Canadian Dream: Free at 45 One Canadian's dream to retire at 45. Topics include: early retirement, investing, savings, spending, and happiness.

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Book Review: The Complete Tightwad Gazzette
2007-11-29 13:25:02
With my current plan to reduce expenses for the next six months I figure I need to do some research on how to be extra frugal, so I borrowed a copy of The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn from the library. I have to say this is not your average book of penny [...] ...
Book  Book Review  Review 

My Money Mistake and How to Avoid it
2007-11-28 13:17:17
Well Ram over at the Canadian Capitalist is celebrating his blog’s third birthday and in order to help him celebrate I’m going to take up his challenge to write on my money mistake and how to avoid it. In my case I feel one of my bigger mistakes was leasing a new car just out of [...] ...
Money 

A Review of My Holiday Spending
2007-11-27 13:49:10
I had a question from a reader, Jordan, about how I handle my holiday spending. By an odd twist of fate I had several of my old Christmas budget files still on my hard drive, so I in the position of being able to analyze how much I’ve spent in the last four [...] ...
Holiday  Review 

The New File System - Update #3
2007-11-26 14:03:34
Today is the day, I was supposed to have my new file system in place and running. I do have the file system in place yet I’m a bit sad to report I have yet to finish cleaning up all my old files. This part of the process is taking a bit longer [...] ...
System 

Why is the Stock Market Like a Yo-Yo?
2007-11-23 17:38:44
Sorry for the late post everyone.  My computer crashed this morning and I didn’t have time to get this post up till now.  I spend a fair amount of my time ignoring the stock market. Really. The main reason is it drives me nuts if I look at it every day. So in my own defense I’ve gotten [...] ...
Market  Stock  Stock Market 

Frugal Living By Reusing and Reducing
2007-11-22 13:45:09
I’m currently trying to avoid extra expenses in order to save for my wife’s upcoming maternity leave (starting next May). So I’ve found myself doing all sorts of projects around the house by reusing what I already have to fix problems or reducing my costs in new ways. For example, the daycare room needed more storage, [...] ...
Living  Reducing 

The Basic Accounts
2007-11-21 13:28:12
It occurs to the other day that I have yet to ever really discuss how I handle my day to day financial stuff. So in the interest of seeing if anyone else has any great ideas I’m going to lay out where I have the accounts and what I use them for. The Chequing [...] ...

Doing the “Impossible”
2007-11-20 14:09:02
I think we as a society tend to limit the potential of people by using the word “impossible.” Whenever I talk about retiring VERY early people tend to just smile and nod and you can almost see the thought behind their eyes of “this guy is trying to do the impossible, he is crazy.” [...] ...
Impossible 

The New File System - Update #2
2007-11-19 13:46:07
So another week has past and I’m a bit sad to report I haven’t made any huge leaps this time on my new file system. I’m still just chipping away at my old filing trying to bring it under the new system, but I hit a roadblock when I ran out of file folders. [...] ...
System 

The Magnification of Savings
2007-11-16 13:55:29
I can’t recall where I read this, but I believe it is true. Generally speaking, success is invisible. We don’t pay attention to something when it works, so for all intensive purposes when things work well it becomes invisible. Only the failures stand out for all to see. I think that applies well to my [...] ...

$50 Giftcard Winner
2007-11-15 13:51:15
The birthday draw ended last night and I’m happy to announce the winner is Fecundity. I’ll be contacting you shortly to pick out which gift card you would like. Thanks for the feedback everyone.  There were some excellent points and ideas from everyone on what they like about the blog or ideas for improvement.  I’ve [...] ...
Winner 

Should I Leverage Invest?
2007-11-14 13:36:28
With the recent drop in the US and Canada stock markets I’m starting to get ideas. Should I get into leverage investing? After all I can borrow money from a secure line of credit at prime it doesn’t take much a dividend income for me to break even on my interest costs and if [...] ...
Leverage 

Winning Other People’s Prizes?
2007-11-13 13:28:23
Ok, this is fairly weird. Well at least to me it is. A long time reader, who recently started her own blog, entered a contest on another blog, Brip Blap. She won and then picked a prize that benefited me as a present for this blog’s birthday. So now I’m [...] ...

Book Review: Smart Couples Finish Rich
2007-11-13 13:15:33
After reading yet another mention of the book Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach the other day, I finally broke down and borrowed a copy of the Canadian Edition from my library. Overall I liked the book as a beginner book. It provides some solid advice on some basic parts of personal finance [...] ...
Book  Book Review  Couples  Review 

The New File System - Update #1
2007-11-12 15:22:59
After my public declaration I went to work and got started on trying to overhaul my file system. I decided to model the system after the one mentioned in Smart Couples Finish Rich by David Bach. The reason I like his system is it covers the basics without being overly complicated. [...] ...
System 

Happy 1st Birthday Canadian Dream!
2007-11-09 13:51:02
Well despite the odds today this blog is one year old with five posts a week. YA! There were times I came close to giving up and packing it in, but your support kept me going. We’ve had some interesting discussions over the last year. Some I regret bringing up and others [...] ...
Birthday  Canadian  Happy Birthday 

Need to Go Super Frugal - Ideas?
2007-11-08 13:41:33
Ok, I’m in savings mode here in an attempt to save enough money to take some time off when kid#2 arrives in May.  My savings plans have been a little limited by the fact I don’t know what my new pay is going to look like after taxes from the new Megacorp that just bought [...] ...

