settle for your bank’s savings account option paying sweet-diddly-squat!) When it comes time to use the money, you transfer it back to your regular account to pay the bill.

This blog explains how to use the spending journal. 

Every month you have to enter your spending journal entries into your budget. This is the part of the process that takes discipline. When you have to enter every single coffee purchase you made into your budget, you become very aware of how often you buy coffee. Every entry represents something you purchased. And becoming aware of your shopping habits is half the battle.

When making your entries, don’t start and stop. Research shows you increase the “pain” if you take a break. So plow through to the end.