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Saturday Weigh-In and LinkStuff

Weight was 182.5 pounds this morning which is down 2 pounds from last week. Did I starve myself all week you ask? Nope, I just got my annual Christmas cold – Ho ho ho!!!

One of the posts I enjoyed the most this week (I like originality and FB is a very creative blogger) was the Financial Blogger’s post on the “I deserve it factor“. He describes how he felt he deserved to splurge on a few luxuries after finishing his MBA exams. I thought he was going to conclude with an inspirational message about how he resisted temptation and immediately put the money into low-cost index funds but no, he splurged because he deserved it!!

We also entered the Carnival of Family Life for the first time (but not the last) with the submission of the Buy Buy Baby book review.

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Saturday Weigh-In and Links

This morning I weighed 183 pounds for a loss of one pound. However I bought a new scale this and on the new scale I weighed 184.5 pounds. I’m going to be using the new scale only from now on which throws things off a bit but who cares? The important thing is that I’m watching my diet and the weight is going in the right direction.

Brip Blap had a great post this week about extraordinary jobs which certainly hit home for me. I’m one of those “boring” people who don’t think there is anything wrong with just working for a living. Even dream jobs get boring after a while – about five years in my case.  There’s a reason they call it work and Brip Blap’s point #3 “Take pride in your paycheck” made me feel better.

He also talks about how it’s ok to work a regular job while following your dreams at the same time – they don’t have to be mutually exclusive and the job doesn’t have to be an excuse not to follow your dream.

This Wall Street Journal article takes a look at the surprising number of borrowers in the US with good credit ratings who took out sub-prime mortgage because of their commissioned mortgage brokers.  Who would have thought that a commissioned salesperson would have led a borrower astray?

The Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Money Smart Life.

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And The Winner Is…

For a copy of Derek Foster’s “The Lazy Investor”….Shevy! Congrats Shevy, I’ll be sending you an email to get your mailing address.

Now on to the usual Saturday LinkStuff & Weigh-In!

Weight – 184, down a pound from last week. I have to say that posting my weight each week is a real motivator for me during the week. I’m planning to buy an electronic scale this week so hopefully that won’t “reset” my weight.

Some Links:

Preet from “Where Does All My Money Go?” had a great series on leveraged investing this week. I did my own series on this topic a while back but he has a lot of detail and actually backs up his plans with facts!

This week we entered Mr. Cheap’s post about real estate agents in the Carnival of Personal Finance which was hosted by Cash Money Life. His post on Unified Theory of Everything Financial was entered in the Carnival of Financial Planning.

Some carnival posts I rather enjoyed:

  • An interesting look at Monopoly and real estate strategies on Two Wise Acres – a great real estate blog.
  • The BagLady had a very good post on the so called “American Dream” which also relates quite closely to real estate.
  • Million Dollar Journey had a post on tipping which inspired a tipping post of my own.
  • A Penny Closer talks about why he bought his first home – I liked this one because it so closely mirrored my own first house story. I also enjoyed his story about overpriced lobster. I can’t believe the waiter didn’t say anything.
  • Smart Money Daily has three banking stories – skip to the last one.
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The Lazy Investor Giveaway

We’ve decided to hold our first ever book give away here on Quest For Four Pillars and will be giving away Derek Foster’s latest book “The Lazy Investor” which we had originally won from Canadian Dream.

This will be a well travelled book by the time this contest is done so feel free to put your name in by leaving a comment – any comment will do. Make sure you enter a valid email so we can contact you if you end up winning. A note for the American readers, this book is strongly geared towards Canadian investors so I would suggest you wait until our next giveaway in January.

Free Shipping at chapters.indigo.caCheck out this review of “The Lazy Investor” which Mr. Cheap wrote a while back. As well here is a pretty good review of the Derek Foster’s first book “Stop Working”.

We don’t want to drag this out so the contest will close this Friday night at 8 pm. Results will be announced on Saturday.

This book will make a great Christmas gift so don’t be shy!

Free Shipping at chapters.indigo.ca

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Saturday Weigh-In and LinkStuff

Weight – 185 pounds so no change from last week. I can’t say I’m too disappointed since the weight loss has been quicker than I expected up to last week so having a flat week is ok. I kept going with the diet and even went jogging once which helped make up for the fact that I’ve basically put the bike away for the season.

This is a pretty interesting article on Canadian bank stock valuations – if you look at the second half they talk about the “tactics” of hedge funds spreading rumours about the banks and then shorting them.

This week we had posts in the Carnival of Personal Finance which was hosted by Stock Trading to Go and the Carnival of Financial Planning hosted by The Skilled Investor’s Personal Finance Blog.

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Applying for a PhD

As regular readers know, I’m currently moving towards becoming Dr. Cheap. The first step in any graduate program is being accepted. This is somewhat different then applying for an undergrad, but luckily I’ve gone though a Masters program so I pretty well know what to expect.

If you want to read more about grad school from someone who has been through it all – check out the new site Ivory Tower Unlocked.

