Here’s my monthly gathering of 10 of my favourite articles from around the web. The bad news is: there are usually way more than 10 articles that I could include here, so some great ones inevitably get missed. The good news is: I just joined Twitter, so I’ll be able to share articles with you throughout the month. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @BalanceJunkie. Enjoy!
1. Man vs. Debt had a guest post from Carmen on 8 Effective Ways to Raise Frugal Kids. There are some great ideas here, but I don’t see many of the parents I know implementing them. That makes it a lot harder for others to try them out. I guess #4 (socializing with like-minded families) would help a lot.
2. If you want to elicit angry and sometimes downright nasty comments, mention anything to do with stay at home moms. That’s precisely the piranha pool that the National Post Editorial Board waded into when they wrote about Staying Home with the Kids. This editorial asserts that we, as taxpayers, should not have to pay for daycare for other people’s children. As a stay at home parent who has earned very little income over the years in order to be home with my children, I can see their point. But I’m not sure intimating that working parents border on negligent was such a great choice, or at all accurate.
3. Canadian Capitalist gave us another good reason to pay off our mortgage A.S.A.P.: Mortgage Free? Ask for a Discount on Your Home Insurance. Who knew?
4. Have you ever cut spending on something (or a lot of things) either by choice or necessity and discovered that you were actually happier as a result? WiseBread had a very thought-provoking post by Oleg Mokhov on How Spending Less Made Me Happier. I’m thinking we’re going to be in the spending less camp by necessity very soon, so I look forward to feeling happier as a result. 
5. Zen Habits had some great ideas on How to Reclaim Your Attention. I could stand to read this post once a week.
6. Financial Highway listed the Top 5 Budget Busters and encouraged us to identify our own budget busters. I have a hard time sticking to my gift budget. Convenience (laziness?) sometimes trumps dollars.
7. The Digerati Life had a guest post on Financial Retirement Planning for a Life Expectancy of 100. Here’s another good news/bad news story: we’re all going to live a lot longer in the future, but that means we need to have enough money saved for retirement so that we don’t outlive our cash stash.
8. Have you ever wondered what happens to your RRSPs once you retire? Mike at Four Pillars did some research for his parents and was kind enough to share How to Convert an RRSP to a RRIF with the rest of us.
9. Financial Armageddon provides some evidence that retail investors are not always the “dumb money”. This article offers a couple of links to recent articles that may show that we (lay people) are Not Necessarily the Greatest Fools.
10. I’ve often wrestled with the question of whether it’s better to buy individual bonds or bond E.T.F.s. In Bonds v. Bond Funds, the Canadian Couch Potato offers a nice summary of the issues involved.
That’s all for this month. I hope you found something here that was new to you or made you think. 
Thanks a lot for the link – I like what you are doing with this blog.