Peter Adler
Peter Adler has been a journalist for longer than he'd want to admit.Not that his memory has been failing him, but when you spend more than a half of a century in this racket, a certain hesitation might be understandable, advisable, even. Banned in the then-communist Czechoslovakia for his writings a few decades ago, he immigrated to Canada where he again returned to journalism. In 1995, he was one of the founding parents of www.canada.com. Later, he also created content for the original version of www.faceoff.com. He worked as editor on www.cyberwalker.com, and
www.triviamonkey.com, too. For a decade and a half, he has been serving as one of the judges on the panel for the Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek's world-wide competition for best news web sites, EPpy. Originally, Adler, a.k.a. Uncle Pedro, trained to become an economist, and that science has kept its hold on him since his university days. And so has his passion for economic and political history. But journalism and other creative endeavours, such as live theatre, have won. His hobbies include his family, reading and writing non-fiction, book editing, live theatre and music. In his writing, he prefers real-life stories. He hates passive verbs. “We can do it” sounds much better to him than “It can be done.”
10 Ways to Save on Taxes
Filed under: Budgeting & Planning, Economizer, Taxes
David Letterman has an incredibly popular segment on his show called Top 10.While not always shocking, it's always at least a perfectly surprising piece of comedy. Usually beautifully outrageous, too.
The Canada Revenue Agency, not to be outdone, has come out with its own Top 10 list. It's not as funny as anything David Letterman might produce. But what it lacks in humour, it more than makes up for in its usefulness.
So, without much further ado, and with a special drum roll, here are the Top 10 (LEGAL) ways to keep more money in your pocket while sending less money to the government coffers.
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Government Makes Parting With Your Money Easier, But No Less Painful
Filed under: Family Finances, Taxes
It's getting close to THAT time of year again when we realize that there are two things inevitable in life: death and taxes. Of course, it should be the other way around, it should be taxes first, and then we're taxed to death, but you get the picture.And the government, through its Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), is cynical enough to not only remind us of the taxation part, but to tell us how to part with our money easier, safer and, galling most of all, cheaper, using their electronic tools instead of snail-mail.
File online and on time, they say.
Get a Good Education Without Bleeding Money
Filed under: Budgeting & Planning, Family Finances, Saving
High school seniors are starting to think about where they want to be come next fall, and many of them have picked trade training courses, colleges or universities as their next steps.Good for them.
Now comes the basic question: where's the money going to come from?
Student loans remain the most popular option. Except: it makes sense to do your homework before you decide. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada has come up with several web pages that offer detailed advice on the topic. Here they are:
Treat Unknown Callers As You Would Strangers in the Street
Filed under: Buyer Beware, Fraud, Identity Theft, Technology
If someone tells you in an e-mail they're from the Microsoft Corporation and you need to click here or there to install a new and important security update, report it to Microsoft. Don't do anything else.If someone calls you to tell you they're from Microsoft Corporation (or, as happened in several recent cases, from Windows Operating System Corporation), and says your computer has been sending out signals of distress lately and they need to access it remotely to fix it, stop them right there. Try to find out whence they are calling you, inform the National Do-Not-Call List, and, if you so desire, the Microsoft Corporation itself, but don't tell the callers anything (or tell them that you don't understand because you've never had a computer and don't plan to acquire one, either).
Planning a Family? Make Financial Plans Too
Filed under: Budgeting & Planning, Family Finances
The role of marriage is not only to love and cherish till death do you part. The role of marriage is, perhaps above all else, to procreate: to have children, and to raise them well.No need to state the obvious: a pretty expensive proposition.
Except it shouldn't be too stressful if you know how to plan ahead.
Rogers, Bell End Internet Throttling Hold For Gamers
Filed under: Consumer Complaints, Technology
complained recently that two major service providers, Rogers Communications Inc and Bell Canada Enterprises, had been throttling the flow of data for their members, slowing their activities down to the point where it was becoming unbearable.The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) took the gamers' complaint to heart and went after the two communications giants.
Rogers cooperated and changed its traffic-management practice, the CRTC says, adding that the company then announced that its traffic shaping policy would be phased out for all customers by December 2012.
Hello? Operator? Phone Income Tax Filings Gone With TELEFILE's Departure
Filed under: Saving, Technology, Taxes, Tax Basics Video
returns will no longer have the option. It's the typical out with the old – in with the new: the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is closing its TELEFILE service.Electronic services have been becoming much more popular in recent years, and TELEFILE's numbers have been going down.
Numbers don't lie, says the agency: between 2011 and 2012, use of the service declined by 12.3 per cent.
New Mortgage Rules 101: What You Need To Know
Filed under: Budgeting & Planning, House & Home, Real Estate, Mortgages, Your Home
But now, the government has tightened up some of the rules that govern them, and it's good to know what changes are in store for those who want to buy their first home.
First of all, the changes involve government-backed insured mortgages only.
'Flamer' Malware is Espionage At Its Best
Filed under: Fraud, Technology
There may be many reasons (none of them legitimate) why people create software that steals information from other people's computers.But then, there is an occasional outbreak of malicious software that attacks seemingly at random. At least, Symantec's Security Response team hasn't found any particular patterns in a new threat known as W32.Flamer. Thus far, the team can only report that the new malware is very sophisticated and discreet, and that it's the result of efforts put together by a well organized group.
Russian security experts from the Kaspersky Labs have gone a step further: they suspect that a government entity is behind the threat. Considering both founders of the lab, Eugene Kaspersky and his ex-wife Natalia, used to work as computer security experts for the feared Soviet intelligence agency, KGB, they ought to know.
$27 Billion Worth of Food is Wasted Annually: Let's Do Our Part to Reduce That
Filed under: Budgeting & Planning, Economizer, Entrepreneurship, Food & Drink
And what's wasteful in your home is amplified by every household in the country. How much food do we waste as a nation? How does $27 billion a year sound to you?
Now that we're properly outraged, is there something we can do about it? Absolutely. Here's what:
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