Pengrowth Energy to Become a Corporation

Yesterday, Pengrowth Energy Trust (Toronto: PGF.UN) announced that it plans on becoming a corporation on December 31th, 2010.

Basically, nothing much will change. Distributions will become dividends (as so will be taxed less for investors) but remain at $0.07 per month, at least for now. As explained in the announcement, the company has a big tax pool that mean it doesn't expect to pay taxes until 2014.

One area was unclear in the announcement, and that was the continuation of the reinvestment and purchase plan. Investors relations was contacted, and apparently the company plans on keeping it the same. That would include the 5% discount on both reinvested dividend and new purchases. :o)

The conversion will need to be approved by the unitholders during a special meeting to be held on December 16th. With those terms, I expect it to be a formality.

New Finance Site: Moneyville.ca

Two of the bloggers that I read regularly have mentioned that they will be blogging on the new site developped by the Toronto Star, Moneyville.ca, so I thought I'd give it a look and see whether it would be worth reading.

My first impressions were quite good. The web site is clean and doesn't look cluttered, and the articles seem interesting. I'll be digging around the site some more, but it looks like a good one. What I particularly like is the fact that it is targeted at the average Canadian, instead of cathering to a nice or presenting things from a U.S. perspective.

Thumbs up from this Frog!

Net Worth Update

As of October 1st, my net worth was $133 563 (up 3.7% from $128 775). If I exclude house-related assets and liabilities, my net worth was $91 973 (5.2% from $87 442). A surprisingly good month, but this had more to do with how the stock market moved than anything else, as this caused two-thirds of the increase. I did watch my expenses more than usual, though, to cut down a bit on unnecessary spending. So it was more a matter of what I didn't do than what I did. :o)

Assets ($194 419, up 2.4% from $189 874)

• Bank Accounts $4 811 (up 6.7% from $4 509)
• Emergency Funds $2 471 (up 4.3% from $2 368)
• RRSP Accounts $58 407 (up 3.5% from $56 426)
• Non-Retirement Investments $30 093 (up 7.9% from $27 878)
• Home $98 430 (stable)

Liabilities ($60 856, down 0.4% from $61 099)

• Credit Cards $3 972 (up 1% from $3 934)
• Mortgage $56 841 (down 0.4% from $57 097)
• Line of Credit $0 (stable)

Ratios

• Debt / assets: 0.313 (down from 0.321)
• House value / total assets: 0.506 (down from 0.518)

The first payment for the new windows hasn't gone through yet, so this will impact the next update. I have reduced my monthly infusion of money into my DRiPs, as I will need to pay the balance of the windows in November. I want to do that using accumulated cash instead of having to dip into my emergency funds.