Announcements

Another great month for traffic on 4P – 115,439 visits and 210,841 pageviews – both are records.
Top referrers for October
Occasionally I like to recognize the top referrers to Four Pillars – here they are for the month of October:

Million Dollar Journey
Canadian Capitalist
The Globe and Mail
Moolanomy
Bible Money Matters
Frugal Dad
My Money Blog
Canadian Mortgage Trends
Wisebread
Dividend Growth Investor

Thanks to [...]

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A quick reminder that the Four Pillars “Return to Questrade” deal is almost over. Check out my original post for details – if you went to RBC last year for the 1% deal and want to return for the $5 trades then this is the time.
My wife and I have completed moving our accounts [...]

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Another great weather weekend here in Toronto.   I don’t think it has rained in a couple of years and the temperatures have been great!
The links
Canadian Capitalist asks if your portfolio has broken even? The media often focuses on how far off the stock indexes are from their highs which isn’t a very accurate gauge for [...]

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Free book download
Mike Piper who blogs at the Oblivious Investor wrote a book recently called “Investing Made Simple”.  It’s going to be offered for sale on Amazon but in the meantime he has decided to allow free downloads of the book from his site.  Go check it out.
The best links
Amateur Asset Allocator wrote an excellent [...]

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Welcome to the 82st Edition of Carnival of Money Hackers. Moolanomy.com was kind enough to let me host this week so enjoy the posts and the pictures.
Investing

Photo Credit: epicharmus

Tallahassee Real Estate presents Housing Market Bottom Reached In Tallahassee posted at Tallahassee Real Estate Blog.
20smoney presents 5 Types Of Diversification Your Financial Advisor Won’t Mention [...]

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Happy Labour Day everyone – we’ve had a fantastic weekend in Toronto – in fact the weather has been perfect for the past week.  Saturday we went up to a beach near Wasaga and it was quite impressive.  I was expecting a fairly small beach but it was huge.  Sunday we braved the crowds to [...]

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First up – Rob Carrick wrote a post in the Globe and Mail where he talks about 7 good deals in investing and lo and behold – Questrade discount brokerage is one of them.  I couldn’t agree more – cheap trades are cheap trades.  If you are paying any more for trades then you are [...]

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The Toronto Star had a great post on the US financial institutions that benefited greatly from bailouts but for some reason aren’t returning the favor.
Nancy Zimmerman (Money Coach) is thinking of buying a house on impulse – go and give her some advice!
Remodeling This Life wonders where time went now that her kids are about [...]

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Penelope Brazen writes a great blog which can sometimes be painful to read because of the things she shares.  This post about why honesty is the best policy (my title) is the most honest and painful one so far.
Money Grubbing Lawyer talks about the renovation butterfly effect.  This is when you improve one thing in [...]

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Big news in blogworld last week – Gather Little By Little which is one of my favourite blogs was sold and purchased by none other than The Financial Blogger.  GLBL was run by Larry who has been a pretty good friend to me over the last couple of years – he has been very helpful [...]

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Just a few links this week since I’m not able to get on the internet much this week.
The best links
Amateur Asset Allocator says that Buffett’s record doesn’t mean that the efficient market hypothesis is wrong.
Thicken My Wallet had 2 great posts

The Hail Mary school of investing – This is when people gamble on fallen stocks [...]

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Happy Canada Day everyone – today’s roundup includes some blog highlights and a whole pile of links – all Canadian of course.
New Canadian Blog Spotlight
There have been a number of new blogs on the Canadian scene over the last little while so I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of [...]

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Once again, Four Pillars is honoured to included in the annual Globe and Mail Best Money Blogs competition.  How we made the list is beyond me, but I’m very glad that Rob Carrick felt that we were worthy.
You can vote for us and 4 other blogs by scrolling down the bottom of the G&M Money [...]

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Last week Not The Jet Set took the time to post a rebuttal to my “Is Dave Ramsey a Financial Expert?” post.  I think this is the first time someone has actually created a post based on one of my posts so I was quite flattered.  NTJS is clearly a big DR fan so needless [...]

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Welcome to the “Four Pillars” edition of the Carnival of Debt Reduction – lots of good debt reduction articles along with a few other financial posts.

The Four Pillars of Mike’s kitchen floor (aka the “editor’s picks”)

Jeff Rose presents Should I Do a Debt Consolidation Loan? posted at Jeff Rose.
The Canadian Finance Blog submitted a [...]

