Drawing a blank

If there's anything more lame than a note in your calendar that says "come up with something funny on Wednesday", it has to be a flat-out failure to produce said funny. I had the best of intentions to follow up last year's sale of the blog with another bit of tomfoolery, but it just wasn't in the cards.

So, for anyone who came here this morning looking for some chicanery, "April Fools!" Remember to keep a handful of salt handy as you peruse the Web today.

300 bits of sense and counting

When you start a blog to chronicle your journey out of debt, odds are your emotions are running a bit rampant. In a highly sensitive and impressionable state, you create an online profile, and have to choose a title for your project. If you're like me, you try to get clever and invoke some wordplay when naming the blog, and you end up with something like Loonies And Sense, hoping like hell that it will still seem even a little bit witty in a year's time.

Of course, having chosen a "clever" title, you also feel the need to revisit the play-on-words from time to time, referencing the pun in your post titles. This leads to posts like these, with milestone posts being especially heinous offenders. Eventually, you find yourself writing your 300^th post, and may decide to buck tradition by focusing on the sense rather than the Loonies.

All of which is to say that this post is the 300^th that I've written here, starting when I burst onto the scene back in 2007.

Let's take a look at the highlights of posts 201-299:

Canadian Stuff

• Loonies And Lexicons: Part 2 - I followed up my initial cross-border cheat sheet with some additional comparisons between Canadian and U.S. financial terminology.


• The P2P Lending Minefield - This industry still has yet to get off the ground in Canada, with at least one false start last year. In this economic climate, it will be interesting to see whether this idea gains any traction in the Canadian market.


• Comparisons In The Air - Four Pillars posted comparisons between Canadian and American retirement accounts and education savings plans, as well as comparing the TFSA to the American Roth IRA. Some good information here to complement my own cross-border comparisons.


• Deposit Insurance at Canadian Credit Unions - With the number of American banks that failed over the past year, deposit insurance has become a real hot topic. I've written in the past about insuring deposits and securities using CDIC and CIPF, respectively, but this post covers the insurance available on deposits at credit unions in each province.

Blogging

• 376 Days And Counting - A slightly belated celebration of my first blogaversary.


• The Worst Financial Advice I Ever Gave - I've been pretty light on the memes here at Loonies And Sense, but I liked this post about all the ways I led myself astray.


• Income From Blogging - I've also been pretty light on the blogging revenue, since I consider it my hobby and don't really run it as a business.

Milestones

• One Year Of Progress: Charting The Trends - I decided to chart my financial progress graphically, and the trends turned out to be very interesting.


• Payday Update: Under $300K Edition - The Loonie mortgage dropped below $300,000 for the first time this month. Since then, accruing interest has twice brought the balance owing back above this threshold, but with this Thursday's payment, we will owe less then $300K, at least for as long as we stay in our condo.

Taxes

• Making Sense Of Income Tax - This is one of the longest posts I've ever written. It takes a very detailed look at how income taxes are calculated, and explains the impact of credits and deductions on taxes payable.


• Getting The Most From A Group RRSP - I make the lion's share of my RRSP contributions into a group plan provided by my employer. As a result, the tax benefit of these contributions is immediately reflected on my paycheque, and I don't wait until April to get my refund.


• Claiming The Tax Credit For Charitable Donations - I took a look at how to optimize the tax benefit of donating to charity.


• Start Getting Your 2008 Taxes Ready Today - Whether it's setting up a folder to hold all your tax-related documentation, or setting aside cash to cover your tax bill next April, you'll be much more relaxed when preparing your next return if you've started thinking about it a year in advance.


• Feeling Some Property Tax Relief - After building up a surplus in our property tax account, the tax portion of our bi-weekly mortgage payment was reduced last August. We're up for renewal this year, at which time we'll look into paying the taxes ourselves.

Investing

• The Market Can Make You Crazy - With the toboggan ride the stock markets have been enjoying, sometimes you just need to step back, breathe, and tell yourself why you're investing in the first place.


• Time Changes Everything - A big rally can actually be as unnerving as a big drop. It's hard to keep your emotions in check.


• Some Perspective On A Month Of -38% Returns - A "terrible" (remember, this was written prior to October 2008) month in the market prompted me to check the data point against a trend line. Turns out it was actually right on target.


