By 2 Cents on December 31st, 2009 | Category: 20 Cents | 
This is a selection of 10 articles I thought you might find interesting from the month of December, 2009. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and there were lots more I could have included.
Fiscal Fizzle gave us some great information on How to Write a Great Financial Mission Statement. Ray at Financial Highway provided 7 Credit Score Myths you might not know about. Gail Vaz-Oxlade had a nice post titled Happy Is As Happy Does. It was a great reminder of the importance of attitude in everything we do. Tom over at Canadian Finance Blog asked Do You Have Enough Insurance On Your Home? This a good thing to reassess periodically. Rob Carrick at the Globe and Mail had a timely article on Why You Can, and [...]
Read on and enjoy … 20 Cents From December 2009
By 2 Cents on December 30th, 2009 | Category: Economics |  Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
~ Hal Borland
Yesterday we looked at some notes that I had made at the beginning of 2009. Today, we look at possible problem areas for 2010. Again, these are obviously not predictions, as I’m too chicken to stick my neck out on what I think will happen. Further, I don’t have any idea what will happen, nor do the thousands of pundits making their “here’s what ‘s going to happen in 2010 lists”. This is meant to be food for thought, and nothing more. (I don’t know about you, but I could use a little more of that kind of food rather than the calorie-filled sort I’ve indulged in over the past week!)
Debt: I think this [...]
Read on and enjoy … 2010 What Ifs
By 2 Cents on December 29th, 2009 | Category: Economics |  Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
This year is going; let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850
Recently I was cleaning up and encountered a sheet of paper I had written on with the title “Possible Tape Bombs To Come”. I wrote it early in 2009 to organize my thoughts on what to look out for in the New [...]
Read on and enjoy … Postcards from 2009
By 2 Cents on December 28th, 2009 | Category: Economics |  An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
~ Laurence J. Peter (1919 – 1988)
Economics is often called “the dismal science” for its general lack of prediction accuracy. There are lots of other reasons financial experts and non-experts alike detest it. For most laypeople like you and I, it’s incomprehensible and just plain boring. I can understand all of those criticisms.
Still, there must be some value in it if thousands of people study it and governments make policy decisions based on it. Maybe it was never meant to be an exact science anyway. Maybe science itself isn’t always all that exact. After all, we can’t learn anything new without first making tons of potentially erroneous hypotheses.
What economists do best is report on general trends and that information is valuable to everyone. Now I’m not suggesting you [...]
Read on and enjoy … Why You Should Care About Economics
By 2 Cents on December 25th, 2009 | Category: BJ News | Love is What’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.
~ Author Unknown, attributed to a 7-year-old boy named Bobby
Merry Christmas!!!
By 2 Cents on December 24th, 2009 | Category: Family | Happy, happy Christmas that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!
~ Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers ~1836
Christmas is about home. Even if we’re not in our actual home on Christmas Day, we are likely visiting the home of someone we care about. That can be homey too.
I am an unrepentant homebody and I therefore love that Christmas gives me a chance to wallow in some serious home time. For me, home means safety, security, the smell of delicious food cooking, the sound of children playing, music, and above all, comfort.
Home is my happy place. Home for Christmas is my happiest place. Wherever you are this Christmas Eve, I wish [...]
Read on and enjoy … Home for Christmas
By 2 Cents on December 23rd, 2009 | Category: Family | To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.
~ Ken S. Keyes Jr.
Oh, the wonderful, picture-perfect scenes that Christmas time brings: families hugging, enjoying special food and special times together. Everything is perfect. The children don’t squabble, couples are in sync, and any past disagreements are forgotten. This would be wonderful, but it is unfortunately not usually reality.
Inevitably, someone will do or say something hurtful or inappropriate, whether purposely or not. The children will not always get along. Old wounds may be reopened. That is the reality of getting a group of human beings with a history together.
Does that mean we shouldn’t get together? Does it mean we shouldn’t aim or hope for that picture-perfect holiday? Maybe your cousin will say something insensitive to you, or your uncle will corner you with a twenty minute discussion of something in [...]
Read on and enjoy … Celebrate What Is
By 2 Cents on December 22nd, 2009 | Category: Life Balance | I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
~ Charles Dickens
If you’re a Dickens fan as I am, you know that one of the central themes in a lot of his work is the idea of conversion. Some evil and/or misguided character sees the light in the end and becomes a better person. Everyone is familiar with the Christmas conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carolwhere he ecstatically throws open the shutters of his home on Christmas morning and asks [...]
Read on and enjoy … Christmas Conversion
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