By 2 Cents on April 12th, 2011 | Category: Money Psychology |  No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.
~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
I’ve been pretty stressed out lately over our impending move and all of the uncertainties surrounding it. In fact, I went down for the count last week with some kind of flu virus that was, I’m pretty sure, not unrelated to the recent upheaval in our lives. I’m sure a lot of people would deal with this stuff a lot better than me, but I’ve never been a person who enjoys sudden changes. I need time to digest things.
Just to give you a quick update, we’re planning to move to a new town about two and a half to three hours away. We were going to build a new home with hopes of moving in before school starts in September. We’ve been going back and forth with the [...]
Read on and enjoy … How Do You Deal with Financial Stress?
By 2 Cents on January 31st, 2011 | Category: Life Balance |  To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
~e.e. cummings, 1955
Update: This article was selected for the Best of Money Carnival – 10 Investment Lessons Edition posted at The Dividend Guy, as well as the Carnival of Money Stories #92 posted at Sweating the Big Stuff. Thanks!
Have you ever taken an online personality quiz? There are all kinds out there. My son recently made me take one related to an online video game to determine what type of wizard I might be. Guess what? I was a Balance Wizard. Who’da thunk it?
Normally, I roll my eyes at these tests. Most of them are just for fun. But what about [...]
Read on and enjoy … Can a Personality Quiz Change Your Life?
By 2 Cents on January 17th, 2011 | Category: Life Balance |  We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.
~Ellen Goodman
Update: This article was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnvial #3 posted at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff as well as the Wealth Builder Carnival #25 at My Wealth Builder. Thanks!
Have you ever heard of The January Effect? It’s basically a piece of market folklore that gets mentioned each New Year, with updated performance statistics. It usually comes with an endless debate about whether it’s an actionable piece of information or something more akin to a stock market ouija board.
I’ve heard of a few slightly different variations [...]
Read on and enjoy … The Real January Effect
By 2 Cents on December 20th, 2010 | Category: Money Psychology |  Get me through December A promise I’ll remember Just get me through December So I can start again
~ from the song “Get Me Through December“
Markets and economics, like life, move in cycles. The only sure thing about a very long up or down-swing is that it will inevitably reverse. December is a time when neither markets, economics or our lives may necessarily be at the peak or bottom of their cycles, but the end of the calendar year still makes us reflect on where we stand on all three.
The holiday season only adds to that effect. We (hopefully) have some time to see friends and family we may not see throughout the rest of the year, and take some time to stop and reflect on the year that was and the year yet to come. December finds many of us a little weary [...]
Read on and enjoy … Get Me Through December
By 2 Cents on November 10th, 2010 | Category: Life Balance |  If you can’t change the world. Change yourself. And if you can’t change yourself then . . . change the world.
~ The The, from the song “Lonely Planet”
I’ve spilled a fair number of pixels laying out why I think the extend and pretend monetary policies of the past few decades have been a mistake. You would think that strongly opposing many of the ideas that have guided western culture over the course of my lifetime might make me cynical at the least, and bitter at worst. Not at all.
While I’ll admit to feeling occasionally frustrated about some of these things, I can’t say that any of them cause me to lose sleep or feel too negatively about the world we live in. Why?
Context Is Everything
I can’t change what’s happening out there, but I can change my reaction to it. Here [...]
Read on and enjoy … If You Can’t Change the World . . .
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 11th, 2010 | Category: Life Balance |  Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.
~Buddha
Today is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, so Happy Thanksgiving to all! Although we may not go as whole-hog on this holiday as our American friends, we do take the day off to contemplate our bounty. With the economic events of the past couple of years, some of us are probably feeling little less bountiful. My family’s financial position isn’t quite as secure as it was 3 years ago, but I don’t necessarily feel less thankful today as a result.
In the spirit of the holiday, I decided to challenge myself to think of 10 things that I’m most [...]
Read on and enjoy … Take the Thanksgiving Challenge
By 2 Cents on September 13th, 2010 | Category: Money Psychology |  A bend in the road is not the end of the road . . . unless you fail to make the turn. ~ Author Unknown
Update: This article was selected for the Best of Money Carnival – 10 Things I Like about Autumn posted at Green Panda Treehouse. Thank you!
Like a bend in the road, change can be painful, or it can offer tremendous opportunities. It all depends on a few variables:
What kind of shape is our vehicle in heading into the turn? How fast are we driving? How we perceive the bend: Is it something that has caught us off-guard, or are we prepared to slow down and navigate the turn safely? Do we feel like a victim of the change, or are we confident it’s a challenge we can meet? How we react to the change: Will we adapt to [...]
Read on and enjoy … Welcome to the Post Consumerism Era: Will You Make the Turn?
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