Random Thoughts: Long Weekend Ahead

Here Comes a Long Weekend

Here in Ontario it is The Long Weekend with No Name coming up, so we are all celebrating in our own private ways. Only in Ontario could you have such a Milk Toast response to a holiday weekend, we may be boring, but it is only overshadowed by our complete dullness.

This week was a lot of fun for me, because I didn’t really have to work very hard on the blog, I hosted the Best of Money Carnival #61, wrote about how the CPI Back to 1.0%, and then ranted about things, which always makes me happy (the cathartic part of writing your own blog cannot be discounted). I was sad that no one told me whether my Good Wine was actually any good, my parents think it should have been good.

Things I Thought this Week

• Random Thoughts: Whale of a Tale or Two… was a recap of last week’s best articles.
• Best of Money Carnival #61: Leaders of the Pack The best of money carnival #61 follows a thematic premise about the leader of the pack in terms of financial writing, the winner getting the yellow jersey
• CPI Back to 1.0% With all the excitement on Friday, you may not have noticed by the Inflation Rate (i.e. CPI) from Stats Canada was announced and it is back down to 1.0%, which suggests any retaliatory Interest Rate.
• The Good Wine : A Personal Finance Parable The good wine is an example of letting something good sit for too long, and in the end it was spoiled. Too bad could have been an amazing one.
• PC Mastercard and Changes So this rant about the PC Mastercard system, is a great example of what happens when on-line systems change. 

What Others Wrote This Week

What was new this week, in the land of Finance for Home and Personal use? Some stuff to really make you scratch your head and wonder what is going on:

• Canadian Capitalist commented on A Scheme to Save 100% of income Tax? which he pans, and rightfully so, but he is really commenting on the original article by Larry MacDonald Reduce Your Taxes by 100%, which describes an interesting concept of buying R&D losses and use them on your own taxes. This whole idea while creative also does not pass the Sniff test for me, the CRA might let you do it, but don’t bet on it (if you are asking my opinion is also STAY THE HECK AWAY from this).
• Preet and his magic Tungsten Spork wrote about how the SEC in the U.S. are looking at U.S. Regulators Proposes Massive Changes to Mutual Fund Commisions, which may lead to Civil War in the sector, maybe.
• Michael James points out that Mastercard has updated their Rules, which are to your advantage, somewhat. Remember they are in business to make money!
• Million Dollar Journey asks Should University Students have RRSPs? I think the answer is they should have TFSAs first, and then RRSPs if they can use them to save and not simply as a buffering system for large income years.
• I love it when I start a trend and Canadian Personal Finance follows my semantic rant last week Semantics of Money with Investing IN your Retirement, not FOR your retirement.
• The Canadian Couch Potato had someone ask them, Does This Thing Work, which was a query about their index investing strategies, an interesting response.
• YoungAndThrifty asks the tough question Destination Wedding vs Traditional At Home Wedding: Which One is Cheaper? the obvious answer is, Why Get Married? or better still, JUST ELOPE! The elope strategy I have suggested to my daughters. I have pointed out that if I have to pay for the wedding, it’s MY party and I get to invite WHO I want and DO what I want. Hopefully they get the point.
• I get scared when Wired talks about ATM machines, and sure enough their article Jackpotting ATMs, scares the life out of me. Makes you wonder how much money is lost this way?
• The WealthyBoomer points out that most of us blow our Vacation budgets for a Once In A Lifetime Experience, like swimming with dolphins and such. I guess their budget ends up swimming with the fishes as it were.
• MoneyNing points out 5 Types of Insurance You Don’t Need, to which I say, Only 5?
• BalanceJunkie brings us The Culture of More: 5 Socio-Economic bubbles about to burst.
• Financial Highway presents 5 Steps to a Debt-Free Life, of course Step Zero is to not get in debt in the first place, but that is me just being me.
• And of course the ever popular Top 10 Reasons Folks are in Debt, by some jerk who thinks he is funny.

You get the feeling someone told bloggers that Top N lists are popular with readers?!? I can give you 3 reasons why that doesn’t work, but that can wait for my own post (I am such a snarky bugger when I want to be).

Weekly Reminders

Remember that I also micro-blog on Twitter, where you can see a whole plethora of good articles and pithy comments by me as well. Twitter feed where I retweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off-colour commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)).