My brother-in-law recently moved to another province.  As most of you know, there are a few things that you need to do when you move such as changing your address, transferring your bank accounts and finding a new insurance provider.

Now, in the "olden" days, you would have to either get on the phone and call everyone, or go to each office in person.  Now with the advent of the Internet, you no longer have to do that anymore.  In fact, a lot of provinces in Canada have just a single site that changes your contact information on all your utility bills and sometimes for your car insurance as well.

Chances are you will need to make a trip to the local branch of your bank.  Usually before you move, you would transfer your account to the new branch, but you should still stop in at the new branch.  I would also suggest that you visit other banks in the area and compare credit cards from these firms to what you have – you may find that you can get a better deal elsewhere.

Don’t forget to forward your mail – it will be a little too far for you to get.  Usually you can pay a fee to Canada post and they will forward your mail for six months.  Oh yeah, don’t forget to have "fun" moving

I decided today that I should figure out how to get a car loan because I wanted to buy a car before winter.  Now, that may seem a little strange, as most people don’t buy vehicles in the fall.  For me I wanted one to drive to work in the winter because I bike in the summer.

So, before I even started learning I needed to know how the process worked.  What I wanted was a cheap loan as I don’t have a large budget to pay for the car.  I figured that my bank could maybe shed some light on the situation so I took a trip down there.

Talking to a loan officer taught me that I needed an unsecured loan to buy the car.  He showed me the interest rates that the bank offered and I wrote them down.  I decided early in this process that I was going to check online too to see what rates I could get on there.

Heading back home, a little smarter, I am feeling more confident about my decision.  I will have to see what my investigation digs up – I need to hurry as it is snowing as I speak…

For most of you, when you look for a doctor, I am sure you usually ask a friend or look in the yellow pages.  I know that is the way that I have found doctors in the past.  It wasn’t until recently that I had the opportunity to try something different – the Internet.

Now, for some of you, it maybe out of your comfort zone to find a doctor online.  The neat thing about looking for a doctor, is that it is not a faceless transaction – you get to go to the doctor and meet them in person as they have not perfected diagnosing illnesses over the internet – at least not yet

For me, I was actually looking for a pediatrician for my child.  The reason that we were looking for a pediatrician as opposed to a regular doctor is because my daughter has had a irregular heart beat for awhile.  Also, when we have taken her to the emergency room at our local hospital, she has been admitted to pediatrics – and I have been very satisfied with the service we have received each time we were there.

I found that using a search engine and visiting these pediatrician’s websites, I could get most of my initial questions answered by the literature on their sites, and I could get a feel for what their company was like.  I later made a list of the ones that passed my initial review and called to make appointments to meet these prospective doctors in person.

I am happy to say that I did find one that I am happy with that is near our home.  So, don’t be afraid if you need to find a doctor to take your search online – use it as a tool to speed up your selection process.

I have been in two car accidents in the past year and the repercussions of them has almost destroyed me.  As a result, my car insurance has sky-rocketed.  It is crazy what I have to pay each month just to be able to drive.

The worst part is that I was declined a mortgage because of my high monthly expenses (mostly spent on the car).  I have basically been given the choice of shelter or transportation.  Had I applied for a mortgage a year ago, it would have been no problem.

I really don’t see what car insurance has to do with mortgages and it makes me so angry.  It is now going to be about five years before I can even think about buying a house.  My personal finances just really suck right now…

I was just cleaning my house today and I came across my welcome package from University.  I decided that I might as well go through it to see what was in there, I tossed it aside when I started school in September.

I felt like a child opening a goodie bag – there was candy, some pens and a whole bunch of pamphlets.  Looking through the pamphlets I realized there were only two topics in there: credit cards and insurance offers.

On the credit card side of things you could find the "best credit cards" – thing is each company was claiming they were the best.  There were 0% interest credit cards, cash back credit cards, and reward cards.  You could get your favorite sports team, favorite vacation spot and even a picture of you  on your card.

For the insurance there was life insurance, accident insurance, disability insurance, health insurance, and even car insurance.  These all offered you a discount rate because we were students, but sometimes I wonder why they bother.  Usually at my age, you don’t think about insurance at all.

Well, sad to say that after ten minutes or so most of the package was in the garbage.  Too many offers, too little time, and therefore no interest.  Too bad they had to kill some trees to give us these offers – it wasn’t worth it.

Do you like to visit your Facebook and MySpace account a few times a day?  I know I do.  My problem is that my school (college actually) blocks us from visiting sites like MySpace and Facebook in the computer labs.  They say that it impacts our productivity.  I say that since I am paying for the computer account, I should be able to visit the sites I want, when I want to.

I have a solution for you.

There are sites that are called free proxy servers that allow you to bypass school filters.  Basically, you go to one of these proxy websites, and browse using their site.  It loads the web pages on a different computer then shows them to you effectively bypassing the filter your school setup.

So there you go.  Visit the sites you want, when you want to, using one of the proxy websites on the web.