Slow Thinking, Fast Olympians and Random Thoughts for a Friday

This week, I celebrated the slow-thinking folks out there. Now I am not espousing decision grid-lock, but I do think it’s a good idea to think about things before making a snap decision!

In Ottawa Simon Whitfield was announced as the Olympic Flag Bearer for the opening ceremonies in London. I wandered by and watched some of the set up of the stage for the official announcement. This, of course, means that Mr. Whitfield will not win anything (the Flag Bearer typically has a lot of bad luck at the Olympics), but since he already has an Olympic medal, I guess we shouldn’t feel too sorry for him.

It’s not expected to be talking about forest fires inside the boundaries of Ottawa/Carleton, however, that is what is happening now. Everything is very dry and getting drier! Here is an interesting bit of trivia, one of the spokespersons for the Ottawa Fire Department is Marc Messier (no not that one, but still).

On a personal side, it is never good when you read about your child’s school in the papers, I guess the only solace I can take is that my son will not be returning to the school, however, this does seem to be quite a mess, however, I will be keeping my eye on this one. My son will be attending a different school this fall.

Weekly Recap

We did have a little Olympic news here in Ottawa, as I said, but we also don’t have much water, we are in a drought currently:

• The Sunday’s Best post included a lot of good oldie but goody posts from the Twitter feed.
• Stats Canada points out that the good news is that Unemployment isn’t up, but neither is employment in June 2012.
• All I want when I am being served is a Little Respect, but I continue to get very strange folk being overly familiar with me.
• I’m not Satisfied Either was my message to the CEO of RIM, hopefully they will be able to come back, I have a lot of friends working there.
• As I mentioned it is important to Celebrate the Slow Thinkers, because many decisions made in haste do not turn out the way we hoped.
• Trojans, Explosions, Power Failures and Random Thoughts Lots of things were blowing up real good in 2012, but not just explosions but also some fun financial info as well.

And thanks to those who added me on Twitter. Check out my Facebook page as well.

Links for the Week

We averted having an Election in Ontario (not that anyone really cared), we had the Omnibus Bill of Death pass for our Federal friends, :

• My Own Advisor gives us a Few Great Reasons he owns ETFs, which are better things to buy than Mutual Funds, and if you are going for passive investing, a good idea (I own ETFs as well).
• Boomer of Boomer and Echo asks, Is a Prenup really Necessary? Just ask Katie Holmes about that one, I suppose.
• A Guest Poster on Modest Money seems to not be fond of my Big Cajun Man Personna (not sure if he is singling me out or going after other Fin Bloggers) with Taking Advice From Financial Bloggers with a Grain of Salt. Maybe I shouldn’t mention the whole Clown Prince of Personal Finance handle either?
• KrantCents makes an important statement Forget Everything Else, Marry for Money, really? Man, Mrs. C8j really made a HUGE mistake marrying me! A new commenter too!
• Canadian Budget Binder talks about a touchy subject in many relationships Money Fights and Money Problems.
• The Blunt Bean Counter actually got some help from Michael James for his article Are Your Collectibles Individual Pieces or an Unbreakable Set? An interesting tax point of view put forward. Makes me wish I kept my 1972 complete set of NHL Hockey Cards (I chomped a lot of stale bubble gum to make that happen).
• Michael James points out that many people suffer from Fear About Large Sums of Money, just because it’s $10,000 decision does that mean you shouldn’t decide?
• The Canadian Couch Potato explains a new ETF strategy with The Long and Short of Barbell Bond ETFs, which is very different from Ladder Bond ETFs.
• Miranda at Planting Money Seeds gives us a Basic Look at Income Investing, a good read for those wondering about this topic.
• Gail Vaz-Oxlade gave us a Week of Stories, where Gail tells many folks different stories, for the whole week.
• Preet returns from his travels with Podcast Episode 9: Mobile Wallets, Roaming Charges & Oprah, the roaming charges advice is really good, and the rest of the podcast rocks as well.