I’m honoured to be nominated for the Globe & Mail’s annual Best of blogs competition. Go on over and check it out. Much thanks to Dianne Nice from the Globe & Mail for nominating me.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure how valid the blog competition results will be – most online polls use IP addresses (physical internet address) to track voters, which means that you can’t easily vote more than twice (home and work). This poll tracks voters using cookies which are easy to delete, which allows for multiple votes. And no I didn’t test this by voting for my blog. 🙂
In other news – Moneyville.ca published an article of mine last week called How to break your mortgage without any penalty.
I wrote a guest post over at Canadian Capitalist called RESP Primer – Just the rules you need to know.
On with the links
Million Dollar Journey shares some financial strategies for a stay at home parent.
The Blunt Bean counter had an entertaining wakeup call for parents about the high cost of tuition in Canada.
William Hanley from the Financial Post writes about MP Pensions and how they insult us all. I didn’t know the pay was $157,000 for a back-bencher. Sounds good to me!
James Stewart from Smart Money asks if home ownership is overrated?
Apparently Albertans lead all the provinces with the highest percentage of home owners behind in mortgage payments.
Sustainable Personal Finance has a good tip to get more exercise – Social exercise.
Canadian Capitalist reports that flight rewards are changing at Aeroplan. I understand they are running a business, but it bugs me that these rewards companies will have one set of rules when they are looking for more clients and then later on change the rules to make it harder to collect.
Boomer and Echo calculates his personal rate of inflation.
Michael James wonders if Garth Turner collects advisor commissions.
The Finance Buff came up with an interesting over-balancing strategy. I’ve been thinking of something similar which I might post on.
Retire Happy blog asks What is your retirement price tag?
The Oblivious Investor notes that a single target retirement fund is all you need for your portfolio.
Landlord rescue gives her take on the recent election. I’d write about my thoughts, but I don’t want to be sleeping on the couch for the next four years. 😉
Dianne Nice from the Globe & Mail writes that green house renos can save a lot of bucks.
9 replies on “LinkStuff – Best Of Blogs Edition”
Thanks for the mention Mike! I liked your guest posts this week, especially the one that wasn’t about RESP’s 😉
I actually have an interesting situation to consider regarding post-secondary. As an employee of a University our kids will get free tuition. The catch of course is that they have to attend that University, and I still have to be working there 16-20 years from now 😉
The other thing to consider is that by attending post-secondary locally my kids will still be living at home in their 20’s! Maybe I should start maxing out the RESP’s so we have the option of shipping them out-of-town.
I liked the article on how to break a mortgage without penalty. This could be very useful for a colleague stuck in a 10-year mortgage.
Mike, congratulations on your nomination! 🙂
You are absolutely correct about the Globe and Mail voting. By not using IP Addresses to track voting, it means I can vote as many times as I want to for my favourite blog. Close your browser and clear the cache, and away you go – you can vote again! It definitely means the voting results lack legitimacy! This pretty basic programming stuff, the Globe and Mail should know better. However the nomination still counts for a lot!!
PS – I say we do a YOC (Yield on Cost) calculation on the results, since it will be an inflated vote, and the results will look much better 😉
@Michael – Apparently the IRD cannot be charged after five years in any mortgage. At that point, only three months of interest can be charged.
http://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/canadian_mortgage_trends/interest-rate-differential-ird.html
That can still be expensive, but possibly better than the IRD – plus it’s easier to calculate.
@Echo – Getting tired of RESPs are we? 😉 Free tuition would be nice, but that’s a long way off for your kid.
Hi Mike – thanks for the mention. Agreed – the voting isn’t too solid. Tsk Tsk G&M!
Thanks for the mention Mike! Congratulations on the nomination. And thanks for that very nice guest post. Have a great weekend!
Hey you are very worthy of the honor of being on the tops blogs list 🙂
And thanks for the link
Thanks for the link and nice recognition for you and all the nomines.
Nice list.
Congrats on the G&M best blogs mention Mike. Very well deserved.
Cheers,
Mark