How My Bank Account Was Compromised (And Depleted)

On Mon­day after­noon, the phone rang. I picked up and heard two sec­onds of sta­tic, often a tell­tale sign of tele­mar­ket­ing. I’m not sure why I didn’t hang up the phone. I usu­ally do—we get a lot of tele­mar­ket­ing calls, and I have no patience for sales pitch at 2 p.m.

Couponing, a North American "Sport"

When I first came to Canada, I did notice stacks of fly­ers fill­ing the mail­box and cat­a­logues left peri­od­i­cally at the front door, but I didn’t think much of it. Spon­ta­neously, I’d put all that in the recy­cle bin. I mean, I hadn’t skimmed through a brochure since I was a six years old impa­tiently wait­ing to look at the Galerie Lafayette toys cat­a­logue around Christ­mas time!

10 Ways to Not Become Poor in Canada

Christ­mas shop­ping is under­way in most parts of North Amer­ica and a lot of con­sumers took advan­tage of Black Fri­day and Cyber Mon­day deals. So, how to not become poor in Canada? How to man­age your money smartly?
Here are ten use­ful tips.

All About Blogging: Blog Monetizing, What Works Best?

In 2008, I wrote a first arti­cle titled Mak­ing Money with Your Blog, in which I detailed the progress of mon­e­tiz­ing my blog. Since then, a lot changed. For the bet­ter, mostly.

8 Things More Expensive in Canada than in France

Com­par­ing cost of liv­ing between two coun­tries is a national sport among immi­grants. It’s a touchy debate because unless you’re an econ­o­mist, it’s hard to make an accu­rate cost of liv­ing com­par­i­son. First, it depends on where you lived before (for instance, life in Paris is invari­ably more expen­sive than in Brit­tany) and where you are in Canada (you can’t com­pare Nunavut with Saskatchewan). Sec­ond, our per­cep­tion is also eas­ily skewed even though eco­nom­i­cally it all comes down to pur­chas­ing power.

How to… Report Scams

So, you got scammed and now it’s too late. You feel angry and embar­rassed and you wish you had trusted that gut feeling.

What can you do now?

Two words: report it.

The steps you need to take mostly depend on the type of fraud and on the nature of the scam.

How to Avoid... Phone Scams

How many times a day does this sce­nario hap­pen to you? The phone rings and you drop what­ever you were doing to pick it up, only to hear a famil­iar pause, and then a mechan­i­cal voice reel­ing off a script.

“I’m not inter­ested, thank you”. You hang up and sigh. Bloody telemarketers.

Group Coupons: a Bitter or Sweet Deal?

Unless you spent the last few years in a cave, you prob­a­bly noted the emer­gence of dozens of “group coupon” web­sites: Groupon, Liv­ing­So­cial, Koo­pon, DealFind and many other are prob­a­bly already serv­ing your city. Sim­ply type the name of your city plus “deal” and they will pop up in your search results.

How to Avoid... Banking Scams

Who doesn’t have a bank account these days? A check­ing account and a credit card are often essen­tial to every­day life but unfor­tu­nately, bank­ing comes with a num­ber of scams.
I strongly encour­age new­com­ers to Canada to get famil­iar with the local bank­ing sys­tem, includ­ing debit cards, sav­ing accounts, credit cards and credit reports.

How to Avoid.. Consumer Scams

Unlike in France, the cus­tomer is king in North Amer­ica. This means that busi­nesses take cus­tomer ser­vice seri­ously and every­thing is made to make your life eas­ier: long open­ing hours, gen­er­ous return poli­cies, cus­tomer help desk, toll-free num­bers… Unfor­tu­nately, there are also a few scams going around.