Random Thoughts: Short Weeks and Long Weekends

It always seems that the week after a long weekend is a nothing week, at least during the summer, because not much usually gets done that week. After Labour Day the shorter weeks typically are more hectic, but during the summer a long weekend usually means the week after will be a complete snooze. Even I took Monday off, but on Tuesday came back with a humorous post Up On The Roof, and then went introspective with the posts Sometimes It Just Takes a Long Time , Money Hemorrhage in August, and Random Thoughts: Long Weekend Ahead.

In Ottawa, while the world of finance seems to have calmed down, the weather has been crazy-wild, with micro-bursts, rain, hail and such, which makes us all go and check our home insurance to see whether we are covered when the tree in the front yard falls onto our neighbour’s Hummer. Just something to think about.

This week in Personal Finance brings us some interesting discussions:

• Money Smart Life tackles the interesting questions Pay Off Your Mortgage vs. Pay Down Your Mortgage, either of which is fine by me, just do either one! The higher your mortgage rate the more you should throw money at it!
• Michael James writes about how Pet Insurance is Hard to Justify , which is very true, in fact I wrote a similar post about Pet Insurance Being a Scam a while ago.
• Ellen Roseman continues her consumer advocacy with Fridges, Stoves and vacuum cleaners and how they just don’t seem to last as long as they used to.
• Money Ning asks Christmas in July: When Should You Start Planning For the Holidays and of course the answer is, you are already too bloody late!
• The Canadian Capitalist gives us A tuneup to skip where a website claims to be helping you do a financial tune up, when in fact their advice is a little shaky
• I didn’t win a darn iPad again but Preet still boasts I’m on TV Wednesday night and Anniversary Winners Announced heck I didn’t even get a spork out of the deal.
• The HST is a cascading Tax and Larry MacDonald reinforces my earlier rants with The HST: taxes on taxes I suspect the full impact of the added income to the governments may only be seen in a few years, but man it hurts me right now!
• Even if your Bank carries low MER Index Funds, doesn’t mean they are going to let you buy them, as is pointed out by the Canadian Couch Potato in Would You Like Fees With That?. I hate to see TD doing this kind of bate and switch sales.
• CA Magazine points out that from 1961 to 2009 income tax on the Canadian Family has increased by 1624%, which makes me wince just reading it. Riscario pointed this out on his Twitter Feed.
• Smart on Money put out a chestnut Personal Finance Basics: The Power of Compound Interest which reminds me of my own post Einstein and the Rule of 72 but they rely on having higher savings rates.
• Jon Chevreau gets into the back to school swing with Back-to-school shoppers to spend $621 next month, much of it online, but if you are a lucky guy like me you are spending a whole lot more
• Million Dollar journey must be in a traveling mood, as they have posted 8 ways to Save Money in Europe Way 0 (Zero) is of course, don’t go to Europe.
• Balance Junkie asks, Have You Lost Faith in the Market, and the easy answer is Yes, and that is a good thing, don’t ever trust the market, only Trust in Steel (whoops thought I was Conan the Personal Finance Guy there for a second).
• Young and Thrifty give us An Ode to Promo Codes, which is not really a Haiku, but still an interesting bit of Poetry.

Enjoy this weekend, the summer is quickly slipping away.