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Top Posts From 2008

Just thought I would list the top posts for 4P from 2008.

Most views

Why you can’t trust real estate agents when buying a house.  I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t use a real estate agent but keep in mind who’s side they are on (hint: it’s not yours!).

How to increase the odds of getting anything you want.  A very interesting and inspirational post from Mr. Cheap.

Why the sub-prime crisis hasn’t hit Canada yet.  Still hasn’t arrived although we’ve certainly felt the effects.

Your money and your brain book review.  A look at a great book.

Traveling Cheap – some methods for cheap travel from Mr. Cheap.

Most comments

110 comments – Why you can’t trust real estate agents when buying a house.

68 comments – Energy sales scams.

66 comments – Why the sub-prime crisis hasn’t hit Canada yet.

52 comments – Safe withdrawal rule for retirement funds.

48 comments – Christian owner.

43 comments – Reasons why your HELOC can be your emergency fund.

42 comments – Why are some parents morons?

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Couple O’Links

Green Panda Treehouse financial blog put together a pretty good list of “best of” posts from 2008. I submitted Mr. Cheap’s post “How to increase the odds of getting anything you want” and it was selected as an editor’s pick. This post was one of the most popular posts on this blog ever.

Saving to Invest put together a “Down Under” version of the Carnival of Personal Finance.  This blog is pretty good and worth checking out.

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LinkStuff for Dec 22 week

Weight

180.0 – holding steady.  Ran 3 times last week which I was pretty pleased with.

Rest of the links

Mr. Cheap’s excellent post called “Christian Owner” got an editor’s pick over at the latest carnival of personal finance which was held at Saving to Invest.  The carnival has an Australian theme which I rather liked having spent a bit of time in Oz.

Million Dollar Journey has 150 ways to save money over the holidays.  (The best suggestion was mine)  🙂

Preet gives an example of how chasing returns damages wealth.

Financial Blogger actually found something positive about Manulife Income Plus.

Cash Money Life wrote about the SEP IRA – Simplified employee pension plan.  This is sort of the American equivalent to the Canadian RPP.

Money Ning wants you to read this before buying yourself a Christmas gift.

Squawkfox explains how to write a killer resume.

Blunt Money has a quiz to find out how frugal you are.

Canadian Capitalist reports on the smartest guys in the room.

The Intelligent Speculator gives a hedge fund report.

Clever Dude says you should get renter’s insurance.

Investing School has 9 terrific investing websites that are sure to suck up your time.

ABCs of Investing wrote about MERs and Index funds vs ETFs.

Carnivals

The Frugal Duchess hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Carnival of Financial Planning was held at the Skilled Investor.

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LinkStuff for Dec 15 + BCE + Auto Bailout

Last week was an interesting one – the BCE deal was finally declared dead after a rather bizarre solvency ruling by KPMG.  From what I understand the solvency test was very strict which seems a bit odd considering that BCE is a pretty solid company.

The auto bailout which I talked about this week – – got rejected by Congress – apparently one of the stumbling points was the reluctance of the union to take a pay cut until 2011.  Hellooo!!  Your company is about to run out of money….idiots!

Luckily for the unions and companies – Bush decided to throw in a few billion to save the bailout.  This hasn’t been finalized yet, but I suspect it’s just a matter of time.  Canada of course has to toss some pesos into the bonfire as well so we are going to donate about $3.5 billion of tax money which of course is only a “loan” or maybe it will be “equity”?  Either way that money is gone – and probably so to are all the Canadian jobs once the car companies emerge from their eventual bankruptcy.

Weight

180.0 – went running twice last week and did ok on the diet.

Rest of the links

Green Panda did a 4-part series on how to have a classy dinner party – this is part 3 – the main meal.

Million Dollar Journey celebrates a second anniversary – congratulations on such a great blog!  He’s giving away some great prizes like cameras, cars….ok not the cars.  Go check it out and comment.

Squawkfox has an amusing post on a rather funny pr email she got pitching a shredder to “get rid of your credit card bills“.  Very amusing and quite sexist as well.

Financial Blogger had an amusing post asking why Brit government bonds are less trustworthy than those of McDonald’s? It’s not because of the food!

Carnivals

Free From Broke hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Carnival of Financial Planning was hosted at the Skilled Investor.

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LinkStuff – Saturday Night Edition

Weight

179.0 pounds.  I did well this week – went running 3 times and observed a fairly strict diet (ie no late night snacks).

Rest of the links

Brip Blap wrote a great post about working from home with kids.  Normally I would give a sarcastic “good luck” and roll my eyes for several minutes, but he sounds like he might be able to make it happen.

Money Grubbing Lawyer got into the Xmas spirit early this year (at least he waited until Dec.) with a great how to write a letter to Santa.  Very enjoyable.

Money Ning says that investing in stocks this year (or any year) was not a mistake.

Million Dollar Journey had a neat post on frugal billionaires.  I don’t think I would be all that frugal if I were a billionaire.  Some of the Richie Rich’s mentioned seem to be still working pretty hard so they don’t have time for shopping and vacations.

CrackerJack Greenback (great name) wrote about the merits and risks of having a 100% equity portfolio.

Clever Dude had an interesting post on the big three Detroit car companies called did Detroit oversell?

Blunt Money had a post on re-gifting rules.  I like the one about not re-gifting any gifts that you haven’t inspected.  A camera box might not contain a camera, but rather some Christmas cake for example.

My Two Dollar has 5 tips for optimizing credit card rewards.

Financial Blogger tells a story about how he worked his way out of a financial problem.

