Chequing in

This morning we had frost. Parts of BC have had heavy snowfalls, and whilst I was bitter about this and felt they should share, Kevin pointed out that power cuts had accompanied their snow.

One of the things which Brits have to get their heads round when coming to live in Canada is the differences in banking practices and this is a lesson that my son Laurence is having to learn just as I did - although I think it is more difficult for him because he would not even know of a time of cheques and bank charges.

It's not like we don't ever use cheques in Britain, I do own a chequebook, although Laurence never has. Dutch colleagues that Kevin works with don't deal with cheques either. If someone here wanted for some reason to give me money, they couldn't just transfer it into my account as I can do from my British account into another British account. They would have to give me a cheque or e-mail me the money for which there would be a charge.

And charges are a whole mindset thing. Most current accounts here - which are referred to as chequing accounts, have a monthly fee and then you have a set number of transactions you can use during that month. So for example, you may have to pay four dollars a month and then have fifteen transactions. So instead of using your debit card all the time, you have to make sure they are worthwhile transactions. In Britain you could go to Boots, Sainsbury's, Marks and Sparks, back to Boots, Otakar's then the Post Office in one afternoon, use your debit card in each and not think about it. If you did that here, apart from the obvious that none of those shops exist here, you would have used up over a third of your month's allowance of transactions. Ooops. So you see what I mean about thinking differently.

Likewise getting cash. In Britain, walk down Commercial Road in Pompey, and even in my own mind's eye I can count ten different ATM points, at different banks and building societies but any of which you could withdraw money from without any charge. Here, ATMs are fewer and further between and if you withdraw cash from any bank other than your own, you can end up paying $3 per go. All of this adds up quickly, so we do have to learn over here to think ahead. One way around this is by using your credit card for everything, which is why, I believe, credit card use is so much more common here. You will find the odd quite bizarre place where you can't use it, but that's rare. Then people pay off their credit card bill using a single transaction.

I know, I know, terribly tedious stuff, but trying to change a mindset is a difficult thing. You do what you are used to doing, and changing can be an expensive lesson to learn.