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Saturday night I had the pleasure of meeting Preet from Where Does All My Money Go -  he and Mr. Cheap came over for some Thai food and a few beers.  It was a lot of fun and hopefully we’ll do it again soon.
Top referrers and stats
May was a pretty big month for this site [...]

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Ok, my combined title is a bit misleading.  Today is the first day that analog tv signals no longer exist and you have to have some sort of cable, satellite or digital box in order to watch television.  I have no idea who this change might affect since I suspect most people already use digital [...]

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Blog Showcase – Weakonomics
I haven’t featured any individual blogs in quite a while but I’ve been reading Weakonomics for a while and I have to say that I’m really impressed by this blog.  The author (Phil) is smart, creative, funny and undoubtedly good looking.  In other words – the complete opposite to anything you’ll find [...]

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We went to the Toronto zoo yesterday – it was pretty good but since our kids are so young, I don’t think they get much out of it.  It can be pretty expensive, however we used an Aeroplan gift card so it didn’t cost us much.  I was telling Frugal Trader that I thought a [...]

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Yes, it was two years this month when Four Pillars got started. It’s been a lot of fun – Mr. Cheap and I have become pretty good friends since combining our blogs and we’ve cranked out quite a few posts (710) since then.
I wanted to thank our regular readers and commenters (12,700 comments) since [...]

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The Don Jail had an open house this weekend for the public – it will be open for last time before renovation into office towers.  We went to check it out however the lineups were unbelievable (4 hour wait) so we left without seeing it.  The jail is available for bookings until October so I’m [...]

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On Monday, May 25 at 2:00 pm there will be a live webcast sponsored by Questrade discount brokerage which features blogging superstars Frugal Trader of Million Dollar Journey and Jon Chevreau of the National Post.  If you want to read a more detailed description of the panel then here it is.  Michael Hainsworth of BNN [...]

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Strange week in the news last week – the government ordered the car companies to reopen talks with the unions.  I find it quite ironic that these car companies are so poorly run that it takes a bloated government to tell it that more cuts are needed.  On the other hand since wages are not [...]

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Another great weekend – it’s so nice to be able to take the kids outside without having to burrow through a huge pile of snowpants, mittens etc.  Mr. Cheap dropped by on Saturday afternoon for a while so we took my son to a local park.  It started to rain a little bit so we [...]

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Some great weather this weekend – it is a bit rainy today but yesterday was just fantastic (until the hurricane at dinner time).  We went down the beach and hung out for a few hour – a great day.
Best post of the week
Kristy from Master Your Card works in a bank and she shares the [...]

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The Links
Cash Money Life had a pretty good post explaining why getting an MBA is no longer my goal.  I had considered this at one time – even wrote the GMAT.
Another MBA post – Financial Nut wonders if an MBA from Harvard is really that good?
Moolanomy wrote about a scam chimney sweeping service that was [...]

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Welcome to the April 17, 2009 edition of the Carnival of Financial Planning.
A big thanks to The Skilled Investor who created this carnival and did the editing for this edition.  If you want to read financial planning posts – then this is the place to be!
Investing
Investing School presents Etrade vs Tradeking vs Zecco – Trading [...]

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I hope everyone had a happy Easter this past weekend.  I really don’t understand why the government and banks get today off but the rest of us (who actually work for a living) have to work.  What a rip!
I just finished filing my taxes – if you are a student or family making less than [...]

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Pinyo, the brains behind such sites as Moolanomy and PFBuzz has come up with another new site which he has just launched called GreatNexus.  This an aggragator site which has a personal finance section as well as various other general interest topics.
The site houses various types of websites:

Blogs – like this one.
Other aggragators such as [...]

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First up – I’m hosting the Carnival of Personal Finance today over at ABCs of Investing.  The theme is “Spring has sprung” -  lots of pretty flower pics so head on over and check it out!
Here’s a very funny “extreme frugality” video.  It’s pretty short (2 minutes) video by Ramit from I will teach you [...]

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It seems like there have been quite a few posts lately in blogworld that are very critical of other blogs.  I blame this all on this post which had a minor error in it which got written up on this blog (well after many commenters had already pointed out the error…kudos).  Then this blog wrote [...]

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I’m competing in today’s March Madness bracket over at Free Money Finance. This is a big competition which results in money being donated to the winner’s charity – I choose the American diabetes association (it had to be an American charity).
If you want to vote then go over and leave a comment with “trust” – [...]

