Category: Announcements

Every once in a while I like to showcase a new or “newish” blog that I really like and I don’t think a lot of my readers know about.  This time I’m talking about Tough Money Love.  I really like this American blog because the auther is very opiniated.  Too many blogs are just plain boring – they write for search engines, they compile lists of ways to save money on groceries….boring, boring, boring!  TML tells it like it is and doesn’t mind if he offends a few people on the way.

• A recent post which is one of my favourites – Vanity is on sale – a very amusing and sarcastic post.
• Another pointless credit sob story – I’ve stopped caring – If you borrow too much money and run into trouble then don’t be expecting any sympathy from TML!
• And finally a timely post after my own heart – TML says to cut down on consumerism at Christmas time.

Weight

182 pounds.  I didn’t exercise as much last week since I was out of town for several days eating, eating and eating….

Rest of the links

Ron from the The Wisdom Journal had a post on the Canadian banking system which is the soundest in the world.  His description of US investment banks was priceless:

…US banks, which operate like a mix between a Wild West cowboy, a suckling piglet, a guy who wants to sell you a Rolex from the trunk of his car, and a two year old throwing a fit while screaming “MINE! MINE! MINE!”

Canadian Capitalist says that recent numbers indicate that managed funds don’t do well in bear markets either.

Million Dollar Journey has 7 financial tips for newlyweds.

Preet is a financial advisor no longer!

Financial Blogger talks about big bailout money.

PFN and stuff

Money Ning says if you have time for a shower, you have time for personal finance.

Clever Dude has some ways to cut down on your food bill.

Blunt Money worries about rationalizing purchases – yes, I have that problem too!

Squawkfox wants to know what are your 3 best purchases?

The Intelligent Speculator says that even Buffet is taking a beating in the markets with BRK.

Investing School explains earnings per share (EPS).

ABCs of Investing wrote about investment diversification and timing the stock market.

The Credit Toolbox says to ask for a line of credit.

Carnivals

The Skilled Investor hosted the Carnival of Financial Planning.

Carnival of Money Hacks was hosted by Taking Charge.

Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Sun’s Financial Diary.

The Americans finally concluded their 28 year election campaign and actually had an election!  Yay, it’s over!!

A great post from one side of the election:  The Wisdom Journal tells exactly how he feels – although he’s not happy Obama got elected, he’s more than willing to live with it.

And from the other side – The Good Human (an excellent environmental blog) presents President Barack Obama.

Weight

Weight is 180.5 pounds – not great but not bad.  I rode by bike to work four times last week and went jogging twice – I had to take advantage of the great weather!

Rest of the links

One Caveman wrote a very good post on networth called I was wrong – Networth doesn’t matter.  I definitely agree with this one, although I would say that long term networth has some meaning.  Short term fluctuations mean nothing however.

The Financial Blogger says don’t sell your stocks!  I couldn’t agree more.

Million Dollar Journey wrote about reverse mortgages.  I don’t really see what the problem with these are, but I guess you have to watch the fees (like everything else in life).

Cash Money Life talks about the worst airline fees.  I’d say their main ticket price is the worst fee – everything after that is a minor inconvenience.

Where Does All My Money Go had an interesting post on gasoline prices in Canada vs US.  We definitely pay a lot more than our American friends for gas which doesn’t explain all the extra complaining they do about it!! 🙂

Squawkfox asked what 3 things you bought and never used?  Do fruits and vegetables count?

Canadian Capitalist reports that John Bogle says equities will return 10% over the next 10 years.  Sounds good to me!

SVB of The Digerati Life which is an interesting blog in itself started a new consumer-oriented site called The Smarter Wallet.  This site promises money tips, consumer news and product reviews to improve your finances!

PFN and stuff

Money Ning, who just went full-time pro-blogger, explains what his parents taught him about personal finance.

Clever Dude asks will America will lose its superpower status?

Blunt Money warns against credit repair agencies.

The Intelligent Speculator has some ways to speculate on oil.

Investing School explains what makes stock prices go up or down.  He doesn’t mention anything about predicting stock price movements however…

ABCs of Investing wrote about balanced mutual funds and investment diversification.

Carnivals

Free From Broke did a great job hosting the Halloween edition of the Money Hack’s carnival.

The Sun’s Financial Diary hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance #177.

Living At Large hosted the Carnival of Money Hacks – great job!

Yes, it’s true – the ownership of www.moneysmartsblog.com will be transferring from a joint partnership of Mike & Mr. Cheap to just Mike effective the moment you read this!  Rest assured however that you won’t be subjected to just my writings since Mr. Cheap has graciously offered to keep writing for a small stipend payable in beer.

One of the things that came out of the whole purchase process (we did a shotgun deal) was that I realized I need to spend less time blogging.  When I first thought about the possibility of not being a part of this blog, I felt really good about the idea of not having to do any more work or feel any stress about the blog.  That told me that maybe spending too much time on the blog is not a good idea!

