Weekend Reading: Summer Holiday Edition

My wife and I enjoy spending our summer vacation in the beautiful B.C. interior. This year we’re venturing a little further than usual, travelling to Kelowna and staying 10 nights in the Okanagan. It’ll be great to see my parents for the first time since they moved to Kelowna from Calgary last summer.

We were worried how our kids would handle the long 10-hour drive and so after much deliberation we decided to leave a day early, cash in some travel rewards points, and book a hotel room in Golden – about the halfway point of our journey.

Now we can take a more leisurely drive through the Rocky Mountains and spend some time stretching our legs in Kananaskis Country, rather than racing across the busy Trans-Canada Highway and hoping to get to our final destination on time.

Once in Kelowna we thought we’d drop the kids off with their grandparents while we alternate between beach days and wine tours. Just kidding, mom! Maybe.

This week’s recap:

Thanks to Rob Carrick for sharing my article on home buyer’s regret in his recent Carrick on Money round-up.

Rob has been a great advocate for personal finance bloggers, linking to and sharing blog posts since long before we started blogging in 2010. The link brought in a solid 5,000+ visitors from the Globe and Mail, so hopefully many of them stick around and join our loyal readership.

On Monday I revealed my net worth update for the mid-way point of 2015.

On Wednesday Marie shared a smart way to define your financial planning goals.

And on Friday I explained why your “free” Aeroplan flight rewards aren’t exactly free.

Weekend reading:

Cait Flanders embraced minimalism and completed a year-long shopping ban – living on roughly half her income in the process. Read Cait’s month-by-month journey here, including a surprising new challenge at the end.

In what might be a first in the personal finance blogosphere, Nelson from Financial Uproar recently got engaged to Vanessa from Vanessa’s Money and explains why they decided to combine their finances.

Carl Richards says that we need to stop telling stories (or making excuses) for our poor financial behaviour.

“To make ourselves feel better, we come up with a story that blurs the numbers. These stories might be considered harmless, except for one, not-so-small problem: They’re not true. And with every story we tell, we slip into a never-ending cycle that increases the gap between our actions and our values.”

A first-time father explains why Millennials should have kids – and soon.

With the prevalence of TV content on the Internet and Netflix, Canadians are seeing less need to have a TV subscription.

The golden question when it comes to retirement planning: How much can we withdraw without running out of money?

Michael James experiments with the 4 percent rule using longevity statistics.

Should you play by the new rules for RRIF withdrawals? What makes good public policy may not make good personal policy, says Alexandra Macqueen.

There is a lot of buzz in the investment industry around CRM2 and this post debunks some myths about the upcoming regulatory changes.

PWL Capital’s Justin Bender and Dan Bortolotti take an in-depth look at understanding your portfolio’s rate of return.

The Canadian Couch Potato rains down on the All Seasons portfolio that was trumpeted in Tony Robbins’ new book on personal finance.

Rob Carrick says Canada’s hot housing market is clearly detached from reality.

Mortgage expert Rob McLister says an early mortgage renewal is a gift horse you’ll want to look squarely in the mouth.

The Pointshogger blog gives us an introduction to using Google Flights – an excellent comparison tool for finding the best flights.

Finally, four things Google found that didn’t matter in the hiring process. The most interesting one was that grades don’t predict anything about who is going to be a successful employee.

Have a great weekend, everyone!