Announcements

A reminder that the Canadian tax filing deadline is April 30, 2010. You must efile by this date or send your return in the mail on that date. As long as the postmark is April 30 (or sooner) then you won’t be late even though the government won’t get the [...]

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Hope everyone is having a good Valentine’s Day and Family Day (in Ontario) weekend.  I’m visiting family and it’s going quite well (so far, but it’s early).
Mr. Cheap has a huge book deal – and not just any book deal. Harlequin romance!  I’ve always gotten really annoyed with Mr. Cheap when we get together and [...]

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I am the champion – my friends
<cue power cords>
And I kept on fighting – till the end -
<cue power cords>
I am the champion -
I am the champion
No time for losers
‘Cause Mr. Cheap is the champion – of the blogosphere -
After my post on Tuesday, Mike promptly left a couple of comments to the effect that [...]

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I’m sure by now everyone has heard of the huge earthquake in Haiti which has devastated the country and killed many thousands of people.  I wanted to write a post to try to urge people reading this to consider donating to help the people of Haiti.  We have donated $250 to the Canadian Red Cross [...]

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Time for another roundup of posts – lots and lots this week.

Million Dollar Journey came up with his 2010 Financial Goals
The Financial Blogger tells us what will happen with mortgage rates in 2010
Canadian Capitalist did a Winning The Loser’s Game Book Review
Don’t Forget About The Free YNAB Giveaway over at the Wisdom Journal. Ron [...]

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This article is pretty neat – Wise Bread has some suggestions to uglify your stuff so it doesn’t get stolen.
Canadian Mortgage Trends had a good piece on the mortgage renewal ripoff offers.
Million Dollar Journey updated his 2008 goals and did very well.
No Debt Plan Wrote that sometimes you just have to ask: Steak and Customer [...]

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I hope all the readers of Four Pillars have a great holiday – don’t eat/drink too much and we’ll see you soon!

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Tiger Woods…”links”…linkstuff?  Haha – get it?  Ok, I have to admit I’ve been following the Woods sordid saga pretty closely.  My only question is why did he bother get married?  I had to wonder at the comments of one of his “friends” who was annoyed that he was seeing other girls as well.
On with the [...]

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I got my H1N1 shot on Tuesday night – no waiting.  If you live in Toronto and have been afraid of the lineups then put your fears away – I went to the East York clinic and there was no waiting.  The lady there told me that it was busy in the afternoon but after [...]

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Moolanomy had a great post wondering what exactly is so bad about credit cards and why are debit cards better?
Amateur Asset Allocator talks about his experience “activating” a credit card – a rather funny description of the up-sell attempts.
Momma’s blog had a post on the 7 sins of fashion – some interesting pics.
The rest of [...]

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This week I did a book review on Mike Piper’s excellent intro to investing book – Investing Made Simple – I had suggested this would be a good stocking stuffer idea since most of the 4P readership seem to already have pretty good investment knowledge.  The links that were on that post were for Amazon.com [...]

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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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