It has been a long while since I have written one of these, so I figured I’d dust off the old Olivetti and bash one out. I can already here the, “OK Boomer“, comments being sent. For those unaware Olivetti made portable typewriters. Typewriters were after pen and paper but before the Interweb.
What have I been up to, that I no longer pump out 5 articles a week? Life, mostly. As a proud member of the Sandwich Generation my life enjoys interesting sidetracks with my Grandkids, Children, and my Mother, all of which are important. I still have a backlog of about 300 articles in various states of publishing, so there is plenty to work on, just need the time.
For those who may look at my archives, I have actually been deleting a lot of older material that was just bad (in my opinion). Some of it really did not stand up over time.
This site is allegedly running on a better and faster platform. That remains to be seen, because it still loads pretty slowly on a PC or Mac. On a phone it seems OK (yes, there is a special smartphone version of this site!).
Election?
I am curious to see how the Minority Liberal Government goes about business. My guess is this will last about 2 years, unless there is a horrific scandal for one of the parties, in which case we might see a rare snap Winter Election! Minority governments do little, which is fine by me.
Recent Articles
Recent is a relative statement since I have written only a handful of articles this year. I’ll give you some of my stuff that I think you should read.
Movember is here, and a few years back I had a nasty episode, that scared me, but unfortunately this year I mark Movember with the passing of a dear friend from prostate cancer. Men need to see doctors, and not just to get blue pills.
The New Ontario Autism Funding system isn’t going to do much for me. I wish it paid for my son’s school, so I could actually think about retiring, but that will never happen.
I was really happy to see that the Marriage Preparation course my youngest daughter took had a section on Finance and Money, but I think it could have gone a bit farther. Money is the one thing that can destroy any relationship, so both parties need to enter the relationship with their financial eyes open.
The luxury that the rich have is that they can make financial mistakes and recover, and with 5 Mistakes Rich Folks Make I was trying to get that point across. If you don’t have a lot of wiggle room, don’t take risks financially.
I do have a technology blog where I write even more rarely so Banking Security delves into that area of technology to do with Financial Technology (I don’t like FinTech it is too kitchy a term these days). The security was OK, but can always be better.
Ellen is Back
Friend of this site Ellen Roseman has returned to blogging, or retired to it? She isn’t really retired, she just seems to have stopped writing for newspapers as a job, but is doing lots of other fun and cool financial stuff. A good tweet from her about Insurance folks.
Financial Winter is Coming (again)
I have continued to read many different writers, and I try to expand my horizons as well. If you keep reading the same authors, how do you learn about new things?
- Michael James wrote about Correlation and when he talks about mathematics and large data, you really should listen to him. The clinching statement that should make you read this is, “… It’s impossible to know the correlation of two investments exactly. …”
- Robb Engen of Boomer & Echo has officially gone off his nut! OK that is click bait but he has quit his “day job” to work full time on the stuff he likes doing. Good for him, maybe I should start doing the jobs everyone is quitting to become bloggers? Oh, I forgot I already am, I am a Civil Servant.
- John Robertson is Taking Leave for a different reason and that is to take care of a loved one. Looks like he has a plan on how this is going to work, and he knows what he is sacrificing, but I admire him for what he is doing.
- Christine Benz wrote a piece on Morningstar that made my blood boil, titled Not OK. Evidently a door to door financial advisor had hooked her sister who has an intellectual disability into consulting with her. Read the story it really disturbs me that people try to make money this way.
- As I get closer to being a Senior Citizen, I keep wondering when the discounts will start, Rob Carrick wrote about The sad reality of seniors discounts. I do get cheaper coffee at McDonalds, though.
Preet brings you (through Tangerine) some help understanding Passive Investing.
You sure you recognize Fake news?
The 2019 Random Thoughts
- March Madness and #MoneyTalk (March 30th)
- Lent Begins and #Moneytalk (March 6th)
- Christmas Treats, RESPs, The Markets and Polkas and #MoneyTalk (December 17th)
- GM, PC M/C Changes, Podcasts and #MoneyTalk (November 30th)
- RDSP Awareness , Volatility and #MoneyTalk (October 12th)
- Tech Infiltration , NAFTA/USMCA, WiFi, Tornadoes and #MoneyTalk (October 5th)
My RSS feed is available.
I love house hippos!!! (And Ellen Roseman). Suggestion for obsolete content – your old “Facebook is your reference article†except for the always useful tip to google yourself and see what comes up.
I’ll be in your neck of the woods Thursday and. Friday. I hope the horror stories about the new train system are exaggerated or history. I’m counting on it to get me downtown from Carleton for a job fair. Wish me luck.
The LRT works, I have used it a few times, as usual always Drama in Ottawa. If you are going from Carleton to Downtown you will actually use the O-train (the old system, or Line 2), which works fine, and then you will transfer onto the LRT, which is OK except during rush hour, then it gets dodgy. I would use it more, but it still doesn’t do me much good in terms of commute time, or convenience.
I think the Facebook is your reference is still relevant. Both my daughters have had workshops where they were told explicitly to edit, remove and have friends remove all questionable entries.
Good Luck!