• The Loonie Portfolio: Asset Allocation And Half-Year Performance - I took a look at the allocation of my retirement investments, and how they stacked up through the first half of 2008.


• How Much Are You Up Or Down? One Ugly Chart, And One That's Not So Bad - Everyone's investments have taken a beating. That's part of the reason that I put so much emphasis on paying off my revolving debt: $500 of debt repayment will increase my net worth in any market.

Looking Back

• Remember The Tape Deck: A Lesson In Delayed Gratification - When I was 12, I saved up $100 (plus tax) for a dual cassette deck. To this day, $100 stands in my mind as a significant-but-attainable amount of money.


• Financial Archaeology: Unearthing Past Behaviour - A detailed look at the outstanding balance and accrued interest on my credit accounts before I "saw the light" in April of 2007.


• How Do You Think Of The Stock Market? - Gordon Korman introduced me to the stock market in his novel Go Jump In The Pool. It confused me at the time, but I think I'm finally getting the idea.

Income from blogging

In addition to the enjoyment I get out of writing, Loonies And Sense has actually generated a (very) small amount of money for me, by way of advertising income. The idea of generating alternative income was one factor that motivated me to set up the blog last year, and I'm hoping for more opportunities in the future for the site to make me some cash.

A recent post at The Shark Investor has got me thinking about exactly what I'm expecting in terms of blogging income. The gist of this article is that, if the reason your blog exists is to make money, then

1. your blog will be boring, and


2. you won't make much money from your blog.

However, if you develop your blog out of your passion for the subject matter and a joy of writing, then you will have a more interesting blog that has the potential to earn more money.

These are great points, and I like this idea of growing an audience "organically", with income as a secondary bonus rather than the primary motivation. With over 250 posts and one advertiser, I think it's safe to say that I'm not blogging "for the money". Granted, I'm not going to turn down any reasonable advertising offers, and I have some kooky money-making ideas from time to time, but the main thing pushing me to keep writing is a desire to learn (and share) as much as I can about personal finance.

It's a nice surprise when something makes you question your motivation, and you end up happy with the answer.

To close, let me just share the best advice I've read on how to make money blogging.

376 days and counting...

Ten days ago, with little fuss and no fanfare, Loonies And Sense turned one year old. I celebrated this occasion by waiting ten more days before even logging into my Blogger account.

I guess you could say I've fallen off the wagon.

This omission might not bother me if I weren't such a fan of recognizing milestones. However, I am a fan, and it does bother me. There's been a lot of competition for my attention recently, and I haven't done a good job of balancing my commitments. I'm realizing that, if I'm constantly writing about how I'm going to do a better job of posting on the blog, then I'm really just going through the motions, and that's not what I want to do.

I want to write, and I want you to read, and the only way to do that is to sit down at the keyboard and post my thoughts.

I realize it's only been just over two weeks since my last post, but it feels like about a hundred years have gone by, so I appreciate the number of you that have kept the RSS feed in your readers. It means a lot that you've stuck around. I've got some exciting developments on the horizon, with Ms. Loonie's upcoming career change, and I hope you'll stay and listen to what I have to say.

I've been here a year. I've had times where I've posted several times a day, and I've had times where it's been a struggle to get one post up in a week. I've had months of breezy budgeting, and spent months getting hammered by unexpected expenses.

Let's see what year number two has in store.

What the heck is a Finwikian?

By now, many of you have probably heard about The Finwikian, a new personal finance wiki created by Mrs. Micah of Finance For A Freelance Life. From the Finwikian home page:

The Finwikian is, put simply, a wiki dedicated to all things personal finance on the internet. It contains a catalog of personal finance blogs and will eventually include articles on numerous topics related to personal finance.

This is an exciting project, as it really represents a completely open collaboration by the personal finance blogging community. For those of you interested in contributing, head on over to register and add your blog.

Loonies And Sense is one of the blogs indexed at The Finwikian.

Another Loonie's worth

In November, I celebrated my 100^th post, with a look back at the various topics I had covered to date on the blog. Well, you're currently reading my 200^th post here at Loonies And Sense. The blog is 277 days old, and my pace has increased from 0.58 posts per day for the first 100, to 0.95 per day for the last 100. I really love maintaining the blog, and it's nice to see this reflected in the numbers.