In very general terms, one of the biggest differences between graduate work in Canada and graduate work elsewhere in the world is that for research / academic programs (e.g. not law, medical or business school) there is usually funding provided to cover tuition and living expenses while in the program. The living expenses is enough that some grad students can even afford to have a car (its about $22K / year for Masters students and $24K / year for PhD candidates). Many people, even here in Canada, don’t realize that you can make money while studying, instead of going into debt.

In fact, amazingly, this is even true for international students. The “official” explanation why we’d want to use government funds to pay people from other countries to learn (then take that knowledge and benefit their own economy instead of ours) is that it creates a superior academic environment, which then benefits the schools’ other profs, students and country. Beats me if this actually works out, I’m just glad that many foreign students decide to settle down in Canada after finishing their grad work (we should offer automatic citizenship after graduation from an advanced degree to encourage those who might stay). My best friends, while working on my Masters, were all Chinese, so I certainly benefited from this.

The application process itself is quite similar to a Masters application and varies little between schools. You fill out various demographic info (like your address, SIN, etc). Recently this has gone on-line, which is cool compared to the old fashioned paper forms I filled out years ago. You need to get recommendations from 3 academic sources (which is a pain in the butt). These are professors that you had a good relationship with who’ll fill out a form saying “he’s a good guy”. Profs act like they’re doing you the biggest favour in the world filling out these damn things (for my Masters I had a reference belly ache that I’d only given him a MONTH to fill it out).

You need to order transcripts from your previous degrees, which is only annoying in that it takes a little while and costs a bit of money (~$8 / transcript). Speaking of costs, most schools will charge you $80-$90 to apply (money grubbing bastards!).

International students have to submit a GRE (to prove they’re smart) and a TOEFL (to prove they can speak English). Its definitely nice, as a Canadian, that I don’t have to prepare for and take an aptitude test.

The applications also require your CV (which is subtly different from a resume – more academic), supplemental info (which is often restating information from your transcripts so that lazy profs who are considering supervising you don’t have to do much reading) and a form where you discuss your research interests (which usually involves looking at faculty at an institution and deciding, by surprise coincidence, you’re interested in EXACTLY their area of research, what a shock!).

After you get your application in (definitely by the deadline, the earlier the better), they make it available for professors who have funding for graduate students. Profs apply for funding, and as part of the application they talk about how many grad students they’re going to take on (which the people awarding the grants view as a good thing). They then use this money to take on graduate students (so profs who get lots of grants, have lots of money and can take on lots of students). If you get a scholarship, which Mr. Cheap was too late to apply for, you become inexpensive for a prof (plus they’re reassured that you’re a smart cookie: if you get NSERC or OGS you can pick the school and prof you want to work with).

Once you’ve been accepted, you start your program (which often involves course work at the start). You get a check every month and have to be a TA usually to earn part of it (which is light work throughout the term, maybe 10 hours a week). Usually within 5-7 years you finish your thesis, which is a major project that represents new knowledge in the area you’re working in (the trick is to pick a very specialized area so that not many people have done work in it and its easy to come up with something new).

Less then 50% of people who start a PhD finishes (and virtually no one who starts a part time PhD finishes). Often you’ll do research in an area, find there isn’t anything interesting to do a thesis on, and after 2 years you have to start over from scratch (which has happened to friends of mine, it is obviously incredibly demoralizing, and this is often the point people drop out at).

In terms of interpersonal dynamics at a university, I like to think of it as a family. Undergrads are babies (they’re cute and can be safely and easily ignored), professors are parents, Masters students are children, and PhD candidates are surly teenagers. You develop a love/hate relationship with your supervisor that is very similar to a parent/child relationship (at least it was for me). They help you, but at that same time are often quite patronizing.

Anyone who has finished grad work (Wooly Woman for one), what do you think of this write up? Does it match your experience?

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Saturday LinkStuff

Weight update: 185 pounds, down one pound from last week and seven pounds overall. Didn’t ride as much this week but my diet was pretty good.

Financial Blogger had a very interesting two part series describing a potential relationship with a bank. Check it out.

Million Dollar Journey had a great series on the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) which I thought was fantastic. There are three posts – Part I, Part II and Part III.

Carnival of Personal Finance was hosted by Moolanomy this week.

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Saturday LinkStuff

First of all…the weight this morning was 186 pounds which is down two pounds from last week and six pounds from the beginning of the “diet” . Didn’t have a great week with diet but the exercise is going well since I still managed to ride to work four times this week.  Yesterday the high was four degrees Celsius (39 degrees F) but I still rode anyways.

Bought another 75 shares of BMO at $57.70. Now we have 400 shares with an acb of $66.50 in our leveraged portfolio.

I wanted to point out a couple new Canadian blogs which I’ve started reading recently:

Drinkin’ Guinness in the 416 is written by Guinness416 who is a frequent commentator on the Canadian blog scene. She posts about finance and a whole host of other topics. It’s worth a look. Great title.

Fecundity – The author is an early thirties Canuck with a family, mortgage, student loans, baby on the way etc etc – I read through the archives and it looks pretty cool.

MillionDollarJourney hosted the big huge Carnival of Personal Finance event this week and was kind enough to include an article from our First Time Home Buyer series written by Christine entitled “What to buy?”.

A rather interesting post on an Ebay strategy with great comments was posted by Kyle at Rather Be Shopping which is another blog I enjoy reading.