Category: Announcements

The Toronto Star had a great post on the US financial institutions that benefited greatly from bailouts but for some reason aren’t returning the favor.

Nancy Zimmerman (Money Coach) is thinking of buying a house on impulse – go and give her some advice!

Remodeling This Life wonders where time went now that her kids are about to start school. Very nice post.

One of the more amusing and clever posts I’ve read in a while was from WiseBread – Remember where you parked your car and 35 more practical uses of a digital camera.

The Financial Highway had some tips to keep emotions out of investing.

The Bag Lady had an interesting take on the Cash for Clunkers program – she says let’s burn down houses.

Million Dollar Journey had a great post by staff writer Kathryn about whether to buy or rent a house when she moves to Toronto. Tons of great comments.

Canadian Capitalist is finally getting around to starting a TFSA.

ABCs of Investing wrote about investment real return.

Carnivals

Carnival of Everything About Personal Finance

1031 Exchange August Edition

Penelope Brazen writes a great blog which can sometimes be painful to read because of the things she shares.  This post about why honesty is the best policy (my title) is the most honest and painful one so far.

Money Grubbing Lawyer talks about the renovation butterfly effect.  This is when you improve one thing in your house and everything else looks like crap as a result.

Million Dollar Journey sprinkles his lawn with dividends.

The Oblivious Investor talks about closet index funds and how to avoid them.

Canadian Capitalist did a book review on Squawkfox’s 397 ways to save money.

ABCs of Investing wrote about blue chip stocks.

Carnivals

Carnival of Twenty Something Finances

Bankruptcy and Debt Carnival

Carnival of Road to Financial Independence

Money Hacks Carnival

Festival of Frugality

Carnival of Financial Planning

Big news in blogworld last week – Gather Little By Little which is one of my favourite blogs was sold and purchased by none other than The Financial Blogger.  GLBL was run by Larry who has been a pretty good friend to me over the last couple of years – he has been very helpful with a lot of aspects of blogging.  Ironically, the new owner, Mike is also a friend – I wish both of them the best.

The Links

Cam Birch wrote an interesting post about fear of a tax audit.  He says that people fear them too much.

Squawkfox wrote a fun post on how to make a kite with recycled materials.  Great stuff.

Million Dollar Journey has some radically frugal ideas.

Where Does All My Money Go discusses the $4k to 10k rebate on electric cars in Ontario.  This might help demand but those cars aren’t cheap.

Good Financial Cents ask what kind of investor are you right now?

Bible Money Matters answers some questions about the new Cash for Clunkers program.

Canadian Capitalist talks about the Pixar phenomenon.  How do they keep cranking out the hit movies?

 

Just a few links this week since I’m not able to get on the internet much this week.

The best links

Amateur Asset Allocator says that Buffett’s record doesn’t mean that the efficient market hypothesis is wrong.

Thicken My Wallet had 2 great posts

• The Hail Mary school of investing – This is when people gamble on fallen stocks (how much lower can they go?)
• How to pick the right business partner – Some good ideas.

Joe TaxPayer wrote about the Dave Ramsey debt snowball and some issues with it.  His post was inspired by my post on the topic which is pretty cool (although I think he would have written it anyways.  I would encourage the regular readers to check Joe out – his thoughts are pretty similar to Mr. Cheap and I so you might like his blog.

The rest

Money Ning will tell you how to be a millionaire.

Good Financial Cents talls us how to avoid investment fraud.

Canadian Capitalist had an interesting post on the 5 cent grocery bag levy.  Lots of comments too.

Investing School talks about diversification.

ABCs of Investing warns that not all ETFs and index funds are diversified and how different types of stock market indexes work.

Carnivals

Carnival of Money Hacks

1031 Exchange Carnival

Carnival of Investing Strategies

Economy and Your Finances Carnival

Festival of Stocks

Bankruptcy and Debt Carnival

Carnival of 20 Something Finances

Festival of Frugality

Last week Not The Jet Set took the time to post a rebuttal to my “Is Dave Ramsey a Financial Expert?” post.  I think this is the first time someone has actually created a post based on one of my posts so I was quite flattered.  NTJS is clearly a big Dave Ramsey fan so needless to say he wasn’t overly happy with my analysis – but that’s ok.  I thought he made a lot of good points – especially his comment that investing while in debt is the same as borrowing to invest.  I do however have to take issue with his claim to having mutual funds that have averaged 15%+ over the last 40 years.  Unless Bernie Madoff was the fund manager, then I find that hard to believe.  🙂

Newsweek had a neat post about a journalist who covered a story on real estate investing and then bought a rental property of his own – unseen.  When he finally went to visit the place it turns out he was an accidental slumlord.

Weakonomics has a question for Habitat for Humanity – Why are you still building houses?

PaidTwice unfortunately lost her father a few months ago – read this incredibly bizarre story about how her Mom and brother went to cancel a Verison phone contract.   The store employees said the contract auto-renewed and couldn’t be cancelled by anyone but the deceased (that’s exactly what they said).  After 3.5 hours…3.5 hours! the contract was cancelled.  Those employees should all be fired.

The Rest of the Links

Million Dollar Journey tells us all he knows about the birds and the bees.

Preet has an idea for a great Father’s Day gift – yes, I wouldn’t mind something like this… 🙂

Want some ideas for (late) Father’s Day gifts? Look no further – Squawkfox tells a great story and has some ideas (which don’t cost any money).

Financial Blogger has 3 tricks to make you more productive.

The Dividend Guy bought some fixed income for his portfolio.

The Oblivious Investor talks about index funds and efficient markets.

Money Ning has some suggestions on saving money each month.

Good Financial Cents has 107 things that make good financial cents.

