Announcements

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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Please note that the contest is now CLOSED!
Time for another big book giveaway – this time we have a number of books by Canadian authors (except one) and will be giving them away to several lucky Canadians.
Rules:
You can enter two ways (do both for 2 entries):

Leave a comment on this post.
Get the secret phrase from [...]

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Million Dollar Journey gives his views on the 2009 Budget
My Two Dollars wrote about a restaurant where the staff voted to work for tips only.
Preet has a book giveaway.
Financial Blogger talks about Critical Illness Insurance.
The Money Gardener reflects on the recession.
Good Financial Cents discusses types of trusts and when you [...]

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A quick note to let everyone know that wolfe and Swati are the winners.
I’ll be in touch with them by email to work out the delivery.

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It was interesting to watch some of the inauguration speech by US President Obama this week.  While I think it’s great that a black man is president of the US – I thought the far more important milestone in US history this week was that George Bush is no longer in office.  As a Canadian, [...]

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Don’t forget to enter in the contest to win one $50 gift card at Chapters.ca.  There are two cards to giveaway and so far only 30 comments so get over there!
You have to leave a comment (on the contest post, not this one) saying what if any changes you are going to make to your [...]

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Weight
182 pounds – down 1 pound from last week which is good.  Didn’t run this week because of knee problems which are hopefully temporary.
The Links
Jordan’s post this week on investing part of a house down payment in stocks reminded me of a Rob Carrick article on investing lessons learned over the past year.  One of [...]

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Weight
183.0 – I gained 3 pounds over the holidays which is unfortunate but to be expected.  I went to visit my parents and although I like to blame them for making it easy to overeat, the reality is that I use those visits as an excuse to eat and drink as much as I possibly [...]

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Just thought I would list the top posts for 4P from 2008.
Most views
Why you can’t trust real estate agents when buying a house.  I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t use a real estate agent but keep in mind who’s side they are on (hint: it’s not yours!).
How to increase the odds of getting anything you want.  [...]

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Green Panda Treehouse financial blog put together a pretty good list of “best of” posts from 2008. I submitted Mr. Cheap’s post “How to increase the odds of getting anything you want” and it was selected as an editor’s pick. This post was one of the most popular posts on this blog ever.
Saving [...]

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Weight
180.0 – holding steady.  Ran 3 times last week which I was pretty pleased with.
Rest of the links
Mr. Cheap’s excellent post called “Christian Owner” got an editor’s pick over at the latest carnival of personal finance which was held at Saving to Invest.  The carnival has an Australian theme which I rather liked having spent [...]

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Last week was an interesting one – the BCE deal was finally declared dead after a rather bizarre solvency ruling by KPMG.  From what I understand the solvency test was very strict which seems a bit odd considering that BCE is a pretty solid company.
The auto bailout which I talked about this week – – [...]

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Weight
179.0 pounds.  I did well this week – went running 3 times and observed a fairly strict diet (ie no late night snacks).
Rest of the links
Brip Blap wrote a great post about working from home with kids.  Normally I would give a sarcastic “good luck” and roll my eyes for several minutes, but he sounds [...]

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We had a big media mention last week in the National Post – unfortunately they are a pay site so no direct link, however the article also appeared in the Calgary Herald.
In yet another media mention, a fine post by Mr. Cheap called Does passive income really exist? was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal’s [...]

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I’m happy to announce that Four Pillars and my other learn to invest blog ABCs of Investing made it into Eric Lam’s Saturday column in the National Post which is quite flattering. Unfortunately, any visitors from the National Post would have been greeted by my cheesy learn to trade video post – oh well, [...]

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Blog Showcase!
Another week, another great blog to showcase…the star this week is Credit Withdrawal.  I like this blog because of the intelligence and humour of the author behind the blog.  Randall is a very funny guy and can quote the Simpsons at will – what more do you want?  Well another great thing he does [...]

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After Mike’s post announcing the sale of 4P, there was some confusion in the comments. After we got an e-mail recently asking Mike how life is “san Mr. Cheap” (which I thought was ice cold, I’m not DEAD! I figured it might be worth taking another stab at explaining what happened. [...]

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