Category: Announcements

I personally think kids are great and I enjoy spending time with mine. However, like everything – too much of a good thing isn’t so good. It can get tiresome after a while.

Judith Timson wrote about how parenting is no fun. She is reacting another post about parenting in New York Mag which outlines all the problems of being a parent.

Jennifer Senior wrote that NY Mag article about parenting called All Joy and No Fun. Some great quotes like “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit”. Couldn’t agree more.  🙂

Garth Turner wrote an absolutely hilarious post about property virgins. I don’t agree with much of what Garth has to say, but this post was spot on.

My Wife Quit Her Job is a site that I just started reading – it is fantastic for those of us who are into online entrepreneurship. The writer Steve is one smart guy and I love reading his posts.   This post was just excellent: Starting A Business: Convincing Yourself To Take Action

Canadian Tax Resource is starting a new tax advisory service. I’m interested in the question of whether or not to incorporate.

Million Dollar Journey had an interesting post about investment loans.

The Oblivous Investor shows how to calculate real estate investment return.

The Financial Blogger reveals how we evaluate our online business.

Larry MacDonald says that retirement pensions improvements might not be necessary.

Squawkfox put together an expense tracking spreadsheet for the holidays.

Preet says that the Eco Fee is a tax.

Canadian Capitalist put together some useful used car pricing resources.

Canajun Finances wrote about pet insurance.

Carnivals

Carnival of Financial Planning

Carnival of Personal Finance

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Nike+ is a really neat systems that basically puts a sensor in your running shoe, records the data to your iPod, then helps runners analyze the data and use it to understand their training and health.  I’ve written about the power of measurement in the past, and I’m a big believer that when you give people hard data about something, good results occur.

The basic idea behind this wacky business idea is a gym equipped exclusively with equipment that has extensive sensors attached to each of the machines.  Each time a user uses one of the machines, they swipe an ID card on a reader mounted on the machine and their work out is recorded (data is wirelessly gathered).  Gym users then get a continuous report on their work out program, broken into activities, effort & resistance levels, calories burned, adherence to a workout program, etc, etc, etc.  Automated suggestions are attached to the analysis (e.g. “You seem to be ready for a higher resistance level on the elliptical trainer” or “Increasing your time on the bicycles by 4 minutes would be worthwhile”).  If you go longer than usual without a visit to the gym, it could even send you e-mail reminders to get back into your work out routine.

This may be interesting in and of itself, but then a variety of interesting applications could be built on top of this “platform” for the gym users.  One example might be fantasy sports leagues where instead of the players being modeled on real sports stars, they are simulated based on the users’ work out data.  More core training could give your representative (or avatar) more power in the game.  Doing cardio could make them faster, missing work outs makes it more likely your player will have an injury, etc, etc.  On a regular basis, these simulations play a variety of games with one another, with the results of each match being sent to all the people involved and (hopefully) provide them with more motivation to continue working out and pushing themselves.

Say a group of friends decide to compete in the CyberGym’s 2010 World Cup.  They pick a country to represent them (Spain or Netherlands might be good choices), and their work outs fuel how well their virtual counterparts play.  In each match they play against other people working out at the same gym (or other gyms that are part of the franchise).  There could be a beginner’s league, where stats are based on improvement (so the new guy who is working hard at getting into a gym routine could be the most valuable player), or an advanced league (where the hard core gym rats would clean up).  Your team mates will encourage you to stick to your work out schedule (to increase the odds of winning), and on a regular basis you get e-mailed a description of each match, perhaps personalized with impressive goals your avatar made if you’ve been doing well, or fumbles if you’ve been doing poorly.  Each match description would tie the performance to the user’s work out routine, and have suggestions for modifying the routine to improve the routine and to make the avatar play better in the future.

Similar leagues could be available for tennis, basketball, or any sport that was of interest to people using the gym.

Would such a system make you more interested in working out, or would it just depress you that people are playing virtual sports instead of real ones?

Wow, it is hot, hot, hot in Toronto this week.  But not as hot as last weekend during the G20 summit – what a complete embarrassment for everyone involved (including the city of Toronto).

On with the links!

• Canadian Capitalist republished a great post on why you should invest your own money. Well worth the read.
• CC followed up with a post on Bill Miller, who used to be a champion coin flipper, but is now reduced to ol’ Gil.  Retire already!  The difference between you and Peter Lynch is that ol’ Pete knew when to quit.
• The Dividend Guy talks about his asset allocation and how it drives his investment decisions.
• The Financial Blogger asks what is your income raise this year? I don’t know yet, but the word “jack squat” comes to mind.
• The Oblivous Investor says that American Funds are not a good deal. Apparently they have a 1% annual cost. Ha! He should check out Canadian Funds.  🙂
• Neil Reynolds from GlobeAdvisor says that pretend austerity programs are not a solution. He makes a great point that reducing the rate of debt increase is not exactly restraint.
• The Canadian Finance blog put together a great list of Canadian blogs. Tom was nice enough to list MSB as “one of the big guys”. Thanks!
• Preet says that the dogs of the dow strategy is underperforming. (Just like every other trading strategy that ever existed.)
• Squawkfox shows us how to make pie-in-a-jar. Mmmmm….pie-in-a-jar.
• Canadian Couch Potato wrote that the new new Claymore inverse bond ETF comes up short. Read the article to find out why that title is funny, in case you didn’t laugh.
• Young and Thrifty says she is buying a house in Vancouver. Bubbles be damned.  Hey, if you can afford it, then don’t try to time the market.  Just buy it.  From her description of Vancouver, I’m about ready to move out there.
• Canajun Finances loathes the HST.

Carnivals

Carnival of Financial Planning

I was going to include this post in the “week of romance” back around Valentine’s day, but there wasn’t room (I guess I’ve just got too much love to give).  Marriage and divorce can be two of the biggest factors in personal finances:  the right partner can help us get what we want out of life, and the wrong partner can ruin us.  I think in many ways Western society has an unreasonable view of marriage which makes us more likely to get divorced, and to be unhappy in our relationships.

In the West we’ve developed the view that “true love” is the only acceptable basis for a marriage.  Other cultures and times factoring social standing or financial status into a marriage decision is viewed as incredibly crass by modern, Western standards.  My brother was laughing his head off one time when he told me about a friend of his who was dating a woman he didn’t find attractive and was only dating her because she was a doctor.  His friend’s justification was that looks will fade but she’ll remain a doctor.  The modern (Western) perspective on this is even if you’re thinking such things, you should never say them.  Many people around the world would find my brother’s friend’s perspective completely reasonable (and wouldn’t understand why my brother and I found it so funny).  The funniest part was the doctor dumped the friend eventually.

I have friends who had arranged marriages, and they can never understand the disdain many Westerners have for this style of marriage.  I acknowledge it’s not always the case, but my friends have presented it to me like a match making service:  they get introduced to someone but there’s no obligation to marry if they don’t connect.

Kurt Vonnegut has written that he thinks marriages fail because there aren’t enough people involved.  In the past a marriage would unite two families, so a small horde of people would all be invested in making it work and would keep pushing the two people together.  His view is that in modern times, two people just aren’t enough to “keep it together”.  An Egyptian friend of mine told me when he was getting divorced his father said to him “until you can prove to me differently, I hold you 100% responsible for the failure of this marriage”.  Ouch! How many marriages would endure if this was the attitudes of the parents?  A Japanese girl I went to elementary school with lived with her parents and grandparents and she would talk about how her grandparents hated one another (but had been together for decades).

Clearly this is a negative when considering truly poisonous marriages, perhaps with abuse.  On the other hand, how many marriages might have worked out if there were a few more people involved in wanting them to work out and trying to help the two people stay together.  I know another couple who divorced who had a hyper-active child (it was never said but I think the kid was a big part of the stress in the marriage).  They might have been able to stay together with a bit more support.

In one episode of Penn & Teller:  Bullshit! they featured a psychologist, Helen Fisher, who has a model of human mating that views it as three stages:

• Lust—the sex drive or libido
• Romantic attraction—romantic love
• Attachment—deep feelings of union with a long term partner.

Her perspective on the show (which seems different from what is articulated on her web page) is that couples tend to go through these three stages (they start out in lust, which develops into romantic attraction which develops into attachment).  Her claim was that Western culture is obsessed with the romantic attraction phase, which she argued will only last for the first couple of years of a relationship.  Some people go looking for a new partner that they expect the romantic attraction to last forever with, which just isn’t the case:  it’s a transitory experience.  The movies sell us the idea of “true love forever”, which just isn’t possible.  One perspective on “Romeo and Juliet” is that (spoiler alert!) they HAD to die at the end.  Relationships change, and they would have developed a realistic understanding of one another beyond infatuation if they’d survived long enough.

At conferences I’ve attended recently I got talking (separately) to two middle aged academics who are women.  In each case, their husband had recently left them and they were struggling to make sense of it.  I mentioned Dr. Fisher’s theory, and it resonated with each of them.  One said that she felt her ex-husband didn’t understand that “relationships evolve”.

Of course the changes have been a mixed bag.  Increase gender equality within marriages is certainly a good thing.  But with the high divorce rates, I think there’s SOMETHING that isn’t right with the popular view of marriage (and that it’s very worthwhile trying to figure out a relationship that will work for the long term).

Here in Toronto, we are gearing up for the G20 summit next week. I think downtown Toronto is quite possibly the stupidest place to hold this sort of event, but needless to say, they didn’t ask my opinion.

I doubt there will be any trouble at the summit. With the number of security people on hand – anybody showing so much as a protest sign, will be beaten down pretty quick. If you are planning to protest – I suggest you don’t.

Another set of great links this week.

The Oblivious Investor wrote a good post on how do you pay your advisor? He brings up an excellent point that you shouldn’t be paying your advisor continuously, if you only need an occasional checkup or adjustment.

