Interest Rates on the Rise

[Duncan]

you're talking to a guy who leaves his computer on 24/7 so i can remote desktop home anytime i want

but i have a feeling jai's worse than i am with his behemoth computer...

[joel]

since i work with hydro and hear a lot of power smart propaganda here are some tips.

Electricity is actually rated different at different times of the day. Using electricity in the day cost more than using at night. A big thing I do is I turn off the heat/lights before i leave the house. Loading the washer/dryer before you go to bed is another thing you can do.

Unplug your outlets if you aren't using it. Things like charges for laptops/cell phones still consume electricity even if the device you are using isn't plugged in.

You can get a lot of different things around the home that save more electricity than other counterparts. bulbs, applicances, windows, etc...

For the most part for me anyways, utilities have never been a huge cost in general compared to some of the other bills i get.

[joel]

in the summer when i don't need any heating my bills drop to under 30$ some months...

[joel]

i think my home insurance is something like 300$ a year. But that's cause it only covers property inside my house. The exterior and structure and stuff is covered under my insurance by my strata fees i believe.

[jeSteR]

I'm actually very good about power consumption now. All transformers and such are plugged into a Belkin Green Conserve Pad, that automatically turns everything off if the drain drops below a set number. My computer is set to hibernate at 30 minutes, so really, it's almost never on. Hard to rd into a 4960 x 1600 desktop.

Unfortunately, I have tennants who have three kids so they're home a lot so my bills are up there.

Gas $88 / month
Hydro $150 / month
Insurance is $900 / year
Property tax is around $2800 / year $3600+ if it wasn't a primary residence

I know Dave got his insurance down to around $600, but don't know what he has for personal belonings coverage.

[Duncan]

hey jai, are those numbers including the costs incurred by your tenants? or are they just your portion?

[jeSteR]

Whole house.. I corrected my numbers.

[nature boy]

we just went through our insurance at the church, and we ended up paying more, but still saving a bundle by being smart about it.

now that may sound contradictory, but let me explain.
our old insurance covered about 1.6 mil of property. our church was appraised and everything including contents is worth about 3.2 mil. because we're only insured for half, even if someone broke in an stole exactly 1.6 million dollars worth of stuff, we'd only get 800k for it because technically only half of that stuff was insured. so because of that we had to pay more to insure 3.2 million worth of stuff.

we went with a broker who specializes in churches, and we could customize our coverage (i.e. no boiler coverage because we don't have a boiler) and we upped our deductible from $1000 to $3000 and that actually saved us over $1000 from the other guys a year.

just some things to think about when getting insurance. could save you money.

[nature boy]

[Duncan]

so i was talking to gordon, if i buy a house and rent it out, i have to rent it out under the table... first time owners can't rent out the house until a year after you've lived there to qualify for first time home owner rebates involved.... basically i'd have to find a tenant who'd agree to rent under the table w/o receipts but still sign the contract and not claim the rental in any government related form... i'm wondering if that's something i'd want to risk as well

[jeSteR]

If the house you buy is over $400K you don't qualify for the grant anyways.

[nature boy]

i thought the rebates only applied to brand new house? or am i way off base here?

[jeSteR]

Not to my knowledge.

And they may have raised that $400K limit again. You'd better check on that

[Duncan]

the HST rebate yes you have to buy a new house to even pay hst.

but aren't there other things like land transfer tax which can be waived for first time buyers and Home Buyers’ Tax Credit (HBTC) for federal tax relief?

[joel]

i am not sure which rebate you are talking about, but if it's on an existing home the most you get on this rebate is $750 i think.

The HST New housing rebate that is only elligible for new houses is much greater, but that's cause you are spending much more paying for HST on a new home. It is supposed to be your primary residence for you to collect this.