To celebrate this latest milestone, here are the highlights of posts 101-199:

Canadian Stuff

• Looking into RESPs - I decided to learn more about RESP rules, and determine whether this is a solution that makes sense for me. As far as I'm concerned, RESPs are a great idea, and well worth the associated risks. Proposed legislation would make some significant changes to the tax treatment of RESPs.


• Early RRSP withdrawals - I wrote about the HBP and LLP, two ways to pull money out of your RRSP tax-free before retirement.


• Tax Free Savings Account: a Roth account for Canadians? - With the 2008 federal budget, Canadians may get to see a very interesting savings vehicle starting next year.


• Person-to-person lending: not just for Americans any more... - Canada saw the launch of its first P2P lending community in February. However, before the month was up, the service had been suspended due to regulatory concerns.

Blogging

• The 37^th Carnival of Money Stories - In December, I hosted my first carnival, with 18 submissions.


• Will the six-month milestones never cease?! - The blog turned six months old in December.

Money Mistakes

• 'Tis the season for cash flow slip-ups - In December, while trying to finagle a cash-only Christmas, I made more than my monthly allotment of free withdrawals, incurring a $1.25 fee. Fortunately, I was able to get the fee waived.


• Paying the stupidity tax - By managing my finances "to the penny", I ended up overdrafting my primary chequing account when my renewed auto insurance payment went through for $0.01 more than I was expecting. This cost me an NSF fee, but taught me that I should plan for the unexpected.

Interest Rates

• Moving my Emergency Fund - I decided to move my Emergency Fund to HSBC Direct, because of their various access methods, and their (at the time) competitive rate. Unfortunately, the next day, HSBC reduced their rate. D'oh! HSBC has tried to make up for their dropping rates by offering a limited time rate promotion.


• Playing the 0% balance transfer game - I applied for an MBNA MasterCard with a 0% promotional rate on balance transfers. In January, I transferred $14,800 of my line of credit balance onto the card. This balance will sit at 0% until March 2009, at which point I'll transfer it back onto the line of credit.


• Feeling the Bank of Candada rate cut - The Bank of Canada dropped its rate by 0.25% in January, which lowered the interest on my line of credit, but unfortunately also affected my savings account rates.


• Another rate cut - Tuesday's rate cut of 0.50% marked the largest one-time change to the Bank of Canada rate since 2001. Bank prime followed suit with a 0.50% drop, and online savings account rates have also been dropping.

Important Dates

• The aftermath - My first Christmas since starting the blog ended up being a successful cash-only affair. I certainly used credit cards for my purchases, but I immediately paid off the purchases, generating no new debt from the holidays. Not too shabby...


• December update; 2007 in review - New Year's Day brought my first year-end review here at Loonies And Sense. I also set my first round of annual goals.


• Monday is "Family Day" - Ontario residents celebrated their first Family Day on February 18.


• This month has 29 days - Because of the Leap Year, the RRSP deadline this year was February 29, not the usual March 1.

Cash Flow

• And the lightbulb goes on... - I examined my budget, and discovered a couple of things about where my money actually goes, and a new way to think of my debt reduction.


• Coping with the January pay-cut - I griped a bit about the fact that, if you max out your CPP and EI contributions before the end of the year, they start up again in January. This is a nice problem to have, but it's an essential part of financial planning in the new year, nonetheless.


• Another look at the treadmill - I decided to take another look at the paycheque-to-paycheque cycle, and whether I'm actually starting to step off the treadmill. Turns out I've come a long way.


• Building a chequing cushion - I talked about building up a cushion in my chequing account, to be able to live "one cycle ahead" of my paycheque. Part of the benefit of this is to bring my own cash flow in sync with Ms. Loonie's cash cycle.

That's a lot of different topics. Let's see what the next 100 posts bring.

Trent makes the big time

A little-known personal finance blogger named Trent Hamm runs a site called The Simple Dollar. Well, this blog finally received some attention today. As I was getting ready for work this morning, with Breakfast Television playing in the background, I suddenly heard a list of frugality tips being read out. These sounded familiar, and I realized they were reading Trent's post Can You Devote Fifteen Minutes A Day To Frugality? It's great to see this blog finally come into its own.

