It’s a good point, since I’m generally buying ingredients over packaged items, there are fewer brands interested in capturing me.
I snagged a good Flashfood box this weekend - 8 tomatoes, 2 onions, 12 oranges, 3 small eggplant, a pint of cherry tomatoes, 8 baby cucumbers, 2 bananas. They’re charging 0.05/dollar + HST as a platform fee on top of the standard $5 for the box, but it’s still a screaming deal when a nice one shows up.
Hi everyone. I just discovered this thread. I think you might want to double check the financial institutions offering high interest rates. Make sure they are investing in solid investments. I checked some à few years ago, only to find they were investing in high risk mortgages. That’s okay when times are good, but if the economy nosedives the institution could go under. Not to be a doom and gloom person, but it is also something to keep in mind.
Having said that, our EF is in the TD getting a miserably low interest rate of 0.05%, but Hubby will not move it! I am beyond frustrated! The Royal has a much better rate at 3.8%.
You might want to check out ratehub
Have any of you imported a vehicle from one province to another? How does insurance work? I would fly to wherever and drive the car home, so it would need plates, do I bring mine from home and somehow register it before I leave?
Yes I have. I will ask SO how it worked. We had a new car shipped from NS to Ontario. It took a few weeks to get it after purchase.
If I recall correctly, since we had all the information and it was new/safetied, we got the insurance, and the plates before it arrived. When it came off the tractor trailer we put the plates on and drove it home. We had to meet by a car dealership when it was dropped off.
You will need all the car details and a copy of the ownership, and get a temporary licence plate (in Ontario it is a paper that you stick in the window) to be able to bring it home. Then get it safetied (I think) and get new plates.
You can also apply for a provincial sales tax rebate after you get home.
If you had driven it from NS would the process be different?
unrelated, but why are cars in Quebec cheaper than anywhere else in Canada?
Probably stolen and new vin attached. Sarcasm just in case due to the stolen cars in Ontario all being shipped out of Montreal.
It may have been cheaper and quicker to drive it, but we saved putting the mileage on, gas, hotel, food, and lost wages for SO to get it.
It was $1000 to ship it.
Anyone care to list the smaller independent grocers/farm markets in their area? I’m thinking said list might come in handy for summer road trips. I’m in NS. As far as I know, we have:
Plus our weekly or twice weekly farmers markets, some of which run year round.
Plus there’s food trucks that sell fresh seafood, or fruits/vegetables that come to town every week.
There are a lot of u-picks in the Annapolis Valley…the ultimate in fresh food!
A lot of rural people here put stands at the end of their driveway where they sell food, often on the honour system. But sometimes with a farm kid manning the booth.
Is it the same in other provinces across Canada?
Anyone know of any particularly good places, locally owned, in PEI or NB, where we could support local farmers?
Are you aware of the Loblaws boycott? Are you doing it? It’s a month long boycott of Loblaws and all the other stores that are under their brands. There is a subreddit r/loblawsisoutofcontrol with the complete list of the stores to boycott.
I will avoid as best as I can, but I don’t have many choices near my apartment and I don’t have a car 
I think I’ll have to go to Maxi (Loblaws owned) once or twice this month so it won’t be a ‘perfect’ boycott.
In Montreal there are so many!! The Marché Jean-Talon, Marché Atwater and Marché Maisonneuve are 3 markets that gather independent farmers. There is also smaller markets in different areas. In my area there’s the Marché Ahuntsic that is a market open only in the summer, on saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm, with a handful of farmers. I love going there and pick my fresh fruits and vegetables!
I’m lucky enough to have a car so I’m shopping elsewhere this month. We are so used to getting the same brands and products all the time, having to use different ones is causing a surprising amount of consternation. The tofu my kid made dinner with had the wrong texture, and the bread for his morning toast wasn’t right.
I hope a message is sent to Loblaws, but also it’s good for us to have to get out of our rut a little.
To be honest, we simply haven’t been shopping there much since Christmas. Their prices are the same as Sobeys, or more, for worse looking produce. We’ve found better deals at Avery’s Farm Market in their discounted produce, and at Gateway Meats. So we shop them first, and then Sobeys.
I think we were in Superstore once last week, when it was so quiet the music sounded like it was playing inside a tin can, echoing off walls of an empty store. It was then I realized something was up. Got home, read the news, and realized there was a boycott on.
I am not actively participating in the boycott, though the push to manufacture spending at freshco the last month (for that sweet scene cashback) means that we have not been picking up much from them lately. While I do believe that there has been profiteering, I think the manufacturers are equally (or even more) to blame.
One could argue that Loblaws should push back more on the big argi corps of the world, but it is harder to chop off that (not quite as multi headed, which is part of the problem) hydra, than point at loblaws. I do like the idea of people trying out other things beyond their default. The multi-armed bandit search method of explore then exploit is a good way to find more optimal solutions when we’re in a space that is ‘good enough’.
But I boycotted Metro during the strike, so perhaps I’m a hypocrite. Spend thus far at loblaws in May: 1 lb ground beef 50% off, 6 PC chocolate bars, 2 flashfood produce boxes which I assume are affiliated with loblaws in some way.
@plainjane , I was getting flashfood boxes at one point…until our Superstore started putting weird processed foods in them that were totally off my diet. I stopped then. Just not worth it. The vegetable and fruit ones were great though! In fact, I scoured all the nearby Superstore flash food boxes and found little of real food in any of them!
I wasn’t going to partake in the boycott officially, but realize by walking to local grocers who deal directly with the farmer I already am! Every Saturday we shop our local Farmers Market as well.
The GTA has a lot of smaller chains but in my area we use 2 independents and then big grocery stores. And we travel to certain independents and smaller chains.
I’m mostly participating in the boycott and I’m our main shopper - the control of the supply chain and disengenuity to the inquiry are a little extra foul tasting. The breaking of habits is great, and sending a message to big stores is great.
Something else to watch for is who you’re diverting money to. One of the discount chains has links to the Northern Store. On the flip side our Freshco is terrible but has a great and affordable local butcher. And Food Basics is reliably the cheapest place to shop but requires a detour to other stores for some things
Doing my best, it is hard because they have the best deals on berries right now but eff Galen Weston!
if you have Freshco, they will price match No Frills & RCSS.
my plan to get Tangerine to send me a better promo worked, and we are now moving money back from the Shadowy One’s lesser promo over to my new better one. I don’t like that we need to play the game, but for 5.75% on new deposits May-Sept, I will play the game.
Speaking of playing the game, we completed the 4th week of manufactured spending with Freshco for Scene points. This week we made it thanks to a bag of cashews ($18) which I will use to make curried cashews as one of my contributions to the family gathering on Sunday. I also bought unplanned feta because it was on sale, and an extra box of panko because ditto. Neither had been in the flyer. So I overshot the target by $9.
You moved your money a couple of days prior to the end of the promotion?
I moved my money at the end of March at the end of that promo, in hopes of triggering something for April. It took a month, but I got May’s.
Is there an online fabric seller that anyone recommends?