Random Thoughts on 2014, Welcome to MMXV and #BestOf

As it is the end of the year, I figured I’d regurgitate a #Bestof list based on my regular Friday posts. No pontificating precursor with me rambling on about things barely financial, straight on to the exciting data from the past year.

My Top Read Posts for 2014

Surprisingly most of the most read posts I had this year, weren’t really written this year, which means either my writing has great staying power, or I wrote a lot of cods wallop this year (wonder which is more correct).

• A Script for Customer Retention Deals
• CRA Child Disability Benefit (How To)
• RESP from Start to Spend
• The Cost of Cheques
• Costco Gas: Now This is Interesting

The Customer retention script is easily my most read post ever, it even has a few nasty comments from folks on the other end of the phone. The RESP from Start to Spend got some actual media coverage which vaulted it into this list of posts.

Strangely my favorite post in terms of writing Fool Proof Market Timing System, didn’t cause a ripple, nor was it noticed by anyone, just goes to show I can’t tell what folks like or dislike.

Top Commenters for 2014

I must admit that sometimes I am quite perplexed that I don’t get more comments, given some of the more controversial statements I have made. Still, I will strive in the new year to make this more of a dialogue, and less of a monologue with me pontificating my points of view.

• My Own Advisor 70 COMMENTS
• Michael James 60 COMMENTS
• Bet Crooks 47 COMMENTS
• Phil 42 COMMENTS
• Bernie 32 COMMENTS

My most commented posts were the giveaways this year (for Quicktax and such), however, these were my most commented post:

• Too Conservative Portfolio, which did ask a specific question, and it did cause a great deal of commentary
• Key Financial Rules is me (again) ranting about borrowing and how it is far too commonplace these days.
• Debt Won’t Just Disappear came from a rather animated Twitter discussion about the use of debt (some folks don’t take kindly to my negative commentaries, it seems).

Top Clicked Links from Fridays

Given the list I put out every week is quite extensive, it is interesting to see which of the links you liked to click the most. Yes, I do actually look at the “analytics” from this site and do tweak things on occasion on the basis of those numbers (not too much, I have to write what I want or it will read even dumber).

• I was heartened to see that the single site that got the most “clicks” was the CRA, given my links on the RESP, and RDSP pages, I was glad to see folks figuring stuff out for themselves.
• The people’s choice from my favourites lists is Mark from My Own Advisor (who got over 500K visitors last year), and your favourite article was Do you really need $1 Million to Retire Well? It is a fair swap since Mark drove the most traffic (from a single non-search engine site) to my site as well.
• Michael James was a close second on the list of your favourite reads and your favourite article was Debunking RRSP Myths with Pictures .
• Next up you enjoyed The Blunt Bean Counter‘s straight forward explanations and specifically you liked Stress Testing Your Finances and Your Death — Comprehensive Test .
• Barry at Money We Have brought a popular post with 6 Bank Secrets to Be Aware of.
• Rounding out our list we can thank Mark from 2nd Career Search for being popular with you folks, especially his article on the Bermuda Triangle of Toronto Real Estate, he continues to search for a place to live in Toronto (I hear).

The most interesting entry on this list is the fact that the Canadian Capitalist’s post actually was 5 times more clicked than any other link I posted (other than a CRA link that is).