You might wonder why I started another blog if I found this one too much work already…to answer that…ummm…I have no idea.  I guess I really enjoy it.  The important thing is that I figured that one thing I need to do is regulate how much time I blog and post accordingly.  Although you might not notice it right away, I’m only planning to post once a week – with maybe an extra post every once in a while.  I’d rather set a schedule that I’m comfortable with and keep things going for the long run (which I’d love to do) than post too much and end up selling the blog.  Mr. Cheap is planning on continuing his current 2-3 posts per week so overall there should still be a reasonable amount of content available for you here.

Some changes – there will be some changes with the blog, although because of a lack of time – the pace of change might be so slow as to be almost imperceptible.  I really want to make more money with the blog – to do this will mean more advertising which shouldn’t be a big deal since most blogs out there look like Nascars.  Other changes will be doing some more promotions and possibly some SEO type articles.  The SEO articles you will recognize because they will be centred on some recent events or directly towards Americans ie “How to handle losses in your 401(k)”.  The reality of blog economics is that Americans are the dominant surfers as well as advertisers and if you can reach American search engine users then you will do well with advertising.  This type of post will be fairly uncommon as they take quite a bit of time to put together so don’t worry too much about the Americanization of Four Pillars.  Generally speaking – things will stay more or less the same.

Squawkfox has some great ideas for Halloween costumes for both kids and adults.  Some great photos as usual.

Money Ning has some advice for hanging on in the bear market.

My Two Dollars has decided to hold back on his opinions (and he has a lot so this will be hard) because of too many bad commenters.

My Super Charged Life had a great story about a wonderful family moment he experienced recently.

Blunt Money says that investing feels like betting.  I think investing is like betting – except with much better odds.

Finance Freelance Life’s husband thinks that their insurance company isn’t very good at evaluating risk.

Green Panda Treehouse isn’t sure if she should pay off debt or save the money.

The Financial Blogger has some advice on beating inflation.

Dividend Guy Blog reports on some investing rules according to Warren Buffet.

The Wisdom Journal used to work as a debt collector and he came up with 10 debt collection don’ts.

Christian PF had an interesting quote from Stephen King.  He used to be one of my favourite authors.

The Intelligent Speculator says that Apple is a buy!

Investing School has some advice on dividends in a bear market.

What is a stock market index?

Of all the business ideas that I’ve had bouncing around in my head, I think this is the #2 best idea (I’ll either finish this series with my best idea or keep it for myself. I don’t think this is the most popular “theme” we post on, so I’ll probably end it after the 20 ideas I originally mentioned).

Barcodes have become increasingly pervasive since their introduction in 1974 (the first item with a barcode purchased was a pack of chewing gum). They’ve been a boon for retailers, as it lets them easily tie in their inventory to their point-of-sale. Every time an item is sold, they can electronically remove it from inventory, instead of having the cashiers manually track it or doing inventory regularly (both would be very labour intensive).

My idea is to subvert a bit of the power of barcodes back to the consumer side of the equation. Imagine a website where it starts with a very simple interface, something like Google. You can type in a barcode off of any product that you purchase. After typing it in, there is extensive information about the produce, such as its manufacturer (and contact info for them), a forum for discussing it, similar products, nutritional info, or anything else people want to track. Inexpensive barcode scanners could be ordered from the site for people who are regularly using it.

Special interest groups could provide an “overlay” of the data, where people who join their group get information about the products. Vegetarians might flag products based on whether they’re Lacto-vegetarianism, ovo-vegetarianism, lacto-ovo-vegetarianism, Semi-vegetarianism or pescetarianism. This would help vegetarians who recently adopted a new philosophy about eating to determine which of their staples are safe to continue to consume (and perhaps find alternatives to favourites). A kosher overlay could help people who have recently adopted an orthodox Jewish diet to evaluate their diet (or maybe help young Jews leaving home stay kosher once they’re buying for themselves), if they were too lazy to look for the kosher symbol on foods they buy. It could even be used for groups who want to boycott companies that support particular causes the consumers are opposed to or who do business with sweatshops.

More sophisticated applications could be built on top of the barcode platform as it gets more data, such as a diet site that will import all the information about what you’ve eaten and track all your daily consumption (of calories, fat, vitamins and whatnot) for anything you input with a barcode and an amount.

Whenever a user looks for information that isn’t in the database, it would then encourage them to find out the information and enter it (and allow other people to fix incorrect information that had been entered).

In terms of a business model, money could either be made by advertising to users (whom the system would know very well once they’ve entered barcodes of what they regularly purchase), selling their user data (with their permission of course), or selling to a larger company (such as Google) once your user base was large enough.

Something that is a very, very early idea of this can be seen here (I was going to incorporate the data he freely provides when I was thinking about building this). I actually had a friend who got pretty excited about this idea and wanted to invest in it, but I could never get my act together to do more than make a few simple mock ups and fairly trivial versions of the site (similar in functionality to the site linked to). Money isn’t need to build something like this, just a developer who is willing to keep banging out code.

