🇨🇦 New grocery rebate?

Published On: March 31st, 2023

The federal budget dropped this week with a few goodies for students, teeth, and people who like to eat.

Plus a little-known consumer protection tool to reverse or cancel credit card charges – this was news to me!

Let’s do this!

Today’s newsletter is 453 words, 2:15 minutes.

10 money things worth reading this week.

1. 🥫 You could qualify for about 3 cans of soup per week with the federal budget’s new “Grocery Rebate”. It’s for lower-income Canadians, and doubles the one-time GST rebate.

  • The max rebate for an eligible household of two parents and two kids would be $467, around $9 a week.
  • Single people without kids could get $234, while a senior could qualify for $225 on average.

Many Canucks are hungry for more, saying the rebate is a “band aid solution that doesn’t address the root problem” – which is the huge increase in the price of food.

Bottom Line: Don’t spend it all in one place.

2. 🎓 Students with RESPs can rejoice, a little bit. The fed budget offers a new Registered Education Savings Plan rule that would allow $8,000 in investment earnings and government grant money to be withdrawn from an RESP, up from $5,000.

3. 🦷 Show me your teeth. Another federal budget item is a national dental care plan for lower income people. Uninsured Canucks earning less than 90K would qualify for dental coverage, while households with incomes under 70K won’t have to shell out a co-pay.

4. 💳 Businesses praise the budget’s credit card fee relief, but some question consumer savings.

5. 💸 Millennial Canadians have been dealt a generational losing hand ’cause they’re deep in debt. Insolvent millennials are on average 33 years old and owe an average of $47,283 in unsecured debt.

6. 🚨 Disinformation is everywhere thanks to social media ’cause it spreads like wildfire. Identify the red flags and fact-check disinformation before it harms you. I shared a solid list of financial scams to help you protect yourself.

7. 🍔 Zellers relaunched 12 stores across Canada. Cheaper stuff may be a draw, but it’s the Zellers Restaurant that’s on the nostalgia menu. Remember the Big Z Burger and Hot Chicken Sandwich with fries? I don’t. Ok, I do. 🙂

8. 💳 Would you like a statutory chargeback with that credit card fee? Globe personal finance reporter Erica Alini fought a $100 cancellation fee by invoking this little known consumer protection tool. This is a fun fightback story, go read it.

9. 🔌 Big savings, less digital clutter. Canada is looking to standardize USB chargers and make it easier to repair products, instead of being forced to replace them. Planned obsolescence may become obsolete thanks to the Right To Repair movement.

10. 🏠 Tweet of the week.

As always, thank you for reading and sharing.

Love love love,

Kerry

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