I'm kidding, of course, about the "little-known" stuff. Trent's one of the most prolific and well-known PF bloggers I know of, but it was still a kick to catch a mention of one of my favourite websites. Good work, Trent!

Blogroll update

Well, I think I've answered yesterday's question about CMHC mortgage insurance. Sorry if I caused any panic, but it seems that your CMHC premium provides insurance for the life of the mortgage, so you are only ever required to pay it once.

This makes sense once you really think about it, but I had seen a post in the RedFlagDeals.com forums that made me wonder whether this was in fact the case. Fortunately, those forums were also able to provide me with the answer to my question.

I've added a number of blogs to my blogroll. These have been daily reads of mine for a number of months, and I finally got sick of typing the URLs by hand every morning, so here they are for your clicking pleasure.

Enjoy...

Milestones

This morning, I realized that yesterday's gloating about my astounding feats of prediction was actually the 150th post at Loonies And Sense. Just over two months ago, I celebrated my 100th post, so the pace has definitely picked up around here. I'm currently aiming for an average of one post per day, and over time, hopefully this will evolve into actually posting every single day. I can dream...

In other news, I received my 50th RSS subscriber yesterday. That puts me, in absolute terms, halfway to my goal of 100 subscribers in 2008. The actual year-to-date increase from 35 readers to 50 puts me at about 23% progress, less than one month in. That's not bad. With any luck, I'll have to revise this goal to make it more of a stretch sometime in the spring.

All in all, not a bad start to the day.

How do you make the progress bars?

I've had a few requests from other bloggers on how to set up progress bars like the ones in my sidebar. It's actually quite simple. I use Blogger to host my blog, so I'm not sure if there's another way to manage this using another service like WordPress, but I basically just insert a HTML/JavaScript widget in the layout, and then use the following HTML for each bar:

<b>Debt Reduction</b>
<div style="width:210px; height:18px; background:#e6e6e6; border:solid 1px #555;" class="goal">
<div style="height:18px; background:#5588aa; color:white; width:3.8%;" class="progress"><b>3.8%</b>
</div></div>
<div style="float:left;">$23,397.71</div>
<div style="float:right;">$14,000</div>

<br/>

For those who aren't as familiar with HTML, let's walk through the details:

<b>Debt Reduction</b>

This is just the name of the goal, in boldface.

<div style="width:210px; height:18px; background:#e6e6e6; border:solid 1px #555;" class="goal">

This is the outer frame of the progress bar. Here, I've set it to be 210 pixels wide, and 18 pixels high. The background colour is coded as "#e6e6e6", which is just a shade of gray. For more on how to interpret HTML colour codes, visit W3 Schools.

<div style="height:18px; background:#5588aa; color:white; width:3.8%;" class="progress">

This is the progress bar itself. Here, I've set it to be 18 pixels high (just like the outer frame), and have a width of 3.8% of the outer frame's width. The colour has been set to "#5588aa", which is a greenish blue.

<b>3.8%</b>

This is the text label to show 3.8% of progress, in boldface.

</div></div>

This simply closes the outer frame and progress bar objects.

<div style="float:left;">$23,397.71</div>
<div style="float:right;">$14,000</div>

<br/>

This provides the starting and ending amounts, positioned immediately beneath the progress bar, and followed by a line break (indicated by <br/>).

Has anyone noticed that December is a busy time?

Apologies to everyone for the lack of posts recently. I've been a bit occupied with Christmas preparations, both at work, trying to wrap up projects before the holidays, and at home, trying to balance gift shopping and visit scheduling. I'm doing all right, but the blog has suffered a bit of late, and for that I'm sorry.

Astute readers will have noticed the text link ad at the bottom of the sidebar. Yes, that's right, Loonies And Sense has its first advertiser. That little bit of income was a nice early Christmas present, which will go straight to my line of credit.

In other news, Canadian Dream is running a series of interviews with PF bloggers, and he has included me in the series. I am a big fan of his blog, which has daily posts that are always entertaining and informative. He's also got a great, ambitious goal, namely to retire by the age of 45. We should all be so lucky.

I'm running behind on all my blog-related goals for December, with only 14 of 25 posts to date, and no posts on productivity or Getting Things Done. Will a Christmas miracle help me meet my goals? We'll have to wait and see.

Will the six-month milestones never cease?!