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I’m competing in today’s March Madness bracket over at Free Money Finance. This is a big competition which results in money being donated to the winner’s charity – I choose the American diabetes association (it had to be an American charity).
If you want to vote then go over and leave a comment with “trust” – [...]

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Busy times – I hosted the carnival of personal finance on Monday which contained 98 entries.  The theme was learn the basics of investing.  And the funny thing is that I’m hosting it again – 2 weeks later on my other blog – the ABCs of Investing.  If you are a blogger then make sure [...]

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I’m competing in a blogger competition and I need your vote!  Head on over to Free Money Finance and leave a comment with the word “trust”.  The winner of the competition gets $500 donated to their favourite charity.  I picked the American Diabetes Association.  I would have picked the Canuck one but it had to [...]

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Rob Bennett is the author of the A Rich Life blog. He has recorded over 75 podcasts on why we need to transition from the Passive Investing model of  understanding how stock investing works to the Rational Investing model .

You’re 60 and expect to retire in about five years. You’ve figured out that you will [...]

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If you are a stock pickin’ investor who like to do their own stock analysis but don’t have the time to cover all the companies you would like then I want to introduce you to a new stock analysis subscription program which is being offered by Brad over at Triaging My Way To Financial Success.  [...]

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Million Dollar Journey discusses the bailout in The Great Homeowner Bailout.
Preet tells us to look at Sales Incentives for Financial Planners and Insurance Salespeople.
Financial Blogger talks about how Being Your Own boss is So Exciting.
The Oblivious Investor explains Why the Stock Market is Unpredictable.
Money Ning gives us 7 Money Saving Tips to Get a [...]

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Rough week in Pillar land – family stomach flu and hosting problems which resulted in switching the blog to a new host.  I’ll be posting the details on Monday (about the hosting change – not the flu!).
Here are a few posts that I read this week:
I thought this post on what you should do when [...]

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The weight
I was brave this week and weighed myself – 182.5 which is down a bit from the last couple of weigh-ins.  I need to keep working at it however.  I’ve been doing a lot of running lately (3-4 times per week) so I’m doing very well on the exercise side but the diet needs [...]

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Earlier today, I posted a lengthy article about why I thought the recent American homeowner rescue package was a waste of money.  Thicken My Wallet, which is an excellent blog – posted a very funny Simpson’s reference as well as a link to a recent Rick Santelli rant on CNBC.  I just watched it (about [...]

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No weight update this week – I was visiting my parents last weekend for a long family day weekend and I’m afraid to get on the scale – maybe next week?
The links
Michael James discusses Cell Phone Obsolescence.
Canadian Capitalist questions Blaming Peter for Paul’s Mistake.
Financial Blogger talks about Government Bonds and Investment Opportunities.
The Oblivious Investor sheds [...]

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I’m competing in today’s March Madness bracket over at Free Money Finance. This is a big competition which results in money being donated to the winner’s charity – I choose the American diabetes association (it had to be an American charity).
If you want to vote then go over and leave a comment with “trust” [...]

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Had a hosting problem this week so time for a new host!  I’ll be switching in the next couple of weeks.
On with the links…
Million Dollar Journey tells us How to Take Advantage of the Market After the Crash of 2008.
My Two Dollars warns us not to Bury Our Financial Heads In The [...]

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We’ve had some problems with our hosting – you might have noticed the blog has been down all day.  I’m not too confident the blog will stay up so I’ll wait a bit to post again (ie tomorrow).

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After many entries – 52 comments and 32 emails with the phrase ‘Orange Sheep’ – the great Canadian book giveaway is over and we have our winners!
In order:

Joel chose New Rules of Retirement
Brandon picked Findependance Day
Blair wanted the RRSP Book.
Wooly Woman
Susan C

If you are a winner and haven’t responded yet then please do so (with [...]

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One of my blogging buddies – Amey from The Wild Investor recently started a new site called SpeakStocks.com and I decided to give it a review to help him get some new readers/contributors.
What it is about?
Stock trading – and everything associated with stock trading.
Some technical analysis articles:

How to trade gaps.  If you (like me) don’t [...]

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First off – a reminder of the free trend analysis service available from INO.  I wrote about this service a while ago in greater detail.  It’s free, it’s fun, it’s healthy and will undoubtedly extend your useful life!
The weight
184.5 pounds!  Porkorama!  The emergency diet and exercise program has been activated and I’m hoping to get [...]

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