Friend Ole Joyful...you write a terrific word-picture. I enjoyed every word, and the moral of your story. It sounds like every one was in a win-win situation. Yes I can say I have experienced a bonus from a good deed. When we lived in Montana and ran a small convenient store, I heard on the radio the local charitable organization said money was short that year and would only be able to give food baskets to those that needed them, but not give toys to kids that would otherwise not get any at Christmas. This was the week before Thanksgiving, and it bothered me knowing how much my grandkids got on Christmas morning. I decided there were 8 small stores like ours in town, so I called them while at work that day and asked if they would be willing to put a collection can on their counter for donations. (I told them what it was for). They all agreed, and I put an item in the local paper about the cans. The TV station in a neighboring town called me and asked it I would come to their studios to be interviewed about our fund drive, which I did. After appearing on TV, I got a call from a long lost friend who lived there, and we reconnected. Now that was a wonderful bonus for me. Oh. by the way our fund raising brought $914.00 for the organization to buy toys for the kids, and I still write, call and email that friend. God rewards in many ways. Dottie

Sounds like much of the same here in the lower 48. Even here is ND where the oil boom is bringing in so much money BUT everything is way too high for the average person. Just ask some of the Canadians that come south to shop and try to find a place to stay.

Recently a number of (mainly seniors) have been using a certain type of investment (unit trusts) that paid quite a high rate of return, some of it tax advantaged in the recipient's hands, plus some of it return of part of one's originally invested money. Such companies that structured themselves to pay out most of their earnings to shareholders were allowed to escape paying corporate tax. Some people who owned a somewhat different type of investment, stocks of Canadian companies, paying a much lower rate of return felt that they were being unfairly treated, and quite a few were leaving the type of investment that they'd been using to buy the other type. So the government changed the rules of calculating tax on the second type of income relative to 2006, with a view to encouraging a number of taxpayers to stay put. Until 2005, a single "taxpayer" who'd earned somewhere around $27,000 - 30,000. of solely that kind of income had a couple of types of credits work to allow them to have their tax liability reduced to zero. The differing method of calculation in 2006 allowed the level of the single "taxpayer's" income from solely that type of income to increase to $46,345. before becoming liable to pay one cent of income tax ... except the $600. Ontario Health Levy in this province. Would that my Member of Parliament's office were to notify every constituent annually of all the changes to the tax code, especially ways that some fortunate people could avoid paying tax at all up to over $45,000. ... ... but I'm not holding my breath, waiting for such a day! The person who told me of it was a C.A. who'd been an accountant (I think controller) of a substantial local company, prior to his retirement (with no pension) a couple of years ago. We've attended a monthly study group learning about investments for over 7 years (sometimes travel together to the meeting) ... I've learned a lot in that group. The government recently changed the tax rules relative to the first type of investment ... not allowing the corporations to avoid income tax, even if they agree to pay out most of their income. The value of that market lost billions overnight ... I can send any of you interested some delicious cartoons related to that! Recovered a substantial portion of it, later. In the light of that ... they may change the rules again next year relative to the second type of income, to increase the rate of income tax on it to more or less previous levels. Good wishes for learning more about the effective use of your income and assets. ole joyful

While a power interruption of a few hours isn't of great consequence to people with a freezer ... longer periods can be rather hair-rising. I've thought that it might be good idea for people where they have power interruptions from time to time to gather a group of, say, four to six or so, to share in buying a generator, possibly of somewhat better quality and capacity than one person would wish to, alone, to move from house to house when the power is out, to keep the food in the freezers intact. Some people where I visited with a generator wanted me to fire up their furnace, but most have an unbreakable connection to the power box and I was unwilling to risk the possibility of the main switch getting reconnected inadvertently, thus pushing power back out on to a line that the linemen understood to be dead, possibly with drastic consequences. Where codes allow, I think that it would be advisable for people to have a push-and-twist connection between the power box and the furnace. When the power is down for an extended period, most people are not going to their place of employment, so would be free to move the generator from member's house to member's house during the day and night ... or even to help an outsider, should they so choose. It would be necessary to have at least one member who had an establishment large enough to store the generator without its being a nuisance. Such a plan would provide cheap insurance for people with a substantial amount of expensive food in their freezers ... and have you noticed how the price of that food has escalated in recent times ... while the wage increases earned by most ordinary workers have been much more ... meagre? Does anyone foresee a substantial change in that scenario, any time soon? ole joyful