Tag Archives: Scotia

Save Money Ads – AND Helping You Spend the Savings

I’m always somewhere between amused and confused with ads that seem to teach people how to spend money. Does anyone really need help with that? Spend the savings seems to be the new trend in a lot of ads:

An air conditioning company ad promotes a 17 month no payment plan. That’s kind of cool, but the second half of the ad tells the guy he can now buy his bouncy castle with that saving. What saving? It’s deferred payments for 17 months – the air conditioning system he’s buying isn’t free all of a sudden! Pay for the bouncy castle now, then pay for the air conditioning system after. That’s MORE spending, not less. It’s over-spending, and not saving.

A national television campaign for car manufacturer asks what would you do if you didn’t have car payments this summer. Would you spend it on a vacation? What? They’re delaying your seven or eight years of payments to not start until fall AND want you to spend the money you’re really not saving on a vacation. And newsflash: The ad states no payments. It does not state no interest, so the interest is still accumulating while you’re not making payments.

Scotiabank has been running the same type of ad campaign for a few years, too. The theme is generally that a couple goes into the branch to see how to save $1,500 a year. Then, the second half of the ad, has them spending it immediately. The ads are cute, but come on. You need a commission-based loans officer to show you how to save $125 a month? If so, you’ve got way bigger problems. I bet I can show you how to save $1,000 a month if you have vehicle payments. But, that aside, the savings, according to their ads, should then be spent immediately? How exactly does that help anyone?

Mortgage Rates & Recalls Information You Really Need

Not nice of some of the big no-service banks to once again take advantage of us. Not nice – but expected. One of them is Scotiabank, who passed on 0.15% of the quarter point decrease last week. I just saw a number of line of credit statements…they’re not the only ones.

On a positive note, the Okanagan right now has some of the lowest mortgage rates in the country. Prospera Credit Union has a five year variable rate of 2.05%. If you want a fixed rate – and you should – it’s 2.65% posted rate, and profit sharing and rebate. Plus, you get to deal with a credit union and not the banks, and that’s the biggest bonus.

Over the past year there have to be about 50 million vehicle recalls of various sizes and degree of danger. That’s a staggering number, led by 30 million recalls for defective airbags, and tens of millions from General Motors.

The problem is that these recalls have to get to the vehicle owners and have to be fixed. Some are minor, but lots of others are safety issues that have caused a lot of fires and deaths. If you purchased a new vehicle, the manufacturer has your information and you’ll get a recall letter. That’s required by law. If you’ve moved, they do not have your address, so you’ll need to go to a dealer – any dealer – and get them to update your address.

If you purchased a used vehicle, they have no idea who you are, or how to reach you! You need to let your car’s manufacturer know that you own one of their vehicles. Whether it’s for a current recall or for one down the road! You can take your registration to a dealer and ask them to put it into the manufacturer’s system – NOT just into the dealer’s service department data base. And never give them your phone number or email address. You don’t want junk mail and solicitation – you want recall information. When you’re at the dealer they can also pull up any existing recalls right on the spot.

An alternate plan is to just do a google search for  your manufacturer in Canada. That’ll give you their website and a customer contact phone number that should be able to do the same thing.

However, the most urgent thing you need to do is to check your vehicle for recalls – now! Here is the link to Transport Canada, or you can just search: “Transport Canada safety recall” and you’ll get to the website. The site doesn’t need a serial number, just the year, make and model.

Link to Transport Canada to search recalls