Category: Announcements

Weight was 179.0 today – I seem to be staying under 180 for the last few weeks so that is encouraging.  Going from 192 pounds to 180ish was very easy, but now the pounds are getting much more stubborn!

Links

Kyle over at the Amateur Asset Allocator had another excellent post called How To Get Bailed Out By The Government. He refers to the South Park line “smug-emitting hybrids” which made me laugh. I think saving the environment is the right thing to do but some people seem to think it’s a status symbol. As for my contribution – I’m getting the Hummer painted green next week. 🙂

Squawkfox wrote a turkey of a post explaining why “free” stuff is really just free crap. Couldn’t agree more.

Chief Financial Officer wrote a pretty good post suggesting that there are better alternatives to lottery tickets. I’ve always thought lottery tickets are a “tax on the stupid” even though I do occasionally indulge in them. One thing I try to do however is buy tickets in smaller draws where the odds of winning are much better than in a lottery. Of course the prize is smaller but it’s a better deal since the payout is usually much higher for a small draw compared to a lottery.

Carnivals

Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by The Happy Rock.

Festival of Frugality was hosted by On Financial Success.

Welcome to the 9th edition of the Money Hackers Carnival. The name of this carnival is normally the “Money Hacks” carnival, but I modified it a bit this week to fit the my “Hacker” theme.

First up we have my all time favourite hacker from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series – Freddy Krueger.

Nobody knows how to slash costs better than Freddy. Need to cut the head off a debt monster? Just give ol’ Fred a call. Waste money on expensive manicures? Not likely! Sweet dreams…

Best Hackers (Editor’s picks)

• Not The Jet Set gives some excellent directions on building your own rain barrel. It has got detailed instructions, pictures and everything.
• Chief Family Officer has some good alternatives to buying lottery tickets. I’ve always been a fan of buying tickets for smaller draws where your odds are much better than a lottery.
• Paid Twice offers some suggestions for your economic stimulus check.
• Blueprint For Prosperity makes an excellent case for a 30 year mortgage over a 15 year mortgage.
• Squawkfox says that free stuff is for the birds. Usually “free” stuff has a big catch!

Next up is a hacker who also likes to play hockey – Jason! You know him from the “Friday the 13th” movies.

Jason was a very misunderstood individual. All he really wanted to do was inform those sexy, young camp counselors that if they invested their earnings while they are still young, it will grow to an amazing amount due to compounding. Unfortunately, communication wasn’t Jason’s strong suit, so words were exchanged, tempers flared and well…you can imagine what happened next.

Best slashers

• Moolanomy has some great tips for college students to keep their spending under control.
• Can I Get Rich On A Salary is not going to listen to the “rich” when deciding whether to invest in real estate.
• My Dollar Plan had a timely post on online backup services. I’ve looked for something like this in the past but never took the plunge.
• The Personal Financier talks about saving $3000 in one hour.
• Free Money Finance says you should budget by year, not by month.
• Finance Gets Personal explains how being chronically late costs her money.
• Master Your Card writes about the new credit card “bill of rights” proposed by Barrack Obama.
• Debt Free Revolution explains why you don’t get your EPA fuel economy MPG.
• Mrs. Nespy’s world has a list of items that you should only buy new.

Halloween is a really fun time of year for me, especially because I can watch Michael (no relation) do his thing on the tube.

Michael knows a thing or two about return on investment. The original Halloween movie was made for $325,000 back in 1978 and grossed $47 million. Not bad at all!

Best ghosts and goblins

• Sound Money Matters has some advice for reducing prescription drug costs.
• The Money Kings urges you to go out and buy a GPS today!
• Single Guy Money set up a special savings account to save for a couple of special luxuries. Maybe you can comment and try to talk him out of the $359 sunglasses he wants.
• Help My Cash Grow writes that retirement is not for everyone.
• Northern Cheapskate wonders if Upromise is worth it?
• Know The Ledge says to stay the course with your investments.
• Cash Money Life wants to know if it’s better to get a tax refund or owe money?
• Millionaire Money Habits has some ideas about how kids can make money.
• Prime Time Money has the connections for free razor samples.
• Free From Broke talks about their new cell phone plan.
• Save and conquer says that turning off the furnace pilot light can save you $75 per year. Bring on the caviar!

I know what you posted about last week!

The “fisherman” from “I know what you did last summer” just doesn’t give up. The first movie wasn’t all that good and they still made several sequels.

