Hang on to your hats, folks. We’re about to enter a crazy time of the year.

Your shopping is probably mostly done (right? RIGHT??) but there’s plenty of in-the-moment wallet busters in store (sic) for the next 10 days. Here are 5 last minute tips to spend smart between now and New Years.

1. Run, don’t walk, run to your nearest dollar store to pick up gift cards, wrapping paper and bows. You don’t want to spend a fortune on this at the Brand Name store on Christmas Eve! If you have 90 minutes of time, an even better idea: make your own bows from leftover wrapping paper like Karen does.







2. New Years Eve. Going out? Leave your keys and your plastic at home. Decide how much you’re doing to spend and use cash. Save yourself from yourself! No oops-overspending hangovers this January 1st on my watch!












3. Create your “standard-polite-decline” in advance to excuse yourself from potentially pricey on-the-spot invites you receive (we’re going out for lunch, join us!). Your line can be whatever works for you. Ideas: a gracious and classic, “Thanks so much but I have other plans” or “another time”; if suitable, ask if you can check your calendar first; have a standby excuse “I need to take the dogs for their walk”.







4. Travelling? Call your cel phone service provider today to be clear about extra charges. Avoid nasty surprises when you get your January bill! I usually purchase about $10 from Bell so I can make extra calls while in Vancouver.

5. Don’t apologize for not spending. I’m not saying cheap-out. But controlling your spending over the next 10 days should be a badge of honour. Settle that within yourself, and then let your actions and your words flow from that place.

For a time as a kid, our family had barely middle class income. Oh, we never went without shoes or anything, but things were tight.

During those difficult few years, there were a sprinkling of glorious moments when something so wonderful happened it felt like a miracle. One occurred when I was in grade 2. I’d just learned how to tell time and I wanted a watch for Christmas. Desperately. But I didn’t expect one, that’s for sure.

On Christmas Eve (we followed the northern European tradition of opening presents Christmas Eve), there was a special box for me. It was an unforgettable moment, unwrapping that gift. Not only did that box contain a watch, but it had six different coloured straps which could be interchanged, and three different casings which could be interchanged. The permutations and combinations were infinite to my 7 year old mind. Not only did I receive a beautiful watch, I received an infinite number of watches!

And I wore a new one every week for that year, and I bet the year after that, and the year after that.

Anyway, that’s one of my most magical, glorious moments of Christmas that I can recall.

How ’bout you? Did you have any particularly thrilling gift-moments that you can recall?

Did you see Children of Men? The images of the Tuition Fee Hike protest in London seem eerily like the movie.

The base fee would rise to £6,000 (about $9,400 Cdn, at today’s exchange rate).

There are some “worth 1000 words” photos over on the Boston Globe site. It ain’t pretty. Dystopia?

Opening my first (and so far only) macbook is one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. (David, remember me asking you if buying future macbooks was as thrilling? or if it was only the first purchase that was so amazing?). I got home at about 4pm and I stayed up til nearly 3am – unheard of for me – enthralled.

That was in 2005, when iPods were starting to take off, but Mac users were still the outsiders — the cool, truly geeky outsiders who inhabited design firms making beautiful things. I wasn’t one of them, but dammit, I now had the same computer! And a money coach with a mac was cooler than a money coach with a pc, non?

Yes, it’s been a love affair, undiminished by my iPod touch, then my iPhone and most recently my iPad. My macbook is my first and true one.

But it’s been hard used: across the country and back, hauled through -40C regularly, dropped a few times, and rarely turned off over the past 5 years.

And now, routinely, this:

My macbook’s had its day and it’s time to buy a new one.

For the past month, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the Apple Rumour site which advises:

Product MacBook
Recommendation: Don’t Buy – Updates soon
Last Release May 18, 2010
Days Since Update 212 (Avg = 195)

But I need one sooner rather than later. I can’t imagine that Apple will release anything new in January – who would buy that soon after Christmas? – and February seems unlikely as well. All I know is that they will release OS X Lion in the summer.

If I buy a macbook now, I can still upgrade to Lion from Snow Leopard when it’s released, right? And it’s a fairly easy process?

ps – and have you bought more than one mac? Was it as thrilling after the initial purchase?

Argh!

Just when I was getting sleepily comfortable with my worldviews, Harvard’s Michael Sandel had to mess with my head.

I’ve been cool with taxes for quite some time now. I wasn’t always. As a teen and into my twenties, I saw no reason why my hard-earned money should fund other people’s issues. I vividly recall being thrown back when my boss at the time, whom I admired greatly, was completely at ease with taxes.

Over the years, I’ve become at ease with paying taxes too. Now, when I hear “tax cuts”, I warily wonder which services we are going to lose. And beyond paying for items I use myself – universities, health, safety via police – I also want to live in a society where the hungry are fed and the homeless are housed. That society just feels better to me.

Until I considered it from another point of view. This other point of view forces a clash between my deep-seated sense of independence (I’m nothing if not “my own person”) and my commitment to fundamental rights and freedoms versus my desire for a kind, compassionate society and .

The reasoning goes like this:

1. Taxation = the taking of our earnings.

ERGO: Taxes are a form of slavery.

If I don’t have the sole right to the fruits of my labour, that’s like saying the state is a part owner of me.

Readers. Agree? Disagree? Is this way of posing the issue a red herring?

Paul – I bet you have something to say
And maybe you, Canajun Finance?

If you have time and inclination, here’s the lecture: