Lenten Finances, Leaping and Random Thoughts

Lent began this week with a flurry of pancakes, and then many posts about finances and doing financial penance for you money transgressions, funny how I can take something religious and turn it into a money issue. As you can tell I take every chance possible to suggest that NOW is a good time to start thinking about your finances and planning (you didn’t notice that?).

Greece and Europe continue to lay the track for the financial roller coaster the stock markets are going through. One day WAY up and the next hurtling back down to the ground, frankly, I am getting sick of the whole thing (like they used to say about Space Mountain, “… big deal you spin around for 4 minutes and then you want to throw up).

The exciting part about next week is that all those folks who were born on February 29th get to have a genuine Birthday, and we all get to enjoy an extra day for RRSP frenzy buying too. I wonder if there are other weird traditions out there for February 29th? Drink from the other side of the cup? Sleep on the other side of the bed? Change banks?  Maybe I’ll eat my cereal with a fork?

Weekly Recap

Yes a very heavily Lenten laden week, but still a few other important tax points to watch out for as well:

• Some interesting videos and lots of links to oldies but goodies with Love Week and Sunday’s Best.
• If CPI is Sneaking back up for January, we might all be better to look at energy and food prices, directly, it’s bad!
• I ate too many pancakes on Tuesday, but not Financial Pancakes like I mention in that piece.
• Usually when I talk about Lent in Finances, I am talking about how you shouldn’t have money lent to you, but not this time.
• Time to break out the tax software with Tax Time: When the T4 Arrives, do you have your receipts yet?

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 goes very philosophical on us asking the interesting question Does Money Bring Happiness ? It might not, but it certainly has friends who can bring it.
• Red Vines and Red Wine is an interesting site, and I am not completely sure what the main theme of the site is, however Welcome to the Pity Party, BYOB is quite captivating (i.e. I can’t stop reading it for some odd reason).
• Tom at Canadian Finance Blog  has a guest post which asks When are Student Loans Worth the Debt? When the parents don’t want to go into debt up to their neck?
• Mr. Money Mustache gives us an interesting analysis with Reader Case Study: Getting Blood from a Stone, surprisingly you can’t get blood from a parsnip either (a Hogan’s Heroes quote!).
• Michael James points out that OAS Remedies Should not Just be About Cost Containment, where he points out raking money back may not be the best way to contain spending.
• Our Financial Kin at My Own Advisor outlines Closing your DRiPs and SPPs, transferring your shares to brokerage, I always enjoy reading about DRiPs.
• Boomer of Boomer and Echo wonders Could you have a Frugal February? If you work at it, you can, remember it is Lent too!
• Gail Vaz-Oxlade gives us some obvious, but still very useful Ways to Save Money on Groceries, the shopping with a list sounds really obvious, but it is VERY true!
• Preet brings us a Funny Video: The Greek Economy, which made me laugh. If you haven’t seen Preet on TV lately, you haven’t been looking closely, because he is EVERYWHERE these days. I turned on my iPhone and he was on there too!

Other Bookkeeping

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An odd Leap Year Quote

Never play leap frog with a Unicorn

• Anonymous (on Leap Day either)