Best fish stories

• The Family CEO says she makes extra money on eBay.
• My Daily Dollars shows how to get wedding invitations for half the cost. Inviting half as many guests is my suggestion.
• Fire Finance covers some basic energy saving tips.
• Financial tips has some frugal grocery shopping tips.
• Financial zip shows the way to financial independence.
• Joshua Lien has plenty of shopping tips to save you money.
• The Shark Investor writes about passive investing vs. growing assets.
• Greener Pastures like to dream about her trust fund.
• KC Lau thinks he can identify the hot stocks of tomorrow.

Thanks a lot to all the contributors of this carnival!

Weight was 179.5 pounds today so no change.

Links

No links this week so I’ll just include the links to carnivals we entered.

Carnivals

A quick word about these carnival links – bloggers enter carnivals to increase exposure to their blog and hopefully get more readers. One of the conditions of entering a carnival is that you have to link back to the host blog, which rewards them by giving them more incoming links which raises their “stature” in the eyes of Google.

In other words, by putting these links, here I’m not recommending them, but rather fulfilling an obligation. That said, if you are looking for new posts and new bloggers, carnivals are one of the best sources for those. The main negative of carnivals is that they don’t really exclude anybody based on quality so not all the posts will be very good. The “editor’s picks” are usually pretty good posts, but if you don’t like the same kind of posts as the host then even those posts might not be interesting to you.

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Gather Little By Little.

Festival of Frugality was hosted by Kyle at Rather Be Shopping.

Carnival of Money Stories was hosted by The Baglady.

The Carnival of Family Life was hosted by On The Horizon.

The Festival of Stocks was hosted by Value Investing.

Weight was 181 pounds which is down 1.5 pounds from last week. I did something to my knee this week so not as much exercise, but I worked on the diet.

Posts of the Week

I read every single post by every single personal financial blogger this week and these posts were the most interesting.

Kyle from the Amateur Asset Allocator wrote a hilarious post about all the things he’s wasted money on. I could have sworn that Mr. Cheap wrote this post since it’s a similar style. I highly recommend checking out this blog because it’s pretty darn good!

Growth In Value wrote a very amusing post about Loblaws. This Canadian grocery store chain used to be pretty dominant but it seems to be running itself to the ground.

Tim from Canadian Dream thinks that parents over do it when raising their kids. I couldn’t agree more.

Ron from the Wisdom Journal told a really great story of how he made some career decisions that he later regretted.

Paid Twice says she will do whatever the hell she wants with with her economic stimulus cheque (or check). I think the idea that Americans *have* to spend this money to help the economy is a bunch of garbage.

Triaging my way to financial success wrote an excellent review of the Derek Foster method and books which I agree with.

Funny About Money discloses the conflict of interest that many home inspectors have – I never thought about this one before.

Brip Blap talked about the good things and the bad things with being a consultant. As someone who is rotting my brain at my normal job, it sounds pretty good to me.

Carnivals

I came across this new carnival and laughed my head off because of the way the host puts down pretty much all the entries except his own. Now this is my kind of carnival!!

The Carnival of Personal Finance was held at MoneyNing this week.

The Money Hacks Carnival was held at Mommy Gets Paid.

Time to list our top referrers for the month of March – these blogs provide a lot of traffic for us so we really appreciate the fact that they like us (or pretend to).

Canadian Capitalist
Million Dollar Journey
Moolanomy
The Money Gardener
Paid Twice
Canadian Dream
The Dividend Guy
Being Frugal
Blueprint for Prosperity
Canadian Mortgage Trends
The Wisdom Journal

Some posts I enjoyed recently

• Remodeling This Life wrote a really good post on how hard it is to let your kids be themselves.
• Were you a rocker in the ’80s? Into disco? Did you like money? If so then check out this money and 80’s music compilation from Squawkfox.
• Credit Withdrawal wrote an excellent post about how America is the bail-out capital of the world.
• If you have lots of sawdust lying around your house then you’ll want to read five little-known uses for a pile of sawdust.
• Dough Roller wrote a great post on why Dave Ramsey is not perfect.
• The Wisdom Journal says it’s ok to have all your eggs in one basket. Excellent blog by the way.
• Rocket Finance talks about the economy and why you shouldn’t follow it too closely.
• Moolanomy covers real estate investing since he is thinking about getting into it himself.
• Gather Little By Little came up with some creative uses for credit cards. (and they don’t involve buying anything).
• Chance Favors talks about deceased celebrities and their shocking estate tax bills.

First up – I missed the weekly weigh-in last Saturday because we were in the hospital with the newborn. This morning I weighed 182.5 pounds which is up a bit.

