Trying to break out of winter money blues

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/01/2018 (3186 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a public service, I am going to dedicate today’s column to a topic that is near and dear to almost everyone I know, by which I mean money.

I am painfully aware that many of you are wondering what makes me, a humour columnist who knows absolutely nothing about money or personal finances, think I am qualified to write knowledgeably about this topic.

Well, let me just say, and I mean this in the best way possible, you are an idiot.

Seriously, if journalists such as myself only wrote about things that we actually know something about, there would be a lot less journalism in the world and that would be a tragedy.

For the record, I decided to tackle this issue today when I received an unsolicited email from a public relations firm promoting something called the Financial Blues Survey, co-sponsored by Credit Canada and the Financial Planning Standards Council.

This survey involved contacting 1,550 random Canadians and asking them the following probing question: “When it comes to your finances, what makes you blue this time of year?”

According to the PR firm’s news release, the period starting on Monday (Jan. 15) and stretching to Valentine’s Day is considered the saddest time of the year, what with its short, bleak days.

It also pointed out that more than half of Canadians (53 per cent) are already feeling blue, owing to the fact their personal finances are messier than U.S. President Donald Trump’s hairstyle.

Which makes this an excellent time for us to sit down, have a cup of tea, possibly a few of those cream-filled biscuits, and have an in-depth chat wherein I share the sum of my knowledge about cold, hard cash.

For starters, some of you are most likely wondering where money comes from. I have spent several minutes studying this question, and I can say with some authority that money comes from three main sources, namely:

1) Looking under the cushions on the ratty couch in your den.

2) Rummaging through the pockets of jackets you have not worn since last spring.

3) Returning that mountain of empties stacked up in your garage.

In the old days, I would also have suggested that you can find money stuffed into the little plastic ashtray in your car, but my wife tells me most cars no longer come with plastic ashtrays, so you probably shouldn’t bother looking there as it will only end in financial disappointment.

In an effort to appear hip and happening, we should also take a few seconds to think about the newest cash craze that is making headlines around the world. I am referring here to the bitcoin, which, according to news reports I partially understood, is a type of digital cryptocurrency that doesn’t actually exist, except in a computer’s memory banks or somewhere deep inside Bill Gates’s brain.

The important thing to remember is that you, a mere human being, cannot physically see bitcoins, which means they are exactly the same as all the other types of currency I currently possess, which are also invisible, if you catch my subtle financial drift.

Some experts argue that the best way to turn a small amount of money into a larger amount is by turning your finances over to an expert analyst. Which is why I always say: “To hell with experts! Also, analysts.”

Based on several minutes of research on the internet, I have determined the way this works is you hand over your money to a financial analyst, who will then take your money to a remote beach in Hawaii and use it to purchase Mai Tais and coconut oil and John Grisham novels. (It is illegal to go to a beach without a John Grisham novel.)

When I explained this to some friends who are financial analysts, they informed me I had made a huge error in the sense that some of them would be more likely to go to a beach in Brazil. Whatever, it is comforting to know that at least your money can afford to take a beach vacation.

Which brings us back to the survey, which contained some shocking findings, such as this: more than one in five Canadians (20 per cent) have a credit card balance larger than their savings account.

Well, allow me to laugh a cruel little laugh — “Muahahaha!” — because I do not think we needed a survey to remind us Canadians that we are carrying more (bad word) credit card debt than most developing nations.

In my case, my wife feels it is her job to remind me every day that my credit card could be used as shielding on the space shuttle because it is able to withstand incredible amounts of heat from the friction caused by repeatedly pulling it out of my wallet to purchase household supplies, such as big-screen TVs that are large enough to be seen when standing at the end of our driveway.

The survey also stated that one in four Canadians (that’s 25 per cent for those of you who remember Grade 5 math) does not have the funds to escape the winter doldrums by taking a vacation.

The survey seemed to imply this was a bad thing, which does not make sense to me, because if we could all afford to take winter vacations, there would not be enough people left in this city in the winter to attend Winnipeg Jets home games, and that could prove embarrassing during TV broadcasts.

Another tragic finding of the Financial Blues Survey involved the chilling fact that six per cent of us have apparently already broken our financial New Year’s resolutions.

That said, I personally have not abandoned my major resolution, which was to try my best to get my hands on some money in the new year. For me, money is a lot like journalistic ethics, in the sense I think it would be a good idea to get some.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to head out into the world right now to try and increase the value of my personal financial portfolio. Because these empties are definitely not going to return themselves.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca