Category: Announcements

Weight

Weight was 179.5 pounds today which is down 0.5 pounds from last week. A quick recap – I started the weight loss goal at 192 pounds – hit my goal of 182 pounds about a month ago and I’m now going for 175 pounds.

Canadian Financial DIY is one of the best investment blogs around – extremely well written and researched. This week he came up with a gem of a post where he compares the current stock market decline (crash?) to multi-vehicle accidents, one of which he was involved with in the past.

ThickenMyWallet, a lawyer turned entrepreneur who blogs on the side, is writing a very interesting series regarding legal issues surrounding blogging such as liability for advice given. Part I deals with intellectual property rights (ie no copying), defamation of character (names CAN hurt you). Part II deals with the potential ramifications of giving advice to readers among other issues.

Moolanomy had an interesting point on Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) which had some great comments (and I’m not talking about mine!).

This article on rewards programs which I discovered through the Canadian Capitalist could have been written by me since I had the same problems with my Visa Aerogold which I just got rid of.

Million Dollar Journey had a couple of posts which I really enjoyed where he talks about Shopping for a Newborn and part II is here.

Carnivals

Green Panda hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance and included Do You Really Earn Your Investment Income?.

Plonkee Money hosted the Carnival of Money Stories and included Cheap’s post Low Level Venture Capital.

On Financial Success hosted the Festival of Frugality and included Mr. Cheap’s post You Deserve It.

The Skilled Investor hosted the Carnival of Financial Planning which featured “My New Asset Allocation (Part XIV)”.

Weight

Weight was 180 pounds today so no change from last week. I managed to go jogging twice this week which makes me feel really good because exercise is one area that I haven’t kept up with over the last month or so. This is mainly because of a never-ending cold but I’m back on track now and I hope to run twice a week.

New Baby

A big congrats goes over to Keith at The Money Gardener who just had a little baby boy a couple of days ago!

Book giveaway

Don’t forget to enter the “RRSP Book” book giveaway – contest ends Monday at midnight!

Carnivals

Plonkee hosted the Carnival of Personal Finance this week and listed our submission “The Myth of Weekly Mortgage Payments”

MoneyMyths hosted the Carnival of Money Stories and included my post called 2007 Investment Returns (hey you gotta enter something!).

Group writing project

On Friday I’m going to be participating in a group writing project – “The Money Matters for All Ages” series. This is a pretty neat set of posts which deals with money matters for different ages from tiny tots all the way up to retirees. The posts which have been published this week have lots of great advice about how to teach kids (of different ages) about money.

January 15 – Introduction at My Dollar Plan
January 16 – Preschoolers at I’ve Paid for This Twice Already
January 17 – Personal Finance for Children and Pre-Teens at Being Frugal
January 18 – Teenagers at Gather Little by Little AND Money Advice to My Teenage Son at DebtFREE-Revolution
January 19 – College Age at Finance Freelance Life
January 20 – The Twenties at Remodeling This Life and more Twenties at Cash Money Life
January 21 – The Thirties at Moolanomy and more Thirties at My Two Dollars
January 22 – The Forties at Credit Withdrawal
January 23 – The Fifties at Millionaire Money Habits and more Fifties at Credit Withdrawal
January 24 – The Sixties and beyond at Chance Favors
January 25 – Retirement at Quest For Four Pillars and Plonkee Money
January 26 – Wrap up and highlights at My Dollar Plan

Preet Banerjee from WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo recently wrote a great book for Canadians called “The RRSP Book” which he has provided to us for review. This book includes a lot of rules and strategies which most investors will find useful. If you want to buy this book directly from Preet then you can easily do so by visiting the secure book purchase site he has set up. Note – the only compensation we are getting is a free book for the review.

To help kick things off we are going to have a book giveaway – just leave a comment below and you will be entered. Contest ends Monday, January 21 at midnight.

I’d like to point out that Canadian Capitalist already did a review of this book (he’s a speed reader) and is giving away four copies of this book. Now four books sounds mighty impressive compared to our one, but if you consider that his traffic is at least a thousand times more than ours, your odds of winning are a lot better on this site!

Mike at The Financial Blogger also did a review – check it out!

For the non-Canadian readers – sorry, but this contest is only open to Canadian residents – but trust me, this book is of no use to someone living outside of Canada.

What’s it all about?

Good introduction to Canadian tax tax system and exactly how RRSPs work.

He starts off with various strategies surrounding RRSP some of them are fairly basic but most are quite innovative. The book is very well written with an appropriate amount of humour – he even has a subtle reference to Star Wars in it.

Strategies that I found most interesting

RRSP loans – He suggests various strategies around RRSP, loans for example such as getting two separate RRSP loans – one which you will pay back monthly and a smaller one which will be paid back in six months with the tax refund thereby managing your cash flow a bit better.

Home Buyer’s Plan – Very good discussion of the various rules and I learned that I could have used the HBP to borrow from my RRSP for my second house. He talks about not paying back the HBP in a down year and claiming the repayment as income – we are doing this since my wife is not working and it is a great strategy. The downside is that I lose a bit on the spousal credit but the saved tax is well worth it.

RRSP over-contribution – Preet suggests an interesting over contribution strategy for someone who is 71 – excellent advice.

Investment swapping – He also covers why you should hold fixed income investments inside your rrsp and also offers a “swapping” strategy to switch investments around if you have FI outside the rrsp which can be switched with equities inside the rrsp. Another use for the swap is to get cash out of the rrsp which can be switched with investments outside the rrsp. I learned a lot in this section.

RRSP planning – A great discussion of the cons of a poorly planned RRSP – they are a great tax saving tool for most Canadians but if the planning isn’t done properly you can end up “shooting yourself in the foot”

Best advice in the book concerns investors who save too much in their RRSP “RETIRE EARLIER!”

RRSP Beneficiary – This section has some excellent advice about naming a beneficiary for your RRSPs. If you haven’t done this or it’s out of date then do this now!!!

Leveraged investing – A good look at leveraged investing including the “Preet” principle.

Summary

An excellent book on the topic of RRSPs.

Once again, if you want to order this book then visit the secure book purchase site he has set up.

Weight

Weight this morning was 180 pounds. I made my goal of 182 pounds last week so the next challenge is to try to get to 175 pounds. Onward and downward!!

Unhappy unsubscriber

I got a pretty good laugh this week when one of my email subscribers decided to unsubscribe from the feed. When this happens (rarely) I get an email notification. Along with the notification I got another email from the unsubscriber himself who returned the post email (which was on weekly mortgage payments) with the following message (I added the “*”s):

What’s wrong with paying mortgage off faster. F*** off you dumb, fat, f***ing pig.

Of all the posts we’ve done I thought that one was least likely to make someone go off the deep end but I guess you never know! 🙂

Some links!

Million Dollar Journey had a very interesting post on his future home gym which generated quite a discussion in the comments.

Moolanomy had a question and answer post with Larry Swedroe who is a financial advisor. My question on currency hedging for Canadians was answered and I thought the answer was definitely worth reading. He also had an interesting post about how mutual fund investors can inadvertently pay for other investor’s taxes.

Cash For Life hosted the Carnival of Frugality this week. I don’t normally read this carnival but I’m glad I did this week. Early Retirement Extreme had a post on why you should get a push mower to save money. I say you should get a push mower because it’s good exercise! Stop the ride had a great post on 13 Ways To Use Dryer Lint. Yes, DRYER LINT!! Check out the link at #6 if you want to learn how to make lint paper mache animals – great for Xmas gifts or to decorate the house! 🙂

This week my post Shooting Down Goals was in the Carnival of Financial Goals hosted by beingfrugal.net which had a really cute theme.

Mr. Cheap’s popular post on how to calculate (or at least estimate) your Entertainment Return On Investment was featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Green Dragon Potato

And last but certainly not least – the photo you see at the top is what I call “Green Dragon Potato” and my wife made them for dinner last night. It’s not sushi but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper!

Merry Boxing Day from Mike and Mr. Cheap!

In case you were wondering what we got up to these holidays, Mr. Cheap left town to visit with his family and then will be doing a bit of jet-setting around visiting friends and I stayed home and welcomed my family for a visit.

This has been the best Christmas ever for me. Last year was pretty good as it was the first one that my wife and I celebrated with our son but this year is even better because his two cousins (2.5 yrs and 14 months) have joined him (17 months) and watching the three of them running around and creating havoc is extremely entertaining. They are only here for a few more days so I’m going to enjoy it as much as I can.

Here are a couple of Xmas related links which I thought were very creative and quite amusing as well…

I knew that Brip Blap has been around but he showed how extremely well-rounded he is with his brilliant “Personal Finance Redneck” test.

The BagLady exposed her Hawaiian roots with some Christmas carols.  Check it out!