Money and This Blog
2007-11-07 13:53:39
I find it rather interesting that there are all these sites dedicated to making money with blogs such as Problogger. I read a few of them more out of just trying to build a better blog rather than make money. Frankly I’m not doing this to get rich or even have it as [...] ...
Blog  Money 

Why Isn’t There Universal Personal Financial Education?
2007-11-06 13:18:01
It’s occurred to me that despite the idea coming up several times by various people over the years, there never has been a serious attempt to get personal finance as part of the basic high school curriculum in every school in North America. Why is that? Then it hit me. Perhaps the [...] ...
Education  Financial  Personal  Universal 

My Public Declaration
2007-11-05 13:58:50
Frugal Trader over at Million Dollar Journey tagged me about declaring a public goal. Since this a good meme I’ve decided to play along. For my public declaration I’m going to deal with something that has been a torn in my side for the last decade or so: my file system. You see the [...] ...

The Start of Personal Fianance Isn’t About Money
2007-11-02 14:02:05
Anyone new to learning about all this personal finance stuff would easily think it’s all about doing a budget, saving and having an investment plan after reading just about everyone’s personal finance blogs. Actually the very start of all personal finance has nothing to do with money. Shocking isn’t it? The true start of [...] ...
Money  Personal 

I Love my Federal Government
2007-11-01 13:49:38
Ok, perhaps ‘love’ would be a bit strong of a word, but I really like the adjustment they have made to the basic tax exemption for Canadians.  See here for details.  The general gist of it is they have raised the exemption this year to $9600 and plan to raise it again to $10,100 per [...] ...
Government  Love 

Net Worth - Oct 2007 Update
2007-10-31 13:22:18
It’s that time again. Yes it’s Halloween, so enjoy all those kids on a sugar high ringing your doorbell! Meanwhile here’s some numbers and graphs to get you ready for all those brightly coloured costumes. Assets House $299,000 RRSP $14,000 Old Work Pension (LIRA) $12,100 New Work Pension $3700 Wife’s RRSP $6000 Wife’s Investment Account $8200 High Interest Savings Account $3200 Debt Mortgage $144,900 Line of [...] ...

Your Health in Retirement
2007-10-30 13:39:57
Since I was sick yesterday I obviously spent some time thinking about my health in general. I don’t do too bad looking after myself, but I know I have a way to go on a few things. This becomes much more serious as you enter your retirement years since the damage you do [...] ...
Health  Retirement 

I’m Sick
2007-10-29 14:42:17
Sorry folks no post today.  I spent part of my night emptying the contents of my stomach into the local sewer system and I don’t have a draft that is ready to post. If you liked that post, then try these...Money and This Blog by Canadian Dream on November 7th, 2007I find it rather interesting that [...] ...

Counting Down Two Weeks
2007-10-26 14:20:31
I look at the calender last night and was a bit shocked to find I’m just two weeks away from this blog being a year old. Has it really been this long already? You mean some one actually reads this crap some days (and yes I do think some of my posts are [...] ...

Your Relationships in Retirement - Part III
2007-10-25 14:50:28
This is my final post about your relationships in retirement series. In part I we talked about our spouse, while in part II we talked about the kids. Now we are going to explore your friendships. I find it almost strange that it doesn’t occur to people that their relationships are likely going to [...] ...
Relationships  Retirement 

You Just Have to Read This
2007-10-24 14:27:31
Alright, I was planning on finishing up my series about relationships in retirement until I read this article by Rob Carrick.  Which sums up my feelings very nicely about all these ’studies’ done by mutual fund companies. So enjoy the read and we will return to our regular programming tomorrow. If you liked that post, then try [...] ...

Your Relationships in Retirement - Part II
2007-10-23 14:01:41
Yesterday we covered your relationship with your spouse. Now I’m going to talk about your relationship to your children. You will likely find that during raising your children that they say some of the oddest things. It’s like they forget about reality for a split second and try to ask for the moon (or [...] ...
Relationships  Retirement 

Your Relationships in Retirement - Part I
2007-10-22 14:19:46
With retirement we achieve a freedom we really haven’t felt since childhood. We can do what ever we want and when ever we want (within reason and your budget). So with all this new found freedom comes a few issues around our relationships that we just didn’t see coming. So in order to address [...] ...
Relationships  Retirement