This is where your finance takes place

Here are the good read for this week:

Money Answer Guy goes along with his financial blogger confessions. A pretty and straight forward post about being honest with your readers. I think that it is very important to be honest and show integrity to your readers. If you don’t what is the point of writing then?

Canadian Capitalist shares with us the story of Dave. After investing several years with a broker, he decided to become a DIY Investor. Investing on your own is a very exciting experience. Though it is sometimes painful Good luck to Dave!

I found out that My Trader Journal also wrote about OIL ETF . Going up? Going down? One thing for sure is that oil is moving big time! I would say that it’s probably time to establish a butterfly strategy with calls and puts on oil. This strategy enables you to make money on a stock as long as it does some good fluctuations (either up or down).

Debt Free is doing a list of things we should look at when doing a mortgage debt consolidation. Paying off your debts with the equity lying in your house might be a good idea. However, like everything else in personal finance, take your time before you do anything!

If you want to invest and don’t bother too much about managing your portfolio, Four Pillars has the answer with his sleeping pill portfolio. He gives us some trick in order to have a good portfolio and not panicking too much in times like now.

Carnivals:

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Money Hack

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Here are the good read for this week:

Money Ning had a great idea of using Google Alert to get more coupons. I never thought of using Google alert for this purpose. It may become lucrative

Million Dollar Journey explains us why it is important to keep a good credit score and he is giving us some tips. Your credit score is definitely one of the very first thing you should take a look at when you are starting to manage your personal finance.

The Dividend Guy writes about 9 rules of risk management.  Investing on your own can be a great or catastrophic experience. By learning to manage your risk properly, you may live longer

DINKS is writing about The Economy.  I personally don’t know where we are heading right now with the Subprime’s, oil prices going crazy and the economic slow down. My only advice right now is to keep a few bucks aside and not making major purchases.

Finally, The Personal Financier is talking about how to save money by shopping your grocery online. I never did that thinking it would cost me more because of delivery charges. According to her, it could become an interesting frugal idea

Carnivals:

Carnival of Personal Finance

Festival of Frugality

Carnival of Money Stories

Carnival of Financial Planning

Carnival of Everything Finance

If you liked this article, you might want to sign up for my FULL RSS FEED. Then, you would get my daily post in your email and can read it at any time. To subscribe, please click HERE.

Here are the good read for this week:

American Consumer News wrote an interesting article on how to save money at the grocery store. With the price of oil going up every day, this is probably the place in my budget where it went up the most!

Debt Free is trying to explain the cause of the US humongous debt. I was happy to find out that the department of defense was not the most important expense in the US. Only the third one…. with 575… BILLIONS! WTF? I think Canada didn’t reach this amount even if we add the last 100 years expenses in the defense department!

Dual Income no Kids are writing about the difference between a second mortgage and a PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance). With my banker experience, I would say that it is easier (but much more expensive) to get a PMI. Second mortgage offered by financial institution will be more expensive than a first mortgage but still affordable

The Personal Financier offers a good reflexion on Privatization. Since I live in a province where several things are run by the government (education, health care, roads and transportation), we are tempted to believe that privatization would be the ultimate solution to our problems. After seeing Sicko, I changed my mind!

In a time where the stock market isn’t going so well. Some people are hiding behind good paying dividend stock. The Dividend Guy write about signs that will tell you when a company potentially drop its dividend.

Thicken My Wallet point out the fact that several people are dependent from a Blackberry and ask if those people should be paid to look over their emails after work hours? I think it is up to employees to set their own limit. On the other side, I don’t think an employer should expect them to work for free… unless the blackberry is given with a specific mandate. Then, it’s up to the employee to refuse

Carnivals:

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Careers

Carnival of Debt Reduction

Festival of Frugality

Carnival of Everything Finance

If you liked this article, you might want to sign up for my FULL RSS FEED. Then, you would get my daily post in your email and can read it at any time. To subscribe, please click HERE.

Money Ning wrote an interesting article about how much you really make when you save money. While saving money can be quite a pain, don’t forget that when you save a buck, it’s a buck after taxes and other contributions. Therefore, you are saving a lot more than a simple buck

Invest in India is telling us why Equity funds hold cash in their portfolio. The purpose of an equity funds is to be heavily invested in stocks so it can provide a good return. While liquidity is technically reducing the expected return of the portfolio, there are some reasons hidden behind fund managers investment strategies.

There is a great post about Risk management via insurance written by Brian Poncelet as a guest writer for Million Dollar Journey. While insurance is not my favorite topic, I must admit that there is a great deal of risk that can be reduced with insurance.

I found some funny pics from The Digerati Life who shows us what a market crash looks like. I recognized this kind of expression since I experienced the market crash feeling once… what a painful experience!

Mr. Cheap from Four Pillars wrote the a small guide about making $30 a month in passive income. With a title like that, it caught my attention right upfront! He also had the great idea of splitting them by poor/rich and no skills/skills categories.

The stock you are holding is decreasing its dividend? There are 3 ways to react to a dividend drop. The Dividend Guy is telling you what you could possibly do and why. I would personally re-evaluate the stock and find out why the company decided to decrease its dividend. Sometimes, you are better off sticking to your investment strategy!

Carnivals:

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Careers (Yipee! another Edtior’s Pick!)

Festival of Frugality

Carnival of Money Stories

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You end up first and while you are desperately taking your breath back, while you sweet like a pouring rain, while your heart is tearing down your t-shirt to get out of your body; someone get beside you and say ”You are lucky! You finished first!”.

Lucky? Yeah, LUCKY. I am sure that many of you hear that remark at least once in your life. It usually happens more when people think that you are doing well on the financial plan. “You were lucky to get that job” or “you were lucky since your parent backed you up during college” or even “you are lucky to have all of this, most people work hard their whole life and don’t have what it”. Lucky… really?

I personally think that there is no such thing as luck in life. Off course there are opportunities and you can benefit a great deal from them. However, opportunities are offered to everybody. It’s more a matter of recognizing them and benefit from them.

Some people will walk on their side of the sidewalk without even looking what is going on on the other side of the street. They work hard and they are honest, but they are walking with blindfold eyes. Those people use the word lucky a little to much.

While I am very far away from being rich, I think I am having a good start on the financial plan considering my age what I have accumulated so far. Some people have the guts to tell me I am lucky and that really frustrates me.

There is no such thing as working hard day after day, making sacrifices and being told that all that you have is not related to your efforts but you owe a big one to lady luck!

When I see a successful person, regardless in which field, I am not telling myself “oh boy, this one is lucky to be so good at what he does” but I am asking “I really wonder how he made it that far”.

Sorry for the rant of the day, but I really needed to write it down so I can feel better I don’t think there is a magic secret for success. In fact it is quite simple. Make a plan, work hard, don’t loose your objective and wish the best for you and for everybody around you. With this kind of attitude, you won’t need luck anyway

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