Newish Canadian Blog Alert!

Here is yet another new Canadian blog which I really enjoy – Money Grubbing Lawyer has been around for a few months and has put out quite a few entertaining articles.  He’s a pretty smart guy and while he writes about money and personal finance, he doesn’t hesitate to go into other topics as well.

Some posts I really liked from MGL:

• Financial advice – Haiku style! Just read it.
• Red Wine and Herb Carrots – I haven’t tried this yet, but it sounds great.
• Don’t play with your meat! – Ok, this is actually a great post on how to cook steaks (which I would love to learn how to do).
• Would you lie to save money? – Is it ok to lie to get a better deal?

The rest of the links

Where Does All My Money Go is trying out for a host spot on the W network.  This short (3 mins) video is very entertaining so I urge you to check it out.  If you want to vote then watch the video (or start watching at least) and then click on the stars under the video screen (prefereably the one furthest to the right).  Preet is a very funny guy and I really think that with a lot of makeup and a nice dress – he could do a pretty good Tina Fey impression.  🙂

Fascinating post on tipping – the history etc.  I can understand why waiters etc are pro-tips – what I can’t understand is the deep-seated belief in a lot of people that they have to tip no matter what.  And that there is no other way for service workers to earn a decent wage (supposedly).

Speaking of tips – My Dollar Plan made a shocking discovery that her XXXXX service provider – she didn’t say who it was (although I’m pretty sure it was the nanny) – doesn’t declare her income. Although I’m a bit shocked that MDP was shocked about this – she makes a great point that people should pay the taxes they owe.  This is the real reason that waiters and other service workers love the tipping system – it has nothing to do with exceptional service but rather, exceptional opportunities for tax cheating.

Now on to a completely unrelated topic – That One Caveman suggests that a great way to get professional services is to use the barter system.  This of course assumes that you have some sort of professional service to offer and I’m positive that taxes will be paid on all such transactions.

I thought this was one of the best posts I’ve read in a while – it is a combination of Tyler Durden’s (Fight Club) rules of life and having a remarkable life.  A great read especially if you liked the Fight Club.

Clever Dude is facing the bear in the face and doubling his 401(k) contributions.  Whether it is your RRSP or 401(k) plan or whatever – now is the time to be brave.

Paid Twice talks about the challenge of getting out of debt and budgeting with irregular income.

Canadian Capitalist wants to know who is to blame for the credit crisis?  There are a lot of parties involved in this mess and CC covers them all.

Million Dollar Journey had an interesting post on Doctors salaries.  They aren’t as high as MDJ thought – I was surprised at how much GPs make.

Carnivals

Carnival of Personal Finance #174 was held at Greener Pastures.

Carnival of Money Hacks #35 was hosted by My Two Dollars.

Carnival of Personal Finance #175 was hosted by Budgets are Sexy.

There’s a joke, which can be disturbingly true in tech circles, that the best way to start an innovative company is to do things that were cutting edge in Japan 5 years ago.  I’ve always had great admiration for the Japanese ability to take things from other cultures, improve it until its barely recognizable, then sell it back to the point of origin.  Obvious examples include Japan’s automotive industry and Manga / Anime.  Heck, even the much vaunted “Kaizen” is an evolution of work from two Americans.

Widespread in Japan is something they call “Hostess Bars“.  The general idea is that you (you being a Japanese salary-man) come in either alone or with friends.  You’re greeted warmly, taken to a private area of the establishment, then an attractive woman joins you.  She finds everything you say witty and fascinating and encourages you to drink the night away (drinking with you and receiving a commission on the bar bill).

This is the “Big Mac” version of Geisha.

My idea for how to introduce this to the West is have a bar in a big city and maybe just do it one night a week at an existing bar to test out the idea.  Hire a bunch of attractive men and women, and get them to dress and act as a caricature of themselves (so if a woman liked hockey, she’d come dressed in a Leafs jersey, if a man was training to be a firefighter, he’d come decked out in rubber pants and suspenders).  The hosts and hostesses could choose if they’d just sit with singles or groups, and men or women (whatever they’re comfortable with).

The expectation is that the host / hostesses focus on the patrons enjoying themselves, be nice to them and talk to them as long as they want to stay.  Patrons are expected to buy the hosts / hostesses drinks (which would be over-priced, low/no alcohol drinks). When they first come in, the greeter would point out the options of who they can have join them, the patron would pick, then that person would be brought over to their table.

When I’ve pitched this idea to gay men, they think its great until I get to the point of no sex, then they lose all interest (thus proving, once again, that all men are pigs).  That’s been the biggest criticism people (men and women) have made when I’ve talked about this idea, that Westerners wouldn’t be satisfied paying for conversation.

I think this is actually incorrect.  I think many Westerners are desperately lonely and looking to connect with other people, not necessarily in a physical manner.  That would be my biggest ethical objection to starting a business like this:  You’re selling people a fantasy (friendship in this case).  That being said, many businesses sell fantasies, so you’d at least have lots of company…