Cleaning your closets? What to do with the stuff.
16 May, 2013 By Sheryl Smolkin SHUTTERSTOCK Do you buy new clothes every season and then realize you already have a similar item in your closet? When you are trying a new recipe, do you check the cupboard first to see if you have all the necessary ingredients or do you automatically add them to your shopping list? Are toys your children have outgrown still cluttering up the house? Cleaning closets and purging are no fun. But every now and then you can no longer avoid the inevitable. And it’s worth...
read moreEmployee undergoing sex change gets $22,000 in human rights case
Liam Richards / THE CANADIAN PRESS Transgender rights: Supporters rally outside of a bridal boutique in Saskatoon. Rohit Singh, not pictured, a transgender bride who was not allowed to try on wedding gowns. (May 4, 2013) By: Sheryl Smolkin At Work, Published on Wed May 15 2013 A male labourer at a Mississauga paper box factory who was fired while undergoing sex change therapy has been awarded $22,000 and eight months pay by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. The case of Maria...
read moreMay 13: Best from the blogosphere
13 May, 2013 By Sheryl Smolkin The May 4th article Not your grandfather’s financial website: The new, fresh face of money sites in the Financial Post by Melissa Leong highlights a new wave of bloggers and personal finance gurus who are shaking up how young people get information about money. She says some of the sites get millions of hits on any given month, embracing readers’ voyeuristic penchant for personal stories and catering to their anxiety about money and hunger for information. We...
read moreSome Toronto law firms and in-house lawyers send work to India
Nick Kozak / For the Toronto Star Gavin Birer owns a company called Legalwise which provides outsourced legal services. By: Sheryl Smolkin At Work, Published on Mon May 13 2013 When you think of jobs that move offshore to countries with lower labour costs, information technology, call centres and manufacturing come to mind. But legal work? Some Toronto law firms and in-house lawyers are also delegating high volume, repetitive work to lawyers in countries like India and the Philippines....
read more10 frugal gifts your mother will love
9 May 2013 By Sheryl Smolkin SHUTTERSTOCK Kids grow up and many eventually have the means to shower their Moms with expensive dinners, jewelry and other luxury items. But if you ask most mothers which Mothers Day gift they treasure the most, they will probably tell you it is the first handmade card thier child brought home from nursery school, or the breakfast in bed delivered at sunrise that she made all by herself. Here are some ideas for Mother’s Day gifts, in no particular order, that will create...
read moreShow me the money
BY SHERYL SMOLKIN ADVISOR FOR BUSINESS SPRING 2013 A dvisors who have moved into selling group products say offering both individual and group helps cement business relationships and makes their clients less vulnerable to overtures from their competitors. It also adds to their bottom line. But in the path to group success, there is key learning at every stage, particularly around the investment of time and return expectations. Take Alan Coles. In the early 1980s, he started his careerin Vancouver selling...
read moreCourt upholds DPSP pre-retirement locking-in
BY Sheryl Smolkin, lawyer and journalist | May 8, 2013 Thanks to some creative plan design, the Ontario Court of Justice has recently upheld the contractual pre-retirement locking-in provisions in a deferred profit sharing plan (DPSP) established by Canadian Tire for its employees. The Case Scott Forbes is a vehicle comptroller in the supply chain division who works at a Canadian Tire transportation facility in Brampton, Ontario. The 47-year old has been a fulltime employee and a member of the DPSP...
read moreDirector’s ‘reply all’ email discussing firing of employee leads to lawsuit
Shutterstock By: Sheryl Smolkin At Work, Published on Tue May 07 2013 We have all experienced that awful feeling after hitting the ‘send’ button and realizing a copy of a sensitive or confidential email has inadvertently gone to the wrong person. Usually, the situation is simply embarrassing. Not so for Maria Fernandes, a Mississauga employee of healthcare communications company Marketforce Inc. In March 2011, she accidentally received an email discussing whether or not she...
read moreMay 6: Best from the blogosphere
There is lots of interesting reading in the blogosphere this week. Squawkfox Kerry K. Taylor counsels husband Carl on what to do with the $100 bill he found. On boomer & echo Boomer comments on senior discounts vanishing from our banks. Marissa is a 20-something recent grad with credit card debt and student loans. On Thirty Six Months she talks about being a good consumer by voting with your wallet. Timeless Finance blogger Adina J. says if she had the choice, she would earn more instead of spending...
read moreHow to plant an inexpensive, maintenance free garden
By Sheryl Smolkin SHUTTERSTOCK Once the snow finally melts and the first tender shoots of green grass poke through the mud, I can’t wait to see beds of beautiful flowers on my street. But a garden can be expensive to plant and maintain unless you know what you are doing. To give you some tips about putting in an inexpensive, low maintenance garden, we talked to Jill Umpherville, the greenhouse manager and third-generation owner at Dutch Growers Garden Centre in Saskatoon. Here is what she told us. Do...
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