Weekend Reading - Things That Matter Edition

It’s that time again where we wind up the week by providing you with some reading for the weekend. As usual the reading is sourced by fellow personal finance and lifestyle bloggers we like to keep tabs on. Why? Their content is AWESOME! Last Saturday we reached a personal blogging resolution we were aiming for which was completing the Yakezie Challenge in 8 weeks. It was a great feeling so this week we are focusing on things that matter to us.

Weekend Reading Editors Picks

Our top pick this week goes to BigCajunMan over at THE Canadian Finance Blog where he discussed The Value of a Day Off. Why does having a day off matter to us? Simple, it means we’re not at work and instead we are doing something with our friends, loved ones or getting some good down time all alone. We really value our vacation days and our workplace has a compressed work week where if we work 33 extra minutes every day, we can take every third Friday off work. This is a fantastic arrangement as we get about 17 extra days off each year which compared to a measly 1/2 hour a day seems awesome. Additionally, in line with our blog theme, it means that many people are not commuting to work (not us however).

I read an interesting article by Broke Professional this week which outlines How Your Spouses Job Can Assist Your Salary Negotiations. Of late Mrs. SPF and I have been exploring our potential career options so we found this to be an intriguing read. Primarily, we think that with one spouse employed in a place with health, insurance and pension benefits the other spouse may be able to delve into more desirable ventures. More on this topic may follow in the coming months - we’ll see.

We write a personal finance blog with a sustainable twist. We admit we are not above tracking our finances very closely. As such, we track our net worth on a monthly basis. Now this isn’t something we’ve shared with our readers as this sort of information really puts our personal finance information out there for all to see (obviously). We do remain anonymous authors here at SPF but that may not last forever, for whatever reason(s). Anyhow, I found My Journey to Millions idea about detailing only month to month changes in his net worth intriguing and we’ll tune in for his first update.

We stumbled a bit of a controversial post today at treehugger.com regarding whether or not Eating Meat from Sustainable Farms is a More Effective Way to Combat Current Food Production and Distribution Systems Compared to Vegetarianism. That was a mouthful but dang interesting. We make a conscious effort to buy local meat that is raised in what we consider a sustainable manner. We aren’t interested in being vegetarians. However, apparently there are militaristic opinions even from what I had (wrongly) considered a passive group in vegetarians. We commented on the article but only heard crickets in response - I’d love if our readers had feedback for me!

Our last editor pick this week comes from a regularly highlighted writer here at SPF, Canadian Couch Potato who discusses When a Dividend Strategy Makes Sense. We’re very interested in passive income and dividend income definitely falls into the category of things that matter to us. We’re convinced employing a Dividend Strategy makes sense for us.

Next up, more great articles I read this week, by category.

Sustainability

101 Centavos provided us with 5 S’s for the 2011 Spring Garden. We are very excited to start our garden at our new (old) house in the spring so this article definitely came at a great time, although in Canada we have a few more months until the snow goes away.

Once again Seeking Alpha graces our weekend reading as they discussed subsidies for electric automobile manufacturers comparing to such subsidies as Taxing Peter to Buy Paul’s New Car.

Retirement

Canadian Dream Free at 45 dominates our retirement reading this week with a few articles we found interesting. The first discussed Pensions: Good, Bad and Ugly. If you are part of the lucky 36% of Canadians who have a pension you will be well served to see what category your pension falls into. Additionally, CDF@45 outlines how poorly the 18-34 year old Generation is doing at Saving For Retirement.

DoNotWait gives us 10 Reasons to Save for Your Retirement. As a PF blogger I think “well, duh!” but given how poorly Canadians have done saving for retirement across most every generation these 10 reasons could be very handy for many people. Pass them on.

Purchases

Invest It Wisely and his partner recently Bought their First Home Together. Very exciting process and experience. Mrs. SPF and I did the same last summer and we really should write about it soon.

Think Buying a Condo in Florida sounds like a good idea? If you live in Canada and are dealing with our winter right now it sounds lovely. The Financial Blogger gives us reasons to think twice about making a hasty decision.

Personal Finance

Looking for a controversial subject? Head on over to Sweating the Big Stuff where the post Don’t Waste Money on an Emergency Fund sure provided sparks!

Free Money Finance tells us we should Compute our Net Worth Once a Year. Personally I think it more prudent to do so on a monthly basis but every individual and family has a different financial reality and you need to cater your financial analysis in line with what works for you.

The TFSA was introduced to Canadians in 2009 and boy-oh-boy was it ever confusing and poorly communicated. Realized Returns provides us with 10 Facts on TFSAs. We also, reluctantly, will tell you that Realized Returns wants you to Read His Drivel and Win a Kindle.

2 Cents @ Balance Junkie reviewed Information Safe, a place to Organize Your Personal Information. Not our cup of tea, much like Mint.ca/com primarily because we don’t like all of our extremely sensitive information stored by a third party, online. I read of far too many companies who are compromised on almost a monthly basis. We’ll stick to our locked firebox.

Darwin’s Money takes a look at the Present Value of Money Explained. Good advice.

Lifestyle

Frugal Zeitgeist discusses Building Muscle for Long Term Fitness. Something I really need to get back into more seriously.

Want to figure out How to Get Rid of Cellulite? Prairie EcoThrifter gives you some great tips.

We Love the Farmer’s Market. Mint.com does too.

Investing

I knew about Dollar Cost Averaging but Dollar Value Averaging is a new concept for me. I’m glad Frugal Trader @ Million Dollar Journey showed me the difference.

Div.net tells us that Intel looks like a Value Play. I thought so a few months ago, but being new to investing i’m still learning how to evaluate stocks so I wasn’t quite sure. Hopefully I didn’t wait to late to add this tech giant to our TFSA.

Blogging

Buy Life Buffet is in the enviable position to give away an iPad and other prizes in a giveaway he is running.

Give me Back My 5 Bucks is giving away some Quicken Tax Software to Canadians in a contest!

Should You Guest Post? You sure should! Aloysa’s Kitchen Sink told us why this week. Speaking of Guest Posts, we were happy to have Mom’s Plans guest post, Treat the Family Budget like a Business, on our site this week. Mom’s Plans hosted our post Mom Knows Best in return. Additionally, we hosted Miss T’s post What is Geothermal Energy and Why Should You Use It while she hosted our post 10 Ways to $ave Energy Comfortably. We also swapped posts with Sustainable Life Blog as Jeff gave us Make Your Own Cleaning Products and we posted at his site about how you can Burn Calories Not Fuel. Our new friend Broke Professional also guest posted on our site about how in the USA they have a seemingly backwards system in that Paperless Billing: Punished for Being Green?

Thanks to the following fellow bloggers who highlighted our articles this week:

• Million Dollar Journey who as a fellow Canadian understands why air sealing your home is important.
• Not Made of Money who highlighted our Journey to Discover the Best Canadian Rewards Credit Card.
• Buck Inspire who found our correlation of Our EcoEnergy Retrofit to be a quirky but fitting way to earn passive income.
• Invest With Passion who mentioned our suggestion on how to better save for retirement.
• Canadian Personal Finance Blog who understands why we Brew Our Own Coffee
• Prairie EcoThrifter who is reading Mrs. SPF’s Sustainable Wedding Planning Series and the first instalment on Attire.
• Money Smarts Blog who caught our post Mom Knows Best @ Mom’s Plans and enjoyed the read on the 10 lessons I learned from my Mom while growing up in a frugal-household-out-of-necessity.
• Canadian Finance Blog who highlighted the Make Your Own Cleaning Products guest post we had this week.