Author Archives: Laurana Rayne

Why I don’t care about the interest rate on my credit card.

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For me, credit card interest rate is a non-issue. I use my card as a convenience and for the cash-back feature. I never use it as a means of living on borrowed money.

The paradox of credit cards…

Credit Card Paradox

Why you can’t win when you pay interest on a credit card…

As long as there’s a balance on your credit card, you are in debt. The lender requires you to pay interest for the use of that money. Credit card companies are happiest when you pay the bare minimum, because that extends the time you are making payments. How long can the time extend to?

This example from page 187 of Conscious Spending, Conscious Life might shock you. You may have to read this quote twice to digest what it is really saying.…
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The Big Reveal – Credit Card Interest

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The consumer culture has become a complicated and complex place to live. Dealing with money is no longer simple and straightforward, and it’s easy to make financial mistakes that haunt us for years. Despite the focus on finances during Financial Literacy Month in Canada, insights to help us navigate through the system are fragmented and inconsistent.

Credit Card

For many years I taught a college course in consumer issues and economics. Early on, I discovered that most students thought if they made the minimum monthly payment on their credit card, they weren’t in debt. They used their credit cards freely and paid the required minimum each month. They thought they were doing the smart and adult thing. Sadly, they weren’t. Continue reading →

Are we financially literate?

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November. Financial literacy month in Canada. The time when we are officially reminded of information and strategies we can use to improve our financial health.

Financial literacy refers to the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources. It’s a term that was introduced fairly recently, when governments began to focus on the need for consumer education in this area.

A recent newsletter from the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada reports that Canada is near the top of the charts for financial literacy in a global survey published in spring 2017 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Canada tied for second worldwide…in the financial literacy component of the Programme for International Student Assessment, a global survey of 15-year-olds.

This report was followed by… [one] on adult financial literacy… [in which] Canadian adults…tied for second with Norway.

As a Canadian, I was feeling proud… and perhaps even a bit smug. Then I remembered a Statistics Canada report, also from last spring, telling us that the debt-to-income ratio of Canadians was at an all-time high of 167%. This means we owed $1.67 for every $1 of disposable income. The fact that Canadians have a lot more debt than income seems at odds with the assertion that we have high levels of financial literacy. How can this be? Continue reading →

Unprocessed.

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Last week I introduced Michael Pollan’s concept of establishing personal policies about what we eat. Today I want to explore the idea of a personal policy that eliminates processed foods.

Why pick on processed foods?

As one nutritionist aptly put it, start with the “big rocks.” Removing them first leads to visible progress in short order. Processed food, junk food, and fast food are big rocks. It has become clear that the Standard American Diet (SAD) creates poor health in people eating it. If you have any doubt, remember Morgan Spurlock’s experiment in his documentary Super Size Me.

Big and small rocks

Removing processed food cannot help but make a difference. Without doubt, you will be eating better if you eliminate packaged and processed items from your food choices. And there are many other benefits to you and your community when you choose fresh, real food instead.

But really, is it possible?

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Conscious Consumption in Everyday Life

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As I pointed out last week, the consumer culture is structured to propel us to buy, buy, and buy even more, without thinking. From the consumer side of the equation, it’s so easy to react mindlessly to the demands of the culture and then find ourselves dealing with the consequences of excess.

Why does overconsumption matter? Because there’s too much collateral damage when purchase decisions are dictated by businesses that have a vested interest in getting us to buy more than we ever thought we needed.

Collateral damage from the profit-at-all-cost paradigm

  • Over-indebtedness, which leaves us with no capacity to cope with emergencies such as interest rate increases and job losses. In March 2017, Statistics Canada reported that the country’s average household debt-to-income ratio hit a record high of 167%. This means that Canadians owed $1.67 for each $1 they generated in disposable income, In everyday terms, this suggests that many Canadians are living beyond their means or, at best, are just making ends meet.
  • Environmental impacts, in more ways than most of us can imagine. Air pollution, climate change, and overpopulation are familiar issues, but a list of 25 on Conserve Energy Future reminds us about others such as light and noise pollution, urban sprawl, and medical waste.
  • Chronic health issues, caused by stress on many levels. Overconsumption leads to the emotional stress of over-indebtedness, the physical stress of eating food contaminated with pesticides and heavy metals, and the mental stress of trying to sort through overwhelming amounts of information in an attempt to figure out what to do to remain financially and physically healthy.

What can we do?

We can start by taking responsibility for our part in this dysfunctional system. As long as we continue purchasing what corporations sell, we are reinforcing their bad behaviour and they will continue doing what they’re doing.