My diet hasn’t been great this week and I blame the fact that my mom is staying with us and feeding me all kinds of yummy crap!!

Guest post and an interview.

I was interviewed this week over at My Two Dollars – check it out!
I also did a guest post at the Canadian Capitalist recently where I talked about the benefits of getting an employer match in your group rrsp.

April Fool’s Day

We did an April Fool’s day post this week which was quite enjoyable. Mr. Cheap created most of the post, but both myself and Mrs. Pillars helped out which is unusual for this blog since we generally write our posts independently. I was surprised that more bloggers didn’t do these kind of posts but I’ve managed to locate a few and listed them here.

• Free Money Finance had a number of posts that were very Onionesque in style – the one where John Bogle admits that index funds don’t really exist got a good laugh out of me.
• Blueprint for Prosperity wrote about a new type of credit card – make sure you click on the credit card link.
• Punny Money talks about how he whores out his wife for fun and profit (yes, that’s exactly what he wrote about).
• Canadian Dream just snapped.
• The Financial Blogger says that the big Canadian Banks are going out of business.
• My Dollar Plan wrote about the best prank her family played on their mother.
• My Two Dollars says he’s going to sell his blog. I offered a few dollars and some hockey pucks but David hasn’t gotten back to me yet. 🙂
• Finance Freelance Life wrote about her unusual retirement plan.
• Money Clipped gives the scoop on the economic stimulus rebate which will be in the form of a debit card that can only be used at a retail store.
• The uber-intellectual Michael James explains his market timing breakthrough. Seems almost obvious in hindsight.
• Lazy Man and Money wrote about the new tank he wants to buy.
• Flexo said he was quitting his job but then admitted he wasn’t.
• Wisebread talks about the new Apple discount tattoo.

Carnivals

Carnival of Personal Finance was held at Stock Trading To Go.

The idea has been discussed a few times in the past, but a bunch of us finally got the ball rolling and set up a few conference calls to discuss it more seriously. Four Pillars and other Canadian Personal Finance blog are going to join forces!

The resulting site will look something like a newspaper, where each of the former individual blogs makes up a column. We’re going to set up collaborative filtering (like Findory if you ever used it), so the site will use each reader’s individual history of clicking on posts to determine the layout. E.g. if you like debt reduction blogs, then the specific writers you like and other debt reductions blogs will be given more prominent placement. Of course there will always be a random “injection” from other blogs that you haven’t read before to expose readers to new blogs and ideas (which is the whole point of this idea).

Each “column” will have its own RSS feed (and direct link), so if you want to bypass the main page and just keep reading your favourites, that’ll be easily possible too.

Part of what swayed some of our fellow bloggers was how well Mike and I have been able to join our blogs together, so the rest of the crew offered to let us “break the story”. Expect to see announcements on most other Canadian PF blogs later today and throughout this week.

One of the sticking points (and the reason for so many drawn out conference calls – sigh) was figuring out what a good name would be. Our current working title (complements of Mrs. Pillars – she’s great with names!) is “Canadian DreamQuest for Four Thickening Capitalists on a Million Dollar Journey in a Garden of Pillars of Guinness Clawing Their Way Through a Financial Jungle With a Foxy Squawker, Larry the Wealthy Canadian and the Middle Class Millionaire Using a Financial Wallet full of Financial DIY Looking for Growth in Value and Wondering Where all the Money Went In Canadian Mortgage Trends in the 416“. We’re hoping that something catchier may present itself before we go live (or soon after so a rebranding isn’t TOO painful). Please feel free to make any other name suggestions here or in the announcements that should soon be appearing on other Canadian PF blogs.

Wish us luck, this is going to be great!!!

Late breaking news

We’ve just recently completed a deal which would mean that Bill Gates will be doing monthly guest posts on the new blog so watch for that!

Ok the weight today was….179.5 pounds. Last week I was at 180.5 pounds so I’m holding steady around the 180 mark. Given the upcoming birth of our daughter, I’m happy to just “hang on” weight wise (that’s my excuse). 🙂

I did another guest post this week over at Paid Twice called Is real estate investing profitable?

Also on the real estate front, Being Frugal had a great post on renting called There is no shame in renting.

Rocket Finance wrote a really good three part story of his family’s finances and some of the steps they took.

Interesting analysis on the hoopla over gas prices over at Frugal Dad.

Carnivals

Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted at Being Frugal.

Festival of Frugality was hosted at Paid Twice.