Book Review and Giveaway: The RESP Book

By 2 Cents on October 22nd, 2010 | Category: Book Reviews | 32 comments

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

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Financial Literacy Update #2

By 2 Cents on March 21st, 2010 | Category: Financial Literacy | 3 comments

I wasn’t planning on having enough material to do another Financial Literacy Update just one week after the first one, but I received an email last week that I really wanted to bring to your attention. Before I get to that, here are a couple of articles on financial literacy issues that you might want to check out:

Jim Yih presents a guest post entitled What Is Financial Literacy? Part 2 at the Canadian Finance Blog. Thicken My Wallet asks Is Personal Finance a To Do Item or an Appointment?

Online Financial Literacy Course

The email I received was from a high school business and economics teacher named Dave. He has been lobbying his school’s administration to institute a program whereby each student must complete an online financial literacy course prior to graduation. The program would be [...]

Read on and enjoy … Financial Literacy Update #2

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Financial Literacy Is Like Green Eggs and Ham

By 2 Cents on March 5th, 2010 | Category: Financial Literacy | 5 comments

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.

~ Bill Beattie

Update #1: This post was included in the Carnival of Money Stories 2: Disaster Issue posted at True Adventures in Money Hacking. Thank you!

Update #2: Thanks to the Mighty Bargain Hunter for choosing this post for inclusion in the Money Hacks Carnival: Middle Name Pride Day Edition.

It’s easy to think that we can’t control a great deal in terms of our financial position. After all, there’s only so much money coming in – and no amount of planning, coupon cutting or budgeting is going to get blood from [...]

Read on and enjoy … Financial Literacy Is Like Green Eggs and Ham

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5 Financial Toxins and Antidotes

By 2 Cents on March 4th, 2010 | Category: Financial Literacy | 2 comments

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Update: This post is featured in the Carnival of Personal Finance – Women in History Edition posted at Simply Forties. Thanks!

I mentioned at the end of my last post that I often struggle with the knowledge-action gap. I know what needs to be done, but I don’t always do it. Why don’t I make the changes necessary to improve? Change is one of the founding principles of Balance Junkie and I wrote early on about 3 keys to change: education, effort and perseverence.

I’ve always been pretty good at gathering knowledge, but actually putting it into practice and sticking with it have been real stumbling blocks for me. [...]

Read on and enjoy … 5 Financial Toxins and Antidotes

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Task Force on Financial Literacy: Gold Medal

By 2 Cents on February 25th, 2010 | Category: Financial Literacy | 4 comments

Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns, be happy that the thorn bush has roses.

~ Proverb

On February 22, the Task Force on Financial Literacy released a public consultation document called Leveraging Excellence. The task force was established by the Canadian Minister of Finance in 2009 to examine ways to boost the financial literacy of Canadians. I thought that the title of the report was interesting in light of the fact that I (and others) believe that excess leverage is the single greatest personal finance challenge facing us today. But the Task Force wasn’t referring to that kind of leverage. They simply want to look at ways to use existing resources in order to improve financial literacy among Canadians. I’m all for that.

My local newspaper carried an opinion piece by Jay Bryan on the Task Force report. Mr. Bryan is in [...]

Read on and enjoy … Task Force on Financial Literacy: Gold Medal

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3 Keys to Change Part I: Education and the Shampoo Cycle

By 2 Cents on December 7th, 2009 | Category: Money Psychology | 4 comments
3 Keys to Change

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find.  In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.

~ Bernard M. Baruch

As mentioned in the last post, 3 keys to effective change are:

I.   Education II.   Effort III.  Perseverence

Today, we will address education. For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll focus on the area of personal finance, but you can apply these principles to any area you like. The first aspect of educating yourself is to figure out what the problem is, and then to learn as much as you can to [...]

Read on and enjoy … 3 Keys to Change Part I: Education and the Shampoo Cycle

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