I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. There is money in your kitchen! The room of your home where you keep your fridge and your stove, your pots and your pans, your cutlery and your crockery is a treasure of stored value. The way to find this money is to use your kitchen […]
Gentle Reader, I’ve been working on staying COVID-free. I’ve been staying home, washing my hands, wearing my mask, and trying not to go down the What-If rabbit hole. While I wait for a vaccine/innoculation/nasal spray, I’ve chosen to use this time wisely. The pandemic will end – we will all be able to breathe around […]
Who doesn’t love the word “free”? This week, I decided to buy myself some new jeans. I went to the website of one of my favourite jeans-buying retailers, and discovered to my delight that everything was 50% off. Hooray! Jeans I want at a price I wanted to pay… how could I possibly ask for […]
Quick! Take a look at your current net worth. If you had known 10 years ago that it would be what it is today, would you have been angry if you had been forced to save more money??? The reason I ask is because I’m getting older. And the older I get, the more I […]
Let me tell you a little secret about myself… I’m not good at math! Luckily for me, higher level math is not required for success in personal finance. Oh, I have a firm handle on the basics – addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions & exponents. However, the higher level stuff like algebra, calculus, and trigonometry […]
I’ve long held the belief that choosing to donate to worthy causes is a deeply personal thing. Some people donate their time. Others donate their money. Whichever you choose is the right answer for you. At the end of the day, I sincerely believe that donating to charitable causes is a very good use of […]
Per Diem… it’s a phrase that means “an amount of money paid per day.” In the world of personal finance, it’s a phrase that is not used nearly enough. I want you to commit to a per diem. That’s right. I want you to pay yourself some amount of money every single day. I’ve written […]
As hard as it may be to believe, the holidays are only a few weeks away. Thanksgiving will be here in another couple of weeks. (Or in November if you’re in the USA.) Then it’s another few short weeks until we celebrate Christmas, or Hannukkah, or Kwaanza, or Festivus. While the holidays will be different […]
The management expense ratio (MER) is the percentage of your portfolio that you pay to the company that sells you the index fund, exchange traded fund (ETF) or mutual fund that you hold in your portfolio. The fees for these products must be disclosed to potential buyers. Thanks to the wonder that is the internet, […]
The silver linings are there if you look for them, even in a pandemic. We all know that COVID-19 has changed things in a fundamental way at a societal level. However, as with most things in life, its impact on individual lives is different depending on one’s access to money and resources. Over the past […]