After having taken over my wife's phone which is with Bell, I started looking at seeing about getting a couple extra features, call display and voice mail. Simple enough. $12 per month for the cheapest bundle including those two features. Separately they are $8 per month, each. Omigosh. $8 per month, each. I actually can't believe that is legal. For someone trying to keep expenses in check that's like more money per month to see who's calling them I'm likely going to spend on lettuce this month. And I like lettuce, we eat a lot of it!

You can be sure that once this contract gets down to a reasonable buy out price. I'm going to be switching to the next closest network that can give me these very basic features for a monthly price that doesn't make me feel like I'm being swindled. Currently that appears to be Koodoo.

The end of the year strikes, so quickly with a bunch of end of the year tasks. One of those tasks that we tackled today was making a political donation. I really have to recommend this because the tax credits for making a $100 donation are so significant. In a nut shell the government gives you a 75% tax credit for the first $100 that any tax paying Canadian donates to a political party. So in effect it only costs $25 bucks.

Pretty good incentive to give your party of choice a boost and be involved in this crazy democracy thing.

It would be really interesting if the government increased the tax credit to 100% on the first $100 and do away with per vote funding and electoral expense government funding of political parties.Wikipedia has an amzing article on how government funding of political parties is currently done. Reading that article it is shocking how few people donate to political parties, especailly given the relatively low cost of a contribution that is $100 or less.