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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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How to Save 33% of Your Net Pay
2007-10-19 15:12:04
As I previously mentioned over at Million Dollar Journey I save about 33% of my net (take home) pay when our household gross income is around $75,000. I say ‘around’ since the daycare’s income tend to fluctuate up and down a bit, so it’s always a bit hard to tell where the year will [...] ...
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Living Without Wants
2007-10-18 14:51:32
I’m now putting together my Christmas wish list after my wife reminded me again and I’m noticing something interesting this year. I’m having a hard time coming up with a list!
It feels a bit strange, but I think I’ve hit a place where I have enough of most things that I really don’t [...] ...
Living
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The Pension Problem
2007-10-17 14:51:22
I’m confused. I mean very confused. Our company’s new owner has different pension plans than what I currently have. The good news is one of the plans is a group RSP that vests at once, so it doesn’t have the drawbacks of a traditional pension. I don’t have to wait [...] ...
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My ‘Success’ Story
2007-10-16 14:30:37
*** Warning - This is a VERY long post***
Over at Get Rich Slowly, JD is having a contest which is part of his group writing project which asks people to write their own success stories. Since I really haven’t gone into this topic in much detail I thought it would also provide a little [...] ...
Story
Success
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Selling Environmentalism
2007-10-15 14:36:31
Welcome to my post for Blog Action Day. I hope you enjoy it and I intend to put a post with some links to a few of my favorites later this week. Now onto the post.
I feel sorry for environmentalists. They are constantly working trying to get people to change and so much [...] ...
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Blog Action Day is Coming Soon
2007-10-12 14:31:46
After debating back and forth for a while I took the plunge and signed up for Blog Action Day for 2007. So on Monday Oct. 15 I’ll join with over 11,000 other blogs to put up a post related to the environment. This should be interesting to see what everyone writes on if [...] ...
Action
Blog
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Career Limbo
2007-10-10 14:44:58
Not too long ago my company was approached with a buy out offer. Currently that is still be evaluated but it goes through I’ll be seeing a new offer of employment. What really gets me about this entire situation is the statement “Generally all employees will be at the same level of compensation [...] ...
Career
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Issues with Payday Loans
2007-10-09 14:31:08
I’ve never used a payday loan. In fact the only information I really knew about them was that they charged a lot of interest. So when I had a request from National Payday about doing a paid post about payday loans I thought it would be a good idea to do a paid [...] ...
Issues
Loans
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Could I Retire Today?
2007-10-03 15:05:37
Perhaps out just frustration or madness I played a little game with myself today. Could I pull the plug and retire today?
The short answer is not really. You see even if I liquidated my assets and moved to a small town in Saskatchewan where I could buy a house for under $50,000 I [...] ...
Retire
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What Makes a REALLY Good PF Blog?
2007-10-02 14:20:05
I love personal finance (PF) blogs. I really do. I just realized a while back I can’t keep up with all the new ones. So unless I get a link from someone I or I see a link on a blog I do read, I don’t explore much. Yet that other [...] ...
Blog
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The Unexpected Windfall
2007-10-01 14:41:57
Friday was a very good day for me. Why? I got money I wasn’t expecting from my work. I forgot we have a profit sharing plan, so it was a nice surprise when I got an email about a bonus I’m getting shortly. It’s not huge but around 1.5% of my [...] ...
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Dumb Luck Is Also Required
2007-09-28 14:40:59
Larry MacDonald recently had a post on his blog about Derek Foster which was questioning weather the math of Derek’s strategy would let other people follow in his foot steps. The short answer I believe is no.
Each early retirement story I’ve read of very young retirements (ie: under 50) all seem to have a common [...] ...
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How to Host Thanksgiving on the Cheap
2007-09-27 14:28:09
I’ve managed to avoid this for almost thirty years, but it finally caught up with me. We are hosting Thanksgiving for my family, which will be 14 people. The good news is I think we can pull off dinner for around $40 to 50 total. How can I do that? With [...] ...