Fabrice Taylor from GlobeAdvisor raised some interesting accounting questions in REITs’ value getting harder to see.  I decided to sell my REITs a while ago because I didn’t understand their accounting very well.  This article confirms my decision.

Million Dollar Journey shows how to use the “Funds From Operation” method to value REITs.

Rachelle from Land Lord Rescue had a pretty funny post called 10 Tips on Renting to The Worst Tenants

Canadian Capitalist says there are only modest changes to CPP in the works.

The Financial Blogger gives some career advice and says that not asking for a raise, can be the best strategy for getting one. I’ve been following this strategy for 17 years with very, very limited success.

Preet explains how a Capital Loss Transfer works.

Carnivals

Pop Economics featured a recent post – The Stripper with Dirty Feet in the
Carnival of Personal Finance. He complained that the articles weren’t original enough, and yet the stripper story wasn’t good enough for an editor’s pick.

I really liked the business principle “under promise and over deliver” from the first time I heard it.  It made total sense to me:  follow through on your commitments and exceed what you said you’d do.  I think this is a good approach to all facets of life, not just running a business.  Your boss asks when you can get a project finished by, you give a date and manage to turn it in 2 days early, perhaps with enough time for some feedback and to create another version.  Your wife wants you to help out more around the house and you commit to walking the dog every morning (and end up putting on coffee and taking out the trash at the same time).

I have, on a  number of occasions, interacted with people who wanted to make me happy while we were talking, so they promise me something that it later turns out there was no chance of them delivering.  The end result was I become MUCH less happy after they’d failed to do what they said they would.  I did some proof reading of an academic paper years ago, and when I showed up for a scheduled editing session, the author would say it wasn’t ready, but to come back in 3 hours or the next day and each time I came back, he needed more time (it happened 4 or 5 times).  I was livid by the end of it.  It would have been absolutely fine if, in the first place, he’d just told me to come back in a week.

Rogers and Bell like to deliberately do the same thing.  They offer a good deal to get you as a customer, then spring a bunch of “hidden” fees and changes to the deal to make it more profitable to them.  I think this is a large part of why people hate both companies.  The deal sounds great when they are trying to get you to sign up, then it stinks when you’re a customer.  They over promise and under deliver and it drives people nuts.

In my opinion, the best way to make a commitment to someone, is to honestly appraise (to yourself) what you’re willing to do for them, then pull back a bit to give yourself a “fudge factor” (quote a slightly longer delivery time, slightly higher cost, slightly lower quality, etc).  If the project takes longer (or is more expensive), you’ll still be able to fit within your original estimate.  If you’re able to complete it on the original estimate, you look like a hero.

On Star Trek, the original series, the chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (“Beam me up Scotty!“) had a reputation as being a miracle worker. As time passes in the series, it comes out that as well as being brilliant, he routinely pads his estimates.

There are other opinions on this.  Basically the counter argument is that it undermines people’s trust if you quote them something then exceed it (they’ll wonder why you didn’t commit to delivering that initially).  There’s also the fear that people will “compensate” if you consistently over deliver and start expecting it.  I don’t find either of these convincing arguments against taking this approach to interactions.  This happened to poor Scotty as Captain Kirk would cut the time allowed for repairs.

What do you think of “under promise, over deliver” as a mantra for “customer” interactions?

Toronto will be hosting the G20/G8 summit towards the end of June.  It will cost a fortune to host this event and I really don’t see what the benefits are.  Many people will be inconvenienced and the only publicity the city will get will be CNN videos showing various protesters getting beaten up.

The worst example of spending is the “fake lake” being constructed for the low, low cost of only $2 million.  This lake is supposed to be a backdrop for the media.  Ironically it is being built only a few hundred metres from a “real lake” called Lake Ontario.  Bah!

The Links

Rachelle, who wrote a great post here called “The Stripper With Dirty Feet – A Tenant From Hell Story” also wrote a post over at Million Dollar Journey on “How to find the ideal tenant“.

Bruce Teague did a great evaluation of this site for me recently.  I haven’t been able to implement any of his suggestions, since I’m busy with a major project, but you should see some site changes in the near future, which were the result of his analysis.  Bruce is an internet marketing expert and helps people market their ideas, talents, and/or passions on the web.

Being Ruth put together a docu-drama in pictures, called “The Day the Cthulhus Hunted My Bunny“.  Don’t know what a Cthulhus is either?  Better go check it out.

Preet found out that the second largest mutual fund industry is in Luxembourg.

Financial Blogger says that home renovations are not a good investment.  How about an RX8?

The Oblivious Investor has a very simple way to figure out how much money you need to retire.

Debt Free Adventure attempted to answer a reader question about a rather tangled-up family business.  Unfortunately, I think this is one situation that has no answer.

The Wisdom Journal lists 10 first time home buyers mistakes.  It’s a good article because it sounds like Ron learned all of them from experience.

Canadian Capitalist says that when it comes to investing, patience is the key.  Couldn’t agree more.

The Intelligent Speculator warns about being fooled by a high dividend.

Carnivals

Carnival of Personal Finance