Leaping Saint David’s Week in Lent and Random Thoughts

With Saint David’s Day passing, and a Leap Day as well, it has been an exciting week, even without any financial stuff that has happened this week.

In Canada we have a real political broo-ha-ha brewing with the Harper government being accused of more dirty tricks, which included having a robo-call scandal arising. The call’s allegedly came from Pierre Poutine (or someone like that), but we shall see whether this turns into a fun political scandal, or whether it just disappears into the LRT tunnels of Ottawa.

Weather continues to be a hot topic, with snowstorms in Eastern Canada and tornadoes in the United States. This time of year we have all kinds of weather, in all kinds of places. Whatever trips you plan, you had better take the weather into consideration, or Mother Nature might take a bite out of your… elbow.

Davy Jones (the former Monkees lead singer) passed away this week as well. I was a Monkees fan (I admit it), and I am saddened to think that voice is no longer with us.

Weekly Recap

A week where I did wander pretty far off topic, but I have been doing that all over the place (my wife is sure I could wander off a tight rope):

• With Knees in Packages and Sunday’s Best there were some fun old posts from me, and one of my favorite Rick Mercer video clips as well.
• Mr. McGuinty is working hard to figure out What Gets Cut in Ontario, admittedly this is just a proposal, but a very wide swath of ideas.
• My daughter is looking at a new apartment and you’d be amazed the information that they want from me, I outline it with You Want WHAT Information?
• Then I wandered off with Happy Leap Day, although I did give some financial ideas on how to celebrate that day.
• Happy Saint David’s Day really is way off topic, but I think it’s important to remember that day.
• Lenten Finances, Leaping and Random Thoughts Lent and finances: Financial penance for your money transgressions. Make NOW the time to start thinking about your finances and planning. 

And thanks to those who added me on Twitter I am now over 1000 folks who follow me, holy cow! Check out my facebook page as well (but no I won’t be buying Facebook stock because of this either).

Links for the Week

This week there have been a lot more giveaways this week, and with our Greek friends causing more financial grief, there was a lot to write about:

• The Blunt Bean Counter brings us an interesting post about When to have “The Talk” about Your Will, I have already told my kids any inheritance is going to be blown on cheap liquor and gambling, so forget about getting anything from me.
• Larry MacDonald is back with a vengeance and takes on a Quebecois sacred cow when SNC Lavalin Shares Plunge, and that is always a bad word when associated with an engineering firm (plunge that is).
• Mr. Money Mustache espouses us to Get Rich: with good old fashioned hard work, what a let down, I wanna get rich quick without doing anything.
• Michael James shares with us Buffett’s Annual Shareholder’s Letter, why would I buy shares in Jimmy Buffet? I mean I do like to be wasted again in Margeritaville, but still, seems a little risky. Oh WARREN BUFFETT, ok, never mind.
• Canadian Capitalist talks about Filing Taxes is a SNAP with SnapTax, which is interesting, but where do you input your capital gain accrual? Surprisingly these guys wanted to show me this before their launch, but I was too busy to see it, now I feel like I missed something cool.
• Our Financial Kin at My Own Advisor talks about the end of the world with The RRSP Deadline and some final Thoughts, not really he is just talking about RRSP seasons coming to an end.
• Echo of Boomer and Echo does a quick How Index Funds Compare to Mutual Funds, are people still buying high MER Mutual funds? REALLY?!?
• Miranda at Planting Money Seeds, makes an interesting point about Earned Income vs. Unearned Income (for the folks down south), an interesting perspective.
• Gail Vaz-Oxlade gives us a useful list with 7 Steps to Getting out of Debt (you could of course cheat and at step ZERO, don’t get into debt!).
• Preet brings us via his co-writer Tusk Trader an interesting question What’s in a Number? DOW Hits 13,000 but does it matter? Not sure, does the DOW matter, or does the number matter?

Saint David’s Day Thought

Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.

• Dylan Thomas (another great Welshman)