Investing and Personal Finance
From the monthly archives:
Last week I received an email from a reader (Michael) which was quite unusual for 2 reasons – 1) we rarely get emails from readers and 2) it was a good question.Â
A friend of my girlfriend hasn’t filed his taxes in 4 years, and we were just wondering what the repercussions will be [...]
{ 20 comments }
I’ve done a number of posts on extremely cheap individuals (Daniel Suelo, Charles Long, Don Schrader) and groups (Freegans) but have always had a soft spot for stories about the Economides (self-professed to be “America’s Cheapest Family”).
While they certainly aren’t shy about self-promotion, I think they’ve actually built a unique lifestyle that works for their [...]
{ 9 comments }
I’ve had a draft of this post sitting in the Four Pillars draft queue for over a month, and after a recent question by JN it seemed time to finish it and post it. While I hope it gives a decent overview of finding, selecting and finalizing a tenancy for a rental property, please keep [...]
{ 24 comments }
My wife and I both have old phones (mine has an elastic which holds the almost dead-battery on [see photo below]) and have been thinking about getting new ones. We didn’t want to get a contract and haven’t had time to look around for a good deal. Luckily, staff writer “Henry” took the time to [...]
{ 17 comments }
“Sway” by the brothers Ori and Rom Brafman is about “the irresistible pull of irrational behavior”. It was passed along to me after a friend enjoyed it and thought I would as well (which I did). It’s a fast, easy read in the style of a Malcolm Gladwell book or Freakonomics. The authors talk about [...]
{ 2 comments }
On Tuesday I posted about Beginning Investment Strategies to Consider, and as promised, in this post I’ll detail investing strategies I think beginner investors should avoid.
There are countless people who want to get your money for a “can’t lose” investment. I’ll try to talk about general “warning signs”, but inherently this is a topic that [...]
{ 23 comments }
I’ve commented before about how dangerous it is to give investment advice to friends and family. I keep running into people who are very bright individuals in other areas of their life, but just throw up their hands in frustration and give up when it comes to managing their money. Never one to learn from [...]
{ 14 comments }
It’s back to school time and most university and college students are probably looking forward to a long winter of tough studies, late night Ramen noodles and figuring out how to cut costs in order to get by on not very much money.
Here are some suggestions from a current student who has done some research [...]
{ 17 comments }
It is a common perception that Canada has one of the highest wireless fees in the world. As a result, wireless penetration rate in Canada is only 62%, which is one of lowest in developed countries. Contrary to this common perception, Canadians enjoy one of the lowest wireless fees in the world through wireless retention [...]
{ 7 comments }
I touched on hitchhiking in a previous post, but felt that it deserved a deeper treatment than I gave it at the time.
For those not familiar with the term, hitchhiking refers to getting rides, for free, from generous motorists who have a free seat and are willing to take you to (or at least closer [...]
{ 9 comments }
Because of dropping interest rates – mortgage brokers have been falling over themselves this year to try to get clients to refinance their home mortgage and get a new mortgage at a lower rate. Brokers of course make money from deals so this is a good deal for them. The idea of having a lower [...]
{ 24 comments }
In real estate there is a euphemism “this property would be ideal for a foreign buyer” which means that it’s overpriced and they need a buyer who is ignorant of local market value to pay that much for it. In smaller communities in Ontario a variant on this is “I’m going to try to [...]
{ 7 comments }
I was talking to a friend recently and used the term “ramen profitable”, which she found incredibly amusing. I realized that I had never used the term on the blog or posted about it, even though it’s a very useful perspective on starting a business.
The term was coined by Paul Graham, and he discusses it [...]
{ 6 comments }
As I discussed previously on a post about our Canon 200sx camera, our only camera up until about a year ago was an aging Canon PowerShot – a great camera in the day but now it was very slow and took very average shots unless the lighting was really good. Three years ago, our first [...]
{ 9 comments }
Over the weekend I watched, and enjoyed, “Sunshine Cleaning“. Â It’s a new movie by the producers of “Little Miss Sunshine” (and also staring Alan Arkin, the heroin snorting grandfather from “Little Miss”). Â It touches on a number of personal finances issues, such as entrepreneurship, career satisfaction and the impact of money within a family.
Like “Little [...]
{ 0 comments }