We get the products we deserve. Continue reading →

Simplify and Civilize Your Food Shopping

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Last week I wrote about dealing with too much information when researching health issues online. Unfortunately, for those of us living in a consumer-oriented culture, the Internet is not the only place where we have to deal with too much to choose from. Think supermarkets. Finding good food and not being distracted by everything else is challenging.

Overconsumption is not an accident… 

Overconsumption is built into the consumer culture, where the story is based on beliefs that “big is better” and “more is best.” Many people buy into that viewpoint with no discernment as to whether it’s in alignment with their values.

Overconsumption, literally, is a major concern with regard to our eating habits. Eating too much and eating the wrong things can cause chronic complex conditions that are debilitating for the person and a major cost to the health care system.

Being aware of our tendencies and habits is useful in helping us manage ourselves, our spending, and our appetite. Self-awareness is a huge asset, and one worth cultivating. to counterbalance  the mindless consumption encouraged by the consumer culture and most  players in it. Continue reading →

Cutting Through TMI

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For a long time, consumer educators believed that people make the best choices when they have plenty of information. Consumer education programs taught us how to locate information so we had enough to make good decisions.

That was before the Internet.

These days, the challenge is not in finding information. It’s in learning how to manage an over-abundance of it. There are two issues here:

  1. Discerning what has integrity in a medium without gatekeepers, one in which anyone can say and publish whatever they want to.
  2. Coping with the volume so that we don’t shut down from information overload.

A previous post featured Dr. Barry Schwartz speaking about the paradox of choice. His research discovered that people actually make worse decisions when overloaded with information and choices. Continue reading →

A Revolutionary View of Alzheimer’s

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Albert Einstein is frequently quoted for saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Much of what goes on in medicine fits this definition. Researchers and practitioners go around in circles, trying small variations on the same approach, and not finding the results they hope for.

The issue is, all of the variations are rooted in the same mindset. In medicine, the prevailing mindset is that the solution to any condition is a magic bullet in the form of a pill to correct the issue. It’s an outdated attitude that worked in the days when penicillin was discovered to kill the bacteria that caused pneumonia, rheumatic fever, blood poisoning and other infections. Penicillin was the magic bullet that ushered in the age of antibiotics at a time when untreated infections were a major cause of death.

However, the landscape has shifted. Today’s health issues are primarily complex chronic conditions. Think heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cancer, chronic fatigue and Alzheimer’s. Despite the enormous amount o money and effort put toward finding the magic bullet, it hasn’t happened.

The prevailing medical view of Alzheimer’s is a good example of stuck thinking.

Doctors are taught that once a person shows signs of Alzheimer’s, continued deterioration is inevitable. Drugs might be able to slow the progression, but there is absolutely no possibility of reversing the condition.

As the title of this post suggests, that belief has now been proven to be untrue. Continue reading →

Panning for gold in a never-ending stream of information…

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One of my themes is resourcefulness, the valuable ability to devise effective ways and means of meeting any situation we face. I’m curious about how we can increase our capacity for resourcefulness. And about how we can discover and engage with available resources without being duped or overwhelmed.

To engage fully, we must recognize that there are two aspects of resourcefulness—what we find within ourselves, and what we can learn from others.

What are resources?

Our inner resources are the attitudes and skills developed from life experience. They keep us going and make us resilient. When we tap into our inner knowing, we bring these resources to the forefront. That’s why it’s helpful for each of us to find our own best method of accessing that inner wisdom. It makes us stronger and better able to cope. My recent blogs have been about accessing inner resources. But… Continue reading →

Finding your inner “yes”

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One of the capabilities that kept me going in difficult times is my intuition, which I usually refer to as my inner sense of knowing. It helps me find the answers that are grounded in my self. In this way, I’m able to discover new perspectives and feel more confident in making decisions. I don’t know how I would have managed without it!

I think my inner knowing was always with me, but not fostered in my environment. It wasn’t until adulthood that my intuition and I reconnected when I took an energy psychology workshop. It was teaching a method of releasing emotions stuck in the energy field. Muscle testing was used to help us identify them so they could be released.

Muscle testing is a means of communicating with the subconscious through our bodies. It was exactly what I needed to make my long-ignored intuition visible.

After a few years, I became aware that I knew the answer inside me before the muscle testing showed it. These days, I use muscle testing when working with clients so they can see what’s happening. Otherwise, I go with the inner sense which, for me, feels like the answer landing squarely on my heart (yes) or rolling off to the left (no).

Befriending your intuition…

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