I subscribe to a lot of personal finance blogs, and the comment boards on them regularly have someone complaining that all personal finance blogs say the same things.
Why, then, am I writing one?
1. Because it’s different for Canadians
Here are some topics I saw covered today: Trent at The Simple Dollar covered charge cards vs. debit cards vs. credit cards.
This is an important distinction … if you’re American. It flummoxes me that the US hasn’t adopted the simple Interac debit card architecture that the rest of the world uses, but they haven’t.
In Canada, though, Interac has been widespread for more than a decade. Everyone has a debit card; everyone knows what it is. The difference between charge cards (like AmEx, which you have to pay off every month) and credit cards will probably confuse a lot of Canadians, but that’s because there’s only one widely-used charge card here – AmEx, like I said – and everything else is a credit card.
Carol on QueerCents has been posting about the importance of insurance as a foundation for healthy personal finance.
Every time I see this topic covered on American PF blogs, the major thrust of the article is “you need insurance or unexpected health costs could wipe you out”.
But Canadians have universal health insurance. This doesn’t mean major health problems can’t create crippling debt – for example, a little while ago I went to a fundraiser for the late, great Oliver Schroer, a phenomenal fiddler. (Update: Olly has since passed away. Here is his Wikipedia page, if you’d like to read about him.) Oliver had been stricken with leukemia and was facing mounting money problems, as many with chronic ailments do. These, however, are the indirect kind: needing more homecare than the system will provide; not having a source of income if you can’t work; traveling for treatment; needing expensive equipment. The other big problem is prescriptions, which aren’t covered, but those are less expensive than they are in the US.
In sum, major illnesses are debilitating here, too, but usually they won’t make you lose your shirt. Therefore, the insurance articles most useful for Canadians are those which cover disability, home, car and life … not health.
My RSS feed also regularly features articles about The Grocery Game, Roth IRAs, 401(k) matches, and stimulus cheques, none of which are useful topics for me, as a Canadian.
2. Because it’s different for the young & broke
I live in a two-storey apartment in downtown Toronto that I share with two other women. I don’t own a car – to get around, I ride my bike or take transit. I’m single and childless. And I make under 30K a year.
Most personal finance bloggers aren’t in those demographic categories. And while I faithfully bookmark detailed articles about home repair for when I am a homeowner, I yearn for advice that’s gonna get me where I live – in an apartment, in an urban setting, in Canada.
3. Because it’s different for girls
By no means do I want an entirely female audience… but I’m a woman, and I’m concerned about gender and how that affects finance.
Before you scoff at that, consider this: women receive only 10% of the world’s income, and own only 1% of the world’s property (figures from Ecofeminist Philosophy
Not counting financial discrimination (because oh, how much I’m looking forward to being a woman and trying to buy a car), there are things I’ll encounter in my life that don’t, largely, affect men: career interruptions in order to take care of children or parents, retirement planning for ten years more than what most men need to consider, life planning that takes biological imperatives into account.
So there you have it. Those three things are why I’m writing. Most of my posts won’t revolve around all or any of those themes, but they’re my motivation for having this site. Like many people, I reached a point where I decided to be the one I was looking for: I wanted to read personal finance about people like me, and so I’m choosing to write it.
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