Canadian Capitalist says that professional investors follow the herd just like us amateurs.

The Intelligent Speculator has more on Microsoft going under.

Investing School says don’t listen to financial experts.

Carnivals

TMM Carnival

Festival of Stocks

Bankruptcy and Debt Carnival

TMM Carnival II

Carnival of Twenty Something Finances

Indian Stocks Mania

Festival of Frugality

Carnival of Top PF posts

Money Hacks Carnival

Carnival of Debt Reduction

Economy and Your Finances Carnival

Carnival of Making Real Money

Money Hacks Carnival

Ok, my combined title is a bit misleading.  Today is the first day that analog tv signals no longer exist and you have to have some sort of cable, satellite or digital box in order to watch television.  I have no idea who this change might affect since I suspect most people already use digital tv.  I suspect it will affect people who only watch minimal tv and don’t want to pay for cable or a low-income person who can’t afford to upgrade.

Has this change affected you or anyone you know?

Losing weight

I’ve let my weight go a bit the last few months – I’ve crept up from 180 lb up to 185 lb so I decided to cut out all evening snacks this week which I think is my achilles heel.  Following the advice of Mr. Cheap – I weighed myself everyday and recorded the results.  I forgot a couple of days but here are the results:

• Starting weight – 185 pounds
• Monday, June 9 – 184.5
• Tuesday, June 10 – 183.5
• Friday, June 12 – 183.0

So far, so good.  Tonight, Mr. Cheap and Preet from WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com will be coming over for dinner and a couple of beers so I may have to skip tomorrow’s weigh-in.  🙂

Blog Showcase – Weakonomics

I haven’t featured any individual blogs in quite a while but I’ve been reading Weakonomics for a while and I have to say that I’m really impressed by this blog.  The author (Phil) is smart, creative, funny and undoubtedly good looking.  In other words – the complete opposite to anything you’ll find around here. 🙂  He’s been at it for just over a year so there are lots of good articles to peruse.

If you like your financial posts with a dash of wit and intelligence then I strongly urge you to subscribe via email or RSS feed to receive his stuff.  He likes talking about economics, investing and many other aspects of personal finance that he finds interesting.

Here are some posts you can check out:

• Local towns have own currency so the Weakonomist does one too.  Very original.
• 6 lessons Star Wars teaches us about money.  Excellent post and if I may quote Homer…”Nerd!!!”  🙂
• 10 things I hate about economists.  This is one of my favourite posts from this blog.
• How the federal government prints money.  This may sound like a boring article but it isn’t.

Links of the week

Amateur Asset Allocator thinks that women should buy their own engagement ring. Well good luck finding someone with that attitude!!  🙂 Seriously, I think the issue is the cost – why does anyone have to waste pay so much for a ring?

M is for Money talks about her uncle giving up his house to foreclosure.  I don’t disagree with his decision but her analysis leaves a lot to be desired….let me guess, he had no idea house prices didn’t go up forever?   He’s no innocent victim.

He bought a house he could afford and lived within his means, he isn’t the poster child for irresponsibility you see portrayed every day. Rather he is one of the unintended victims of this current crisis who never realized the danger they were in.

One Mint explains why GM is not trading at zero.  (Not that it would ever actually trade for zero – but you know what I mean).

The rest of the links

Thicken My Wallet says that taxes are going up so hire a tax accountant.  I disagree (see my comment).

The Oblivious Investor has a list of 35 resources for anyone is is not debt-free and wants to learn to invest.

Million Dollar Journey has 8 ways to keep your kids busy this summer.

Financial Blogger tells you how to negotiate a raise during a recession.

Good Financial Cents came up with four things that are making you poor.

The Intelligent Speculator explains target date ETFs.

Money Ning reviews the Ally bank.

ABCs of Investing says that stock prices don’t represent stock value.

Carnivals

Carnival of 20 Somethings – Sesame Street edition!!

Festival of Frugality

Money Hacks Carnival

Carnival of Financial Planning

Economy and Your Finances Carnival

We went to the Toronto zoo yesterday – it was pretty good but since our kids are so young, I don’t think they get much out of it.  It can be pretty expensive, however we used an Aeroplan gift card so it didn’t cost us much.  I was telling Frugal Trader that I thought a zoo visit isn’t really worthwhile until kids are 6 or 7 – does anyone out there have any experience with this?  Of course it doesn’t hurt to bring toddlers to the zoo – only that it’s a lot of money and hassle.  Zoo money tip – bring ALL your own food.  We bought 4 slices of pizza and it cost $18.  It was good though (very greasy & salty).  🙂

Creative posts

One of the things I like the most in blog posts is creative topics – ways to save money when grocery shopping just doesn’t pique my interest.  Here are a few posts that I thought were quite good and had creative topics:

• Pinyo from Moolanomy had a good post called “Never say we can’t afford it“.  I’m not sure about the ‘never’ part but I tend to say this a lot even though it would be more accurate to say something about how it doesn’t fit in the budget or our financial goals.
• Ron from the Wisdom Journal wrote about the “left digit“.  A very interesting post which talks about the effect of prices and how consumers don’t really roundup when comparison shopping.
• Weakonomics wrote about the Ikea effect and why his blog is so much better than this one (which isn’t hard).
• Jeff from Good Financial Cents had an entertaining guest post on the art of manliness blog (yes, there is such a thing) called How to be a financial stud.

And one other thing – MSN Smart Spending was kind of enough to feature one of my posts for the first time and they were very complimentary –   Is that frugal tactic worth it?

Carnivals

Carnival of Cash Flow Consciousness

Money Hacks Carnival

Carnival of Money, Wealth and Health

ABCs of Investing wrote about asset allocation for retirees.