Thanksgiving
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The $0 Baby Room Challenge
2007-09-26 14:46:02
After discussing this with my wife I’ve decided to embark on an interesting challenge for us. I want to decorate and prepare the baby’s new room with a total budget of $0. So I can only reuse items from our first child or beg, borrow or steal items to complete the room. [...] ...
Baby
Challenge
Room
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Maintaining Your Assets
2007-09-25 14:57:01
I think every is aware that it is a good idea to do a little maintenance on your assets to ensure their value doesn’t drop prematurely. We do oil changes on our vehicles to keep them running longer and we do paint jobs on our houses to keep them looking nice. Yet when [...] ...
Assets
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The Water War - Part III
2007-09-24 14:53:26
The last water bill came in and I’m fairly pleased with the results after installing my low flush toilet. My total usage was 13.2 cubic meters over 33 days or around 400 L per day. For comparison in 1998 in Canada the average personal water usage was 343 L per person per day. [...] ...
War
Water
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The Long Road Ahead
2007-09-21 14:53:46
It appears that I’m going to be out of the office for a few weeks in the next month or so. Dates are not firm yet but it could start the middle of next week and I’m not sure about my access to the internet and time to write posts during those weeks.
I’m going [...] ...
Ahead
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The Other Supports
2007-09-20 14:41:42
Often we talk of supports and we are referring to insurance or government programs like Employment Insurance. Supports are your nets to prevent you from falling. Today I want to talk about the ones which don’t involve money. I want to discuss family and friends.
A little background for newer readers out there. I used to [...] ...
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Charity
2007-09-19 14:53:29
Perhaps one of the least discussed expenses in personal finance blogs is charity, which I define as a voluntary given amount of money to any organization to benefit others. Why is that? I think perhaps we don’t know how to categorize the expense. Is is a bill, a personal expense or [...] ...
Charity
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Pay! What do you mean pay?
2007-09-18 13:58:35
I’ve had the rather good fortune to get a free ride to work for almost a year now. That just came to a crashing halt. Through a series of unfortunate events more horrible than those suffered by a trio of orphans I’m now faced with having to pay to get myself to and [...] ...
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The News and The Plan
2007-09-17 14:31:37
Well after all that waiting it’s now official. I’m going to be a dad for the second time around early May (Yes I’m excited). Yet a major issue with this will be my wife runs her own daycare, which will close during her maternity leave. So how do I pay for a 13 [...] ...
News
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Musing on Life, the Universe and Everything
2007-09-14 14:59:43
On Life: My brain seem particularly slow this morning. It all started out last night when I woke up feeling a bit cold. I assumed I had just lost some sheets and proceeded to roll over. It occurred again and I rolled over. Then after I woke up I walked down [...] ...
Life
Universe
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Saving Money on Your Heating
2007-09-13 14:30:45
Here in Regina, the last week of weather has been just cold enough for me to break down and turn my furnace on first thing in the morning to heat up the house a bit. During the day my south windows still pick up enough solar heat to avoid turning the furnace on overnight [...] ...
Money
Saving Money
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No Post Today
2007-09-12 14:34:27
Due to exciting news beyond my control I can’t think straight this morning and I won’t have post for you. Believe me I’ve tried writing something, but it all seems to be coming out as complete crap today.
As to the news itself. Well your going to have to wait a few days to find out. [...] ...
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The Winner is… and Site Updates
2007-09-11 14:08:42
Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. After stripping out multiple comments from people and my own comment, I’m pleased to announce that Mike of Four Pillars has won a copy of The Lazy Investor by Derek Foster. Mike has been a long time commenter at this blog, so it is nice to see [...] ...
Site
Winner
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The Cut Off
2007-09-10 14:22:49
It occurs to me that I have yet to discuss one of my more useful spending tools. Periodically I’ve noticed our spending starts to go a bit out of control compared to the normal spending. At times like this I reach for one tool that always works like a charm to bring us [...] ...
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Book Review: The Lazy Investor
2007-09-07 14:50:38
After my interview with Derek Foster I was very curious about reading his new book. The book is divided into three parts: part I deals with his investment strategy, part II with investing for kids and the appendix is an update on his life from the last book.
In part I Derek goes through an [...] ...
Book
Book Review
Investor
Review
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