A month or so ago NeilMcIntyre.CA commented that despite being an accountant and dealing with finances every day, his personal finances didn’t reflect his own knowledge in his profession,

Pay off debt, then start saving and investing NeilMcIntyre.CA 30 July 2007

Subconsciously, I held on to the debt in order to keep my asset balances high. Artificially high. [...] I’m an accountant and auditor, I find other people’s mistakes and control weaknesses, and until this weekend I wasn’t even managing my own finances like a pro!

I interesting to read Neil’s post because this month I returned to rigourously tracking my expenditures and tracking it against a monthly budget. I also, this week, reduced my chequing account balance and counted it against next month’s budgeted debt payment in order to benefit more from the time value of the money.

Part of the problem is not applying knowledge and reason to something about which you feel a lot of emotion. Money you make and save and one you spend or debt you bear can have pride or guilt associated with it which can lead us to act in ways that hurt our finances.

I wonder about the choice between paying off more debt or saving for a downpayment for a house. If I expect the house to appreciate in value as housing prices rise and expect to take on a mortgage in the puirchase of a house (which would at that point just be trading debt for debt) then postponing the purchase to pay of other debt earlier would have a net cost.

Generally I would think it would be more beneficial to save for the downpayment and buy the house earlier and still bear the other debt. That could change though if the debt affects the terms of your mortgage.

Anyway, I am going to comment and ask Neil what he thinks.

This has been the summer of wheat . . . beer that is. The number of breweries marketing wheat beer, at least in Ontario, Canada has exploded.

Molson Coors introduced Rickards White earlier this year and recently announced its availability in bottles.

PC released PC Blanche brewed by White Water Brewery a.k.a. Brick Brewing Co Limited. And Brick later announced Waterloo Wheat brewed by — according to the label — Waterloo Brewing Company a.k.a. Brick.

Last weekend, I saw that Mill Street introduced its Wit Bier.

Even the Heuther Hotel released a wheat beer this summer.

It’s all part of the growth of wheat beer on this continent. Numbers from the Beer Institute show the growing use of wheat by brewers in the USA.

Pierre Celis brought white beer back to Hoegaarden, Belgium, in 1966 when he opened Brouwerij Celis and started brewing Oud Hoegaards Bier. In 1978 he changed the name of the brewery to Brouwerij De Kluis, which had a fire in 1985 and got less insurance money than required to rebuild. This led to the the part owners of the brewery selling to Artois which merged with Piedboeul to become Interbrew which merged with Ambev in 2004 to become Inbev. Celis later also sold his share to Artois.

He opened a Celis Brewery in Austin, Texas and made the first batch of Celis White on March 19, 1992. This was the beginning of wheat beers growing popularity in North America.

Brick would later brew Celis White under licence, bringing the beer to Ontario.

Coors has a wheat beer called Blue Moon whose production moved to Montreal in spring 2005 after the merger with Molson. An article in the Montreal Gazette suggested that Molson was brewing the one beer marketed as Blue Moon in the USA and as Rickards Original White in Canada.

Which shows how much of beer is just marketing.

• Brick used to brew ‘real’ Hoegaarden 21 May 2007
• PC wheat beer, Brick, and business size 15 May 2007

• Pierre Celis from Hoegaarden & his Belgian White Beer White Beer Travels
• It’s Blue Moon in the U.S., but we know better Saturday 18 August The Gazette

Hiro and I were at the Superstore last Saturday and I discovered that they sell Mauby Fizzz there.

Mauby is a drink made in the Caribbean that is made from the bark of the mauby tree. I first tasted it when I was in the islands in 2001.

Mauby isn’t necessarily carbonated, but this one is. It is produced by Pepsi in Trinidad and Tobago
Here is the label information:

cool yourself
MAUBY
FIZZZ
boisson gazeuse
please recycle
300ml
7 34362 05888 0
Nutrition Facts
Serving size 1 Bottle (300ml)
Amount Per serving
Calories 180
% Daily Value *
Total fat 0g 0%
Sodium 15mg 1%
Total Carbohydrates 45g 15%
Sugars 45g
Ptroteinn 0g
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000calorie diet.
Contains: Carbonated water, sugar, extract of mauby bark, (colubrina arborescens), caramel, aniseed and vanilla flavour, spices, potassium sorbate.
Contient: Eau gaziefiee, sucre, extraits de mauby (colubrina aborescens), caramel, aromes d’anis et de vanille, epices, sorbate de potasse.
Product of/ Produit de/ Trinidad & Tobago
Bottled by/ Bouteille par/ Pepsi Cola
Trinidad Bottling Co. Ltd.
47 Tissue Drive P.O. Box 2092
New Trincity Industrial Estate
Trinidad & Tobago

We left for Ann Arbor quite late Friday 17 August.

