Investing and Personal Finance
From the monthly archives:
Randy had some questions about RESPs:
Hi, I was wondering what is meant exactly by ‘approved post-secondary school’. I might go back to EU in the next 10 years, so I wasn’t sure what’s needed as proof of education to be able to withdraw including the grant money. I talked to a childrens education fund sales [...]
{ 1 comment }
There are all sorts of good reasons to want to start a business. Often it’s also possible to start a business doing something that the owner personally enjoys: people who like creating artistic works might become graphic designers, those who enjoy writing might become ProBloggers, authors or copywriters, while those who like talking [...]
{ 18 comments }
I recently took my 3 year old son down to watch the annual Christmas parade for the first time. I live in Toronto but I imagine that most large cities have their own equivalent. I was a bit apprehensive since I had never taken him to a large event like that before. We had a [...]
{ 10 comments }
“Almost all neglect the properties they manage and take kickbacks from suppliers and subcontractors who overcharge the property manager’s client in order to pay the kickbacks.” – John T. Reed
People selling real estate advice almost always advocate using property management companies. John T. Reed suggests they do this to overcome the objection “I don’t want [...]
{ 11 comments }
Thanksgiving made me think about fun and inexpensive ways to decorate the table and here are some of the results, a potato turkey, an apple turkey and a nutty turkey. These food animals can be used to decorate the table at Christmas, Thanksgiving or any other time of year that you need a bit of [...]
{ 15 comments }
I get a lot of requests to do guest posts for Four Pillars so I thought I would publicize some guidelines for these.  As well, I’m also interested in paid writers as well.
Benefits of writing for Four Pillars
Writing for Four Pillars is a great opportunity to share your experience and knowledge with a large readership [...]
{ 16 comments }
One and a half years ago I did a post about Labour vs. Investment Income and Mike did a post about Do You Really Earn Your Investment Income? The point of both of our posts was that there is an expected investment return (ROI) that an investor can’t really take credit for. If you match [...]
{ 21 comments }
Recently my daughter puked in the car. On herself, on the car seat and a little bit on the car itself. Was it a mild case of H1N1 flu? Too much Halloween candy? Who knows? And it doesn’t really matter – bottom line is that it smelled as foul as you could possibly imagine. This [...]
{ 23 comments }
I always enjoy features in MoneySense or the Globe and Mail where they profile a family, highlight their current money issues, then consult with a panel of financial planners for suggestions on what the family should do moving forward. Some time ago in MoneySense, they talked to a couple who worked, lived a frugal lifestyle, [...]
{ 15 comments }
I often see kite surfers zipping around Lake Ontario on windy days and I think it would be a great sport to pick up. The only problem is – what do I do with the kids? I can’t very well go flailing around in the water with my young kids patiently waiting on the shore [...]
{ 10 comments }
I’ve travelled in developing countries such as Thailand, and one of the interesting things is that they won’t protect you from yourself. You might be climbing up a mountain and where in the West there’d be a massive fence to prevent anyone from falling over the edge, in a developing country there’s a single chain [...]
{ 7 comments }
Canadian Capitalist wrote a very interesting post yesterday highlighting the fact that there are some disabled former Nortel employees that paid into the “self-insured” LTD (long term disability) plan offered by Nortel and now might lose their benefits. As Thicken My Wallet pointed out in the comments – this basically a loophole in the law [...]
{ 12 comments }
A friend gave me a copy of “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and it’s one of the few books that I’ve liked well enough to keep in my personal library (I move a lot, so I try to keep the weight to a minimum). I’m not usually into “personal motivation” style books, however this [...]
{ 5 comments }
We recently received the following question by e-mail:
Hi Mr. Cheap, I just wanted to get your opinion on this theory and if you think its wortwhile in the long run. The theory goes like this; for every dollar you have in a trading in account, you can borrown a dollar on top of that. [...]
{ 11 comments }
Please note that Mr. Cheap wrote a very good post yesterday about H1N1 so check it out if you haven’t already – a lot of great comments.
H1N1 (Swine flu) vaccine hysteria has hit my city in a big way – last week there were people lining up for 6 hours to get shots for their [...]
{ 24 comments }
I’ve been amazed at people’s reaction to H1N1 for a number of reasons. I was *SHOCKED* that they were able to get the name changed from “Swine Flu” to H1N1 (people involved with the pork industry started oinking immediately after the pandemic started and amazingly managed to get it renamed). I still like to call [...]
{ 33 comments }
This is my review of Investing Made Simple written by Mike Piper who is the author of the investing blog Oblivous Investor. I’ve highlighted both Mike’s blog and book before and I was quite happy to review the book for him. I think it’s a great resource for a non-investor or someone who is [...]
{ 6 comments }
