$1000 an hour? Why not ? | The Press

It’s not just lawyers, CEOs and celebrities who can boast of making several hundred or even several thousand dollars an hour. In an exercise which obviously has nothing scientific about it, The Press had fun drawing up a short list of one-off activities that could earn you an attractive hourly wage. Between finding the most advantageous mortgage, filing your own tax return or forcing your telecom provider to give you a discount, among other examples, it’s up to you to choose your salary for a few hours!

Karim Benessaieh
The Press

Mortgage

Buying a home is the biggest investment of a lifetime for most households. Naturally, it is in this area that the potential savings are the most attractive. According to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, 40% of the population had a mortgage in 2019, with a median amount of $200,000. A quick look at sites like HelloSafe offering mortgage rate comparisons finds, at the time of this writing, a difference of 0.8 percentage points between the best offer (4.34% at Nesto) and the less good (5.14% at the Laurentian Bank), for a five-year fixed-rate renewal.

The difference, for a $200,000 mortgage: $73 per month, a remarkable savings of $4,380 over five years. Between research, negotiation and signing, barely four hours are enough to change financial institutions.

“A basic trick for negotiating your rate: consult the rates offered on the market and ask your financial institution to do better,” recalls the Autorité des marchés financiers in a document published in 2019. If you have the capacity, l he provincial organization also recommends amortizing your mortgage over a shorter period.

Potential salary: $1000 per hour

Insurance

Do you believe that your insurance premium is based on immutable criteria shared by insurers? This is not at all the conclusion reached by the Autorité des marchés financiers when comparing the auto insurance premiums obtained by 10 consumers in 2017.

Saving an average of $763 per year for barely two hours of work is respectable. But let us specify at the outset that the president of the Regroupement des cabinets de courtage d’assurance du Québec, Jean-Pierre Tardif, finds this sum of $763 exaggerated. While he believes shopping around for insurance is important, he warns consumers not to rely solely on price.

He has other saving tips. In housing, for example, we should raise deductibles, “which have aged badly”. “We still have deductibles at $300 or $500. I would go for more, $1000, even $2500. » The renovations, the alarm systems and the automatic shut-off of the water are rewarded. In automobiles, parts marking, which can cost up to $250, will earn you a discount of up to $85. Finally, combining several policies with the same insurer will get you up to 10% off.

Potential salary: $250 per hour

Telecoms

Whether for the Internet, cell phone or cable television, we recommend contacting your supplier once a year to negotiate a reduction. Without changing anything, you can get in less than an hour nearly fifteen dollars a month as a reward for your loyalty.

But there are tricks. “Providers establish an index of their customers, which allows them to determine if they have a good chance of leaving them,” reveals Nadir Marcos, CEO of PlanHub, which specializes in price comparisons for internet and cellular.

How to make yourself more desirable? By reaching the end of the contract for a subsidized telephone, by multiplying the calls to customer service and, above all, by challenging the supplier with a better competing offer. Do not be afraid to switch to another company, says Johanne Le Blanc, budget advisor at Option consommateurs. “I could understand the hesitation when you had to change your phone number and pay a breach of contract fee. It’s not like before, we’re no longer tied up, there’s more mobility. »

Potential salary: $180 per hour

Taxes

According to Revenu Québec, barely 39% of taxpayers do their own tax returns. Some obviously have complex tax returns and business or rental income that warrants the use of a professional. But for the vast majority, for example a working couple with two children, software costing as little as $20 can often replace an accountant which can cost upwards of $330. Three hours is enough.

“I think a lot of people would be able to do it themselves,” says Julie Brissette, of the Cooperative Association of Family Economics (ACEF) of East Montreal. But beware, not everyone is equally comfortable with software and the mechanics of tax returns. “In the ACEFs, we mainly see people with low incomes, seniors for whom technology is sometimes inaccessible, people for whom it is synonymous with anxiety. »

She points out that there are many organizations that offer tax clinics to low-income people, up to $45,000 for a couple. “We take care of more and more workers, the clientele is expanding,” she notes. In addition to the ACEFs, some of which offer this service year-round, she points out that there is an unknown telephone service, 211, coupled with a website www.211qc.ca, which lists all the community and social organizations.

Potential salary: $100 per hour

Essence

Did you know that a car traveling at 120 km/h consumes 20% more fuel than at 100 km/h? “Air resistance is less when you’re going slower, and the engine also runs slower,” explains Jesse Caron, automotive expert at CAA-Quebec.

Let’s have fun calculating the hourly wage we could get from this economy. A car constantly driving at 100 km/h will cover 600 km in six hours, the equivalent of Montreal-New York. The same car traveling at 120 km/h will mathematically cover the same distance in five hours. Suppose that the car consumes 8 liters per 100 km while driving at 100 km/h: it will therefore have swallowed 48 liters.

At 120 km/h? 20% more, for a balance of 57.6 litres. We will therefore have saved 9.6 liters by driving more slowly. At $1.70 per litre, as of this writing, that’s an hourly wage of $16.32, barely above minimum wage. We have obviously not taken into account here the benefits for the environment, which are unavoidable but more difficult to calculate. And yet, motorists are sensitive to it, notes Jesse Caron. “What I am about to tell you is extremely anecdotal. I, who do Donnacona-Montréal every Monday, notice that some people drive slower when the price of gas is higher. »

Potential salary: $16.32 per hour (plus environmental benefits)

Three more tips

Unclaimed property

In Quebec, some 400,000 unclaimed items with a total value of $380 million, abandoned after a move, a job change or death, are piled up and recorded in a register kept by Revenu Québec. Every year, $32 million is returned to their rightful owners. At the Bank of Canada, the hoard is even more impressive: there are 1.9 million unclaimed balances worth 742 million. A few minutes are enough for a search.

Use

According to the latest Kijiji Index, presented by the Responsible Consumption Observatory of the University of Quebec in Montreal up to 2019, Canadians had earned an average of $789 the previous year by selling their used goods. Outdated lamps, furniture gathering dust, clothes you’ll never wear again, almost everything can find a buyer on the many resale platforms like Kijiji, Markeplace, LesPAC and the many specialized shops. Earnings obviously depend on the products offered for sale.

Credit card

Nothing is easier than comparing the different credit cards on the market: the Financial Consumer Agency has put a comparator online that will allow you to choose a card based on the interest rate, annual fees and rewards. A word of advice: “You have to pay your entire balance,” recalls Johanne Le Blanc, of Option consommateurs. Even paying $99 on a balance of $100, interest over 20% will apply on the entire $100. »