I started formally tracking my net worth at the end of April, so my first data point is my April 30 net worth. With my September month-end results, I had six-month s of data to explore. One month later, I had my starting point plus six months of progress to report.

Well, it suddenly occurred to me that today is Loonies And Sense's six-month anniversary. Yes, it was six months ago that I opened my doors to the blogosphere. A lot has happened in that time:

• I've written over 100 posts


• I've hosted a carnival


• I've increased my net worth by $13,124.86 (90%), through a combination of $3,829.86 in asset growth and a whopping $9,835.00 in debt reduction (including $4,621.71 in mortgage payments)


• I've accumulated a $1,000 Emergency Fund


• I've re-allocated my retirement investments into low-cost index funds

I think this pretty much drains the pool of six-month milestones to celebrate, so expect the first round of one-year posts to surface in early April.

100 cents to a Loonie; 100 posts at Loonies And Sense

As the title so subtly suggests, this is my 100th post. I wracked my brain to come up with a more clever title for this post, but I'm afraid that's the best I could do.

A post count of 100 doesn't exactly take me out of the newbie camp, but it is a significant milestone for me. When I started the blog, I wasn't sure what kind of posting schedule I would keep, or how long I would even manage to keep the blog running. Just look at the 27-day gap between my first and second posts.

Since then, I've graduated into something resembling a regular posting schedule, and I've gained about 30 regular readers through RSS subscriptions. Still small, but growing. Knowing that people out there actually read the blog has really helped to keep me honest with respect to my goals. I may not always achieve the goals I set for myself, but having to answer to my audience means that I keep these goals in mind as I go through my day-to-day life. Thanks for being there to keep me accountable.

I wanted to celebrate my 100th post with a quick retrospective of my ramblings since my "hello world" post on June 7:

Canadian Stuff

• Loonies And Lexicons - In this post, I explored the parallels between Canadian and American personal finance terminology


• Loonies And Savings Plans - In this follow-up, I looked specifically at the education and retirement savings options available north and south of the border


• Loonies And Greenbacks - This September, the Loonie reached parity with the US dollar for the first time in over 30 years


• Canadian Black Book® and Free credit reports in Canada - These links allow Canadians to assess their vehicle's value, and obtain their free credit report

Family

• There's no "I" in "Personal Finance" - Ms. Loonie and I decided to take a joint loan to consolidate her student loans at a low rate


• Welcome back, home cooking and discussing finances - Ms. Loonie opened an ING account to save up for her tax payment next April

Mortgage

• So long, CMHC - In July, we finally paid off the last of the CMHC premium on our mortgage


• Demystifying Mortgage Rates - I looked into how mortgage interest is actually calculated based on the posted rate

Savings Wars

• Canadian High-Interest Savings - A New Hope - I looked at the process of opening and funding an account with ING Direct, HSBC Direct, Canadian Tire Financial Services and ICICI Bank


• The Canadian High-Interest Savings Strike Back - I compared the web interfaces and fund transfer processes at each of the above institutions


• Return of the Canadian High-Interest Savings - I compared the access methods for these institutions, and provided a final verdict on the account of choice

Investing

• Allocation on the Brain - This summer, I realized just how risky my asset allocation was, and decided to diversify


• Market timer extraordinaire! - I finally sold my two stock holdings, which triggered some brief seller's remorse


• Perspective on my market timing - The relative performance of my new index fund portfolio against my old stock portfolio has me feeling much better about my investments

That's just a handful of posts that I think give a flavour for what the blog's all about. Do you have any favourites that aren't on the list?

How'd that happen?

This morning, I thought I'd check my Google Page Rank. I've checked it sporadically over the last few months, and seen it go from "NA" to zero. I'm not sure whether there's actually a difference between these two values, but I interpreted NA as "not worth measuring", and zero as "on the scale, but at the very bottom".

Imagine my surprise today when I found that Loonies And Sense has a Page Rank of 3.

To put this in context, Amazon and eBay have a Page Rank of 9, while The Simple Dollar and All Financial Matters have a Page Rank of 5. I'm still a noob, but I'm growing.

To double-check my increased ranking, I searched Google for loonies and sense (no quotes), and found that my site is the number one result. I used to get this result when I used quotes, but not without. That's definitely an improvement.

Thanks to everyone who's linked to me, and made this happen.