By 2 Cents on October 30th, 2010 | Category: BJ News |  Thanks very much to everyone who read and commented on my recent review of The RESP Book by Mike Holman. As I do for each of these draws, I numbered the comments and had my youngest son pick a number. The person with comment matching that number wins the book.
This time, the winner is Marsha. I’ll be letting her know by email and Mike will send out a copy of the book. For those who didn’t win this time, consider buying the book. If you intend to use RESPs at all, it’s a pretty inexpensive investment.
BJ Updates
You may have noticed that I changed the layout of the site a little over the past week. (I hope you like it.) I’ll be making a few more changes over the coming weeks to make it a little easier to navigate. [...]
Read on and enjoy … RESP Book Winner
By 2 Cents on October 29th, 2010 | Category: Economics |  Debt and deficits are not inventions of ideology. They are facts of arithmetic.
~Paul Martin, Canada’s finance minister at the start of the country’s “Redemptive Decade”
Update: Thanks to The Financial Blogger for choosing this article for the #1 spot in the Best of Money Carnival – My Favorite Money Quote Edition.
Usually our Friday Food for Thought posts highlight a single article. Today, I’m going to highlight and compare 3 great pieces, so this article is a little longer than usual. I think you’ll find, however, that these articles will provide you with a lot of food for thought that’s well worth your time.
On Monday I laid out some of the reasons why most of our capital is in cash. I then went on to look at What Would Make Me Invest in the Stock Market again. I [...]
Read on and enjoy … Time to Stop the Bubble Machine?
By 2 Cents on October 27th, 2010 | Category: Debt |  The only man who sticks closer to you in adversity than a friend is a creditor.
~Author Unknown
Update: This article was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance #281 posted at Consumerism Commentary. Thanks!
Last week Gail Vaz-Oxlade wrote a really interesting article about The New TD Collateral Mortgage. I was very surprised that I had not heard more about this given that it seems like a pretty big deal to me. As of October 18, 2010, TD will register all new mortgages as collateral mortgages rather than conventional mortgages.
If you’re asking yourself what in the world a collateral mortgage is, you’re not alone. I didn’t know either. Gail goes on to explain it very well in the article. The mortgages most of us have in Canada are conventional mortgages. We have a set amount of principal that we’re borrowing, [...]
Read on and enjoy … Mixed Messages from TD Bank
By 2 Cents on October 25th, 2010 | Category: Investing |  The world will change for the better when people decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the way the world is, and decide to change themselves.
~ Sidney Madwed
Update: This article was included in the Carnival of Wealth #10 posted at Personal Dividends. It was also included in the Carnival of Money Stories – Halloween Aftermath Edition posted at Live Real Now and the Carnival of Financial Planning #164 at ABCs of Investing. Thanks!
I’ve stayed out of the stock market game for the most part for the past few years. Yet I follow and write about personal finance, investing, and economics every day. I still find it very interesting and I would love to participate again at some point.
Last week I wrote about risk tolerance in Stock Allocation: All or [...]
Read on and enjoy … What Would Make Me Invest in the Stock Market?
By 2 Cents on October 22nd, 2010 | Category: Book Reviews | Saving for your child’s education will likely improve the odds that she will participate in post-secondary education by diminishing financial barriers and building a financial nest egg.
~ Mike Holman
Whenever I was looking for detailed information about RESPs, I would always end up at Mike Holman’s blog. It used to be called Four Pillars, but the name has since changed to Money Smarts Blog. Mike’s always had a very comprehensive section on RESPs on his site and it was my go-to reference on the topic.
Still, I’m a huge fan of physical books rather than their cyberspace cousins and I wished I could have a concise book about RESPs on hand to use as a reference. It’s so easy to forget the details of relatively complex financial products like RESPs given that you likely don’t revisit them more than once or [...]
Read on and enjoy … Book Review and Giveaway: The RESP Book
By 2 Cents on October 20th, 2010 | Category: Investing |  Just remember, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way.
~ M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter
Update: This article was included in the Carnival of Wealth #9 posted at Personal Dividends and in The Carnival of Financial Planning #163 posted at The Skilled Investor. Thank you!
I don’t like roller coasters. On a high school trip, however, a couple of friends convinced me to give it a try. I came off with my stomach in my throat and my knees moving sideways. It was not enjoyable. A couple of years later, some friends talked me into going horseback riding even though I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like it. That was one of the scariest experiences of my life as the horse took off and [...]
Read on and enjoy … Stock Allocation: All or None?
By 2 Cents on October 18th, 2010 | Category: Money Psychology |  The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
~Joseph Joubert, Pensées, 1842
Who doesn’t love a good myth post? They seem to be everywhere, and guaranteed to elicit clicks galore. The minute you see a title like “10 Myths about . . .”, on financial blogs and you are compelled to read on. I know I am.
Before we delve into this further, let’s take a moment to look at what a myth really is. For many people, the word myth conjures up images of Greek gods and heroic tales. It can also refer to ideas that are considered to be as unrealistic as the existence of Zeus and Hades. Here are a couple of myth definitions from my trusty dictionary:
1. a legendary story; fable 2. a fictitious person, thing, or happening
So it looks like our common perceptions about myths [...]
Read on and enjoy … Myth Posts and the Lost Art of Debate
By 2 Cents on October 15th, 2010 | Category: Economics |  In my opinion, the crisis and the sharp recession of the past two years and the subsequent rescue packages around the globe did not provide the necessary catharsis that recessions need to bring to economies.
~ George Athanassakos
Update: This article was selected for the Best of Money Carnival #73 posted at Redeeming Riches. Thanks!
I chose a recent article from the Globe and Mail for today’s Friday Food for Thought. This one is by George Athanassakos, a professor of finance. He has been wondering about what the rise in both bonds and gold means for a couple of years now and provides some updated insights in this article: Who Is Right? Bond Bulls or Gold Bugs?
Usually a rising gold price indicates that investors see inflation coming. Rising bond prices, and the accompanying lower yields, usually portend slowing [...]
Read on and enjoy … Can Gold and Bonds Both Be Right?
|
Balance Junkie Included in:
|
Recent Comments