Glyn Wolf

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Well, that's it. We're back in a Hounslow hotel, ready to board our flight back to Canada tomorrow afternoon. It's been a long and thoroughly enjoyable vacation--our first big one in years--but we both feel ready to go home now.

I used Google Maps to create this rough map of our route, for anyone who's curious.

We've actually spent most of this trip seeing nature, and sites of historical interest. Somehow, though, we've managed to cram in visits to two Doctor Who exhibitions, and now we're spending a night in Cardiff, as a stop-off on our way to London. (I swear, I didn't plan it this way!)

Click on the picture for a caption that pretty much explains everything.

This trip has been my first experience driving in the UK, and it's not exactly what I expected. Friends and family really wound me up about how difficult and nerve-wracking it is to switch from right to left. To be sure, I've had to bear that fact in mind constantly, but the switch felt fairly natural. That's been true for most of the regulation differences that we've encountered: where there are differences, they are usually subtle and critical, but fairly easy to follow. They just require careful attention. I was struck by how similar the rules for roundabouts are in Alberta and the UK. The critical difference is that you need to change out of the inside lane before exiting a roundabout in the UK. All of the signs are different, but very clear and straightforward. I am especially impressed with the use of road markings here: they are packed with information. I wish the roads in Edmonton were half as clear.

No, what makes driving here feel much more challenging than back home is the sheer complexity of the roads. Back home, there is plenty of space to build multi-lane roads where every lane has one specific purpose. Where a simple intersection creates too much congestion, we build underpasses and more sophisticated junctions. In the UK, space is at a premium, and so roundabouts are used to improve flow where an underpass (here termed a "subway") would be impractical. They are simply everywhere, and work extremely well once you get the hang of them. Even on straight roads, lanes constantly shift about and change purpose as you travel along them, as the designers try to cram in right-turn lanes, bus stops and parking spaces into what Alberta would consider a two-lane road with no stopping allowed. Country roads, while much simpler, are 60mph and full of hills and blind bends.

You have to keep alert all the time and read the road markings quickly. It's stressful and focuses the mind, but the challenge has not been overwhelming, so far. Well, except for London. That particular form of hell I'll leave to Brendan to relate.

Ugh, not the best of days. First, we accidentally slept until lunchtime because of jet-lag. We tried to do a bit of sightseeing before seeing Wicked in the evening, but the very first thing that happened on our trip out was that Brendan lost his credit card to a Barclay's cash machine. That effectively cut off our cash supply. I think I have an option with my HSBC card, but I'll have to find out for certain tomorrow. On the plus side, we did get to do a bit of walking about and snapping pictures. Those will be up on Flickr shortly. I'm forced to use a lower resolution than I'd like as the bandwidth at the hotel is awful. I'll post the higher-res versions when we get home, most likely.

Well, I have to hand it to the Republi--oh, I'm sorry, the Conservative Party of Canada. The TFSA announcement has certainly garnered them the right kind of publicity. This budget symbolises a new kind of politics in Canada: dynamic, visionary and, most importantly of all, it puts money back in the pockets of Canadians. I'm sure it will be complete coincidence when an election call soon follows this splash of charismatic legislation.

The greatest feature of this new savings vehicle is how bizarre it is. A tax cut on capital gains wouldn't have been nearly as head-turning, and people would quickly criticise it once they realised how little impact it had on them. This vehicle seems even more confusing than the head-scratching RRSP system. (For instance, did you know that the tax break you get from an RRSP does not yield any more after-tax savings than TFSAs offer, assuming that your tax bracket doesn't change between the time you contribute the money and the time you withdraw it? I sure didn't, but I just proved it to myself in Excel. Remember folks, the tax break you get on an RRSP contribution is a deferral, not a refund. The only tax break you're getting in either plan is on the investment growth.)

Because I'm not an accountant, but I've been worrying at a couple of questions today:

What should people use a TFSA for?

It's clearly a great supplement to your RRSP, assuming you've maxed out those contributions. Good news for the wealthy middle class there. When it comes to retirement savings, I imagine you should max out your RRSP before contributing to your TFSA, because it gives you the opportunity to defer tax on all of your savings until retirement, when you will likely have a lower income tax bracket than you had in your earning years.

Most people don't have maxed out RRSPs, though, and the thornier question is what they should use their TFSAs for. I've done a fair bit of retirement forecasting in Excel (because I'm paranoid and have an unhealthy obsession with the topic), and it seems to me that buiding a comfortable retirement fund is extremely difficult unless you start very young and get the magic of compound interest working for you at least 40 years ahead of time. Most people need to contribute as much as they can possibly afford to their RRSPs because time is no longer on their side.

I would argue that saving for anything but retirement is foolish unless you can prove to yourself that your retirement income will be adequate. When calculating your retirement income needs, remember to account for inflation, increased health costs and the fact that most people tend to spend more when they don't have a job consuming so much of their time. All you'll have on your side is Old Age Security (a small amount), the Guaranteed Income Supplement (an even smaller amount, intended only for the most needy) and your fully taxable RRIF savings.

