Around the Blogosphere

I started a new blog a few weeks ago (as if I didn’t have enough on my plate).  Earn Save Grow is still very much a personal finance site, but it will focus less on frugality and more on topics like how to increase your income, and how to save wisely in the areas that…

Lately I’ve been interested in behavioral finance – the effect our emotions and inherent biases have on the financial decisions we make.  How many of us have been reluctant to sell an investment at a loss, and rationalize that we’ll sell once it “comes back” and we break even?  That type of behavior is called…

Last week I reviewed two personal finance books: Stop Over-Thinking Your Money! by Preet Banerjee, and The Moolala Guide To Rockin’ Your RRSP by Bruce Sellery.  The authors were kind enough to each provide a copy of their book to give away to a lucky Boomer & Echo reader. We had over 80 entries to…

We launched a new business this week – a fee-only planning service – and the response so far has been fantastic.  Thank you for all of your positive comments and emails, we really appreciate the support.  If you’re interested in working with us, please check out our fee-only advice page where you can read more…

Attempts to enhance the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) failed this week as Ottawa decided to kick the can down the road and wait for the economy to improve before making any changes to contributions and benefits.  Provinces are now looking into their own solutions, including a voluntary pension option. The current average CPP payment to…

We recorded episode three of the Because Money video podcast on Wednesday and welcomed special guest Kerry K. Taylor, the blogger behind Squawkfox.com, to the program to discuss frugal Christmas gifts, the “one toy in, one toy out” rule, and money saving tactics at the grocery store. You’d think after three episodes I’d be a…

Most of us were curious what would become of ING Direct Canada after it was purchased by Scotiabank last year.  Scotia has kept its hands off so far, but one thing we knew for sure was that ING soon had to change its name.   Last week the online bank unveiled the new name, Tangerine,…

Earlier this month I sent out a note to our e-newsletter subscribers asking for feedback and examples of their most hated bank fees.  Incredibly, I received over 50 responses and stories about how the banks can nickel-and-dime us at every turn. I was collecting the information for a feature story I wrote for the Toronto…

A mid-week round-up; what the heck is going on here?  I’d meant to publish our weekend reading last Friday, but when I found out it was Robert Britton’s last day of work before he retired, I just had to publish his retirement story that day. But that meant we missed revealing the winners of our…

On Monday, I wrote a review of Gordon Pape’s new book, How TFSA’s Can Make You Rich.  We promised to give away a copy of that book, plus a copy of, Money Savvy Kids, to one lucky reader. Congratulations to Bryan, whose comment left at 7:33 AM Monday proved to be the winning entry.  I’ll…