The trip is about 350 kilometres. We stopped in Windsor and I got some US currency then we crossed the Ambassador Bridge. When we got into the Ann Arbor after midnight, I found that the directions I had printed off to get to the city followed a route on the highways different that the directions to our accommodations — that I had expected to susquently follow. We drove down Main, Liberty and State streets, but then doubled back and drove down Packard and stopped at Stadium at the circleK to buy a map.

I navigated and we drove up Ferdon and got to Vitosha Guesthouse at Berkshire and Washtenaw. We followed the directions that Kei had given me on the phone and we got to our room and finally to sleep at about 02:30.

(more…)

We played our final league match this Tuesday. It has been an interesting season, that is if you find losing interesting. We will end the season with a terrible record

We have improved in our team play. In our last match I noticed how well I and my teammates improvised plays, dummied, supported and covered compared to earlier in the season.

We are much better than our record, but, still, we aren’t producing winning results. In almost a third of our matches we were winning at the half only to lose or tie.

Injury, poor attendance and thence few or no subs, and rotating goalkeepers, hindered the performance of the talent we do have and didn’t help the psychology of the team.

Anyway, I am glad to have played with the team, but it shows that it takes time to build a team.

I liked playing competitively and playing full regulation time matches. I don’t really like our team name, Merkins. I could have done without the cursing, complaining, and ungentlemanly conduct that seems to be a norm in the league.

• Won our first cup match in soccer 22 Jun 2007
• Inconvenient stormy 60 minutes 16 May 2007

Everyone at some company is supposed to take web courses. One of the course descriptions (that allows time for exploring the web on your own) provided this pearl:

The web is not an information highway, it’s a tidal wave bearing gifts — and incidentally washing away anything without a strong foundation.

What could that mean?

Last Friday Ojo and I went to Queen Street Commons cafe (operated by the Working Centre) where we each had Thai noodle salad. We walked around in Victoria Park for a bit.

Later we stopped by a new cafe on King Street, Maestro. It is down a spiral staircase from the sidewalk. The blackboard sign list all sorts of coffee served. We tried Serbian coffee. It was very strong brewed with finely ground coffee beans still in the bottom of the cup and served with a glass of mineral water.

I rarely drink coffee and it was interesting to me to taste how much sipping the mineral water affected the flavour.

The guy also told us about Turkish coffee, Greek coffee and others he had on his list. We also asked about another type of coffee listed on the sign outside, Canadian coffee. That’s just regular coffee.

A problem with brand loyalty programs is that points can be devalued unilaterally.

Aeroplan recently announced that for its so-called Tango fares that they will be worth a quarter of the normal value.

• Effective for travel as of September 15, 2007, earn 25% Aeroplan Miles for distance flown on scheduled flights operated by Air Canada and Air Canada Jazz within Canada and between Canada and the Continental U.S.A. (including Hawaii) with Tango fares (R, G, P, E, N, T, K booking classes) and X booking class.

You won’t get there any faster though.

This isn’t as bad as other instances in other plans where accumulated points are devalued by things like changing reward thresholds.

In these programs as you accumulate points the company has to count it as a liability and put away money to account for it. That money will eventually cover the cost of your reward. They get, hopefully for them, increased business and the time value of their reward offset fund.

Devaluing loyalty points is attractive in the short term because it instantly reduces liability and frees up cash from the fund. It could also be attractive in the long term because the change might not affect the members’ perceptions of the loyalty program to the same degree.

I was interested to learn last week that the creek in which Waterloo killed beavers last year was once called . . . that’s right, Beaver Creek.

Laurel Creek has been tested, studied and so changed by human intervention as to be unrecognizable by those who lived here 200 years ago. Even its name has changed. It was Beaver Creek in the 1800s (one branch retains the name), but at some point was changed to Laurel Creek.
– The creek The Record 4 Aug 2007

How prescient that name change was. Now let’s go find some laurel trees.