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I (Adina J), a self-confessed personal finance snob, select a handful of excellent PF articles from the week gone by. The TimelessFinance Sunday Reader serves these pieces to Readers of refined tastes. And because we all need a bit of comedic relief at the end of a long week, I’ll label one Personal Finance Fail — a self-explanatory category. |
Another slow start to the week, with most of Canada still in a turkey-induced stupor on Monday. (Canadian Thanksgiving, international peeps – see, we really are different here.) I’m sure there was at least one amazing post that I missed that day, but I was in recovery too. Not from serotonin withdrawal, but from a 4.5 hour car ride with a toddler. Yes, I’m a masochist. Let’s get to the good stuff, shall we?
I’ll be honest: when I first scanned the headline to this MoneySense article, I thought I was going to read about Warren Buffett’s grocery list, or maybe his preference for car manufacturers. Actually, it’s about the Buffett-approved value investing approach which, while less ripe with lame joke potential, is a far more enlightening read.
My Own Advisor did an interview with DIY Investor Susan Brunner. She’s a wealth of knowledge about patience, the superiority of dividend stocks, and why your best advisor is you (Hey! That’s the name of the website!).
She Thinks I’m Cheap! wrote about 6 ways to help fight lifestyle inflation. One of my favourite is a variant of the his first example: understand how much money the things you want really cost. My husband and I once spent a good chunk of a date-night dinner figuring out how much extra (gross) income it would take for us to get a second (brand new) car. (Yes, we really are that boring.) Assuming we didn’t go looking at Audis, and got decent financing, after adding in insurance, fuel and zero maintenance costs, we came to a conservative number of $20K (gross) per year. That’s how much extra money we would have to make to get a second car without the purchase affecting our current cash flow and savings ratio. Although we are totally awesome and brilliant (naturally), it would still take us a bit of time to get our incomes up by that much. Pass, thanks.
The Personal Finance Fail of the Week comes from Canadian Finance Blog writer Alan Schram, who counsels us against buying cheap shoes, vehicles and computers. Buying quality products is an excellent idea; thinking that price is a reliable indicator of quality is a rookie mistake. Writing prose like this is even less excusable:
“Feet are important. You never really realize just how important your feet are, or how much they support you, until you injure one of them. Walking around on a wound is an incredibly painful and uncomfortable experience, and I don’t recommend it for anyone.”
Masterfully insightful. But, Alan, a tip: if your $70 shoes don’t last more than a year, you’re doing something wrong.
That’s all for the Sunday Reader. Check back on Wednesday for part 4 of 4 in my series on work wardrobes. Have a good week!
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Lovin’ the blog love…thanks for the mention!
BTW, on Facebook now – feel free to connect with me. I will do the same.
Mark
Welcome to Facebook pages; I used my personal profile to “Like” MOA and also added it to the TF page’s favourites.
For some reason, a Page’s “favorites” don’t count as Likes. You have to “Like” the page with your personal profile for it to count.
And NP, that interview was a great post!
Thanks for the mention! Glad to hear that you passed on the second car since it didn’t make financial sense. Chrunching the numbers might not be fun, espesially when you’re out on the town, but it’s worth it in the long run.
Andrew
It’s fun to us! But we’re weird people
You guys are money heroes. Keep fighting the good fight.
And Adina, cancel your cable. lol
Never, Joe! I finally got HBO back