An inflation-protected investment

This does not scale up beyond a couple hundred dollars, but if you are planning on sending a large quantity of first-class letters across Canada, investing in some stamps is not a bad method. Currently stamps are 54 cents and are marked as “permanent” which means that the face value of the stamp will increase as prices increase. Stamp prices will increase to 56 cents in 2010 and 58 cents in 2011.

Implicit in this price increase is a 3.7% protection against price increases in the future. Since interest rates are currently well below this figure, there is a minor amount of inflation-proofing available to buy stamps now for the next few years.