Bear in mind that the only tax break that TFSAs provide is on investment growth. Effectively, it increases the rate at which you can accrue interest. This benefit doesn't translate into large amounts of money unless you stay invested for long periods of time or unless you are investing gobs of cash. I just don't see how a tax shelter will improve people's lives greatly unless they're either wealthy or saving for retirement.

What will people use a TFSA for?

I worry that people will try using a TFSA as an alternative to an RRSP because, on the surface, they appear to give similar benefits and the TFSA is more flexible. In truth, they do, barring the potential benefit of tax deferral. However, TFSAs have a critical flaw in my view as a retirement savings vehicle: they let you withdraw your money! The most important feature of a retirement savings plan is to start early and stay invested for the long term. Getting a the best interest rate and contributing as much as you can are secondary priorities to that, because they have a smaller impact on the curve of your investment growth. Flexibility sounds great on the surface, but retirement savings are dangerous to mess with. I consider the restrictions in place on RRSPs to be important, if unpleasant.

I've heard it suggested that TFSAs are partly motivated by a desire to get Canadians saving more, because they appear not to be saving enough right now. I find it hard to believe that TFSAs will be the incentive people have been waiting for, given the immediate and seductive benefits of tax deferral that RRSPs provide. However, I suppose it is possible that the inaccessibility of RRSP savings is such a disincentive as to overcome the benefit for some people. Seeing how people use TFSAs might settle this question once and for all.

What I Wish

I wish the Conservatives had used this surplus to target what I consider to be the biggest remaining weakness of our retirement savings policies: people don't start RRSPs early enough, because they never feel that they have enough money. People leverage themselves too much for desirable things like houses and cars, and don't place enough priority on retirement savings when they're young and when it will make the most difference. Poorer citizens simply can't afford to save.

Could we take some of that surplus and use it to help with RRSP contributions, perhaps? I would love to see a programme that contributed some amount to young people's RRSPs, as soon as they turn 18. Government contributions would be off limits for withdrawal. It's a half-baked idea, but if we could accomplish something like that, I think it would greatly improve the state of retirement savings in this country.

I was not aware of these "educational" short films until recently, but they're awesome. I had no idea how dangerous calcium could be. Don't fall victim to the Helvetica Scenario!

Look Around You - Calcium (1/2)
Look Around You - Calcium (2/2)

I can't find any information about this on the wire services yet, but James Randi recently announced on the The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (podcast #129), the end of the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, wherein he offered a million dollars to anyone who could demonstrate psychic or paranormal abilities in a formal test with mutually agreeable parameters. While he did say that JREF would be willing to administer the test in special cases for certain high-profile individuals if they should be interested, the general programme will be discontinued.

Among the reasons he gave for cancelling the programme were:

1. No high-profile psychics, like Sylvia Browne or John Edward, are willing to participate. The challenge is largely a media and PR exercise, but it's not really news if JREF manages to demonstrate that someone you've never heard of does not, in fact, have psychic abilities.
2. It is expensive to administer, because many people have attempted to claim the prize. While the candidates don't get very far in the testing, setting up an agreeable test in each case takes a lot of preparation. JREF long ago started farming out the initial testing to smaller skeptical groups, to cope with the workload. The effort also takes money, which could be used in other initiatives.
3. It's been ten years since he officially upped the reward to a million dollars, and that's a long time to spend on a programme that is not accomplishing its goal of influencing public perception.

I have mixed feelings about this cancellation. On the one hand, I have a strong rationalist leaning and have a lot in common with the skeptical movement. On the other, I agree that the challenge never really accomplished much, except to provoke hostility when Randi would publicly issue a challenge to some famous psychic, and they would predictably refuse. I would prefer it if JREF would dedicate its resources more toward public education about skepticism.

It's taken an age but, at long last, we've sold the Ford Focus. It used to be gamble's primary vehicle until he moved up to a Subaru Legacy 2.5GT spec.B about a year ago. We'd planned to sell the Focus privately soon afterward, and we did a fair bit of prep work to make it happen, but life became busy again for both of us and the Focus remained in our driveway, forgotten. If you squint, we're convinced that you can just make out its dark blotch on Google Earth.

The irony of procrastination is that, while one's objective in delaying is to avoid extra work and stress, worry about not doing the work eventually becomes more stressful than the work itself. And so, when I finally got a couple of weeks off, I promised gamble to give the car some love and get it ready for sale. We priced it to beat the competition, and got the result we were after: a deposit from an interested buyer within a couple of days. Yay, craigslist!

gamble finished the deal today, and we can officially stop worrying about it. Best of all, the driveway is no longer an obstacle course!

My senses of self-esteem and self-discipline got a boost today. My body mass index has finally settled down to 24.8, which places me at the very top end of the "normal" range--a range I've not fit into for probably ten years. Don't get me wrong, I know BMI doesn't provide a complete picture of overall health, but it is one important metric and so this victory is worth celebrating. My best guess for a healthy target weight is 160 lbs, and my body composition is still too weighted toward fat. I need to start building strength and endurance, but I'm not sure how I want to fit that work into my lifestyle yet.

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