Squawkfox has come up with a very useful and frugal idea – 6 printable holiday gift tags, Christmas cards, thank you notes and greeting cards.

Canadian Capitalist did a TFSA FAQ.  If you are Canadian, over 18 and have some cash then check it out!

The Intelligent Speculator wrote about the French sovereign wealth fund.

Investing School has 25 ways to spend time during the financial crisis.  #3 Turn on tv parental control – Switch it on and block the financial channels.

ABCs of Investing explains what exchange traded funds are.  What is market cap?

Carnivals

Carnival of personal finance was hosted by Might Bargain Hunter.

Carnival of Financial Planning.

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LinkStuff Dec 1

We had a big media mention last week in the National Post – unfortunately they are a pay site so no direct link, however the article also appeared in the Calgary Herald.

In yet another media mention, a fine post by Mr. Cheap called Does passive income really exist? was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal’s Wallet blog.  In case you are thinking this might be some little nothing blog under the WSJ umbrella – none other than Jason Zweig (your money or your brain) published a post a bit after our mention.  He wrote about “Has pessimism gone too far?” – I respectfully disagree – there is never enough pessimism!! 🙂

Rob Carrick, my favourite finance journalist did a live chat last week and yours truly managed to sneak in a question.  The topic was market volatility – check it out.

The Globe and Mail had an excellent article on the potential future of the big 3 American auto makers – and it’s not pretty!

Squawkfox created a great list (with pics) of 10 frugal homemade gift ideas for Christmas.

Canadian Capitalist thinks that Buffett is not losing his touch.  I’m not so sure.

Million Dollar Journey had a good post on cash flow damming.  This is a tax technique where you pay expenses for your small business from your line of credit and use your revenue to pay down non-deductible debt (ie mortgage).  The net result is that you end up legally transferring non-deductible debt to deductible debt.  Mr. Cheap suggested this to me a few weeks ago and I am going to consider doing this.

Financial Blogger says that money is falling from the sky is his post about the US government bailout plan of 2008.

Clever Dude says he is officially stuck in his house because it is worth less than he paid for it.  I would argue he is only psychologically stuck.

Blunt Money has some great advice about how to cut down on over-the-top gift exchanges.  Couldn’t agree more!

Money Ning asks if saving money is always worth it.

The Intelligent Speculator says that corporate bonds are not so safe.

Investing School explains 401(k) retirement plans.

Credit Toolbox has some advice for dealing with credit agencies.

ABCs of Investing wrote about index funds and explains what interest payments are.

Carnivals

Living Almost Large hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Carnival of Financial Planning.

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4P Media Mention in the National Post or Eric Lam is God!

I’m happy to announce that Four Pillars and my other learn to invest blog ABCs of Investing made it into Eric Lam’s Saturday column in the National Post which is quite flattering. Unfortunately, any visitors from the National Post would have been greeted by my cheesy learn to trade video post – oh well, that’s what you get for trying to make a quick buck! 🙂

I don’t have a link to the article and in fact I haven’t read it myself since I couldn’t find it on their website – but I’m sure it was a good mention!

Thanks to the Canadian Capitalist for letting me know about it.

[update]

Ok, thanks to Canadian Capitalist I now have the article – it is very nice and complimentary, which needless to say is what I like!

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Four Pillars Sale: Another Perspective

After Mike’s post announcing the sale of 4P, there was some confusion in the comments. After we got an e-mail recently asking Mike how life is “san Mr. Cheap” (which I thought was ice cold, I’m not DEAD! 😉 I figured it might be worth taking another stab at explaining what happened. Keep in mind, this is my perspective on things. Mike’s may differ, although I hope he’ll put any clarifications in the comments (in his version I’m probably less muscular and don’t save him and his family from a mugger using nothing but Kung-Fu and the power of my brain).

When we originally joined forces, Mike was far more enthusiastic about monetizing the blog than I was, so I was happy to let him handle that element of the site. After a year (and reading all the comments about what a good deal I was getting) Mike got to the point where he wasn’t enjoying posting & promoting enough to justify splitting the revenue with a partner (while doing all the promotion). The blog was under-monetized, but understandably it wasn’t appealing to do 100% of the work for 50% of the benefit.

We discussed a few options how to equalized things, but in the end figured that having one of us buy the other out made the most sense. After tossing around a few ideas, we eventually settled on a “Shotgun offer“, where Mike would determine a price, and I would decide whether I wanted to buy it for that, or sell it for that. This is kind of like when Mom makes one sibling cut a piece of cake in half, and the other pick which half they want: its a built in way of making sure a fair price is determined (since the person setting the price doesn’t know if they’re buying for that or selling for that). We had discussed this in the past and decided this would be what we’d do if one of us wanted to leave in the future.

Mike named a price (he’d prefer to keep that part private), and I decided I’d rather have the cash and lose half the blog instead of paying the cash and getting the whole thing. The cash went straight into GE stock (Mike told me not to spend it all in one place, which I did unfortunately :-). We had previously discussed what would happen after the deal, and Mike had offered to pay me to keep writing for the blog (at $20 / post, which is less than I make programming or TAing, but is a fair price for something I enjoy doing – so I’m making a cool $20 bill writing this up!). We’ve agreed that if he gets sick of me, he can fire me, and if I want to leave at some point, that’s ok too. Plus, I now have to call Mike “boss”, as in “Sure thing, boss!”  He calls me “kid” now too.

As Mike mentioned, there will be some layout changes as he tweaks the monetization (which shouldn’t affect RSS readers), and his posting has dropped off a bit (he’s not going to try to maintain the 2.5 post / week rate unless he’s in the mood to write).