It’s been a weird week in weather. The week started out at -20°C, which temperatures rising almost to +10 by Friday! Then on Saturday, temperatures fell back to -10 and beyond and it was extremely windy, which was a pain when I had to go pick up a desk at a furniture store and the ground was almost literally a flat sheet of ice, and the wind almost knocked me off of my feet! So glad I had a warm car to return to, but it makes me appreciate the hardships that people had to go through before modern technology. I can’t imagine that life was easy for the natives that lived here hundreds of years ago, nor for the European settlers here a couple hundred years back.
There’s been a lot of interesting reading around the blogosphere this week; so, what’s going on with the economy? Are there real green shoots, or are we merely seeing the beginnings of another crack-up boom? Is there inflation, or are we merely seeing a shift in investor sentiment from “paper” assets to “physical” assets? What are your thoughts?
Weekend Reading
Economics
- Long Live Inflation (Squirrelers)
Government
- Deep Thoughts: Social Security (The Amateur Financier)
- The Education Bubble Is Fuel for Revolt (Mises Daily)
Health
- The Myriad Benefits of Intermittent Fasting (Mark’s Daily Apple)
Home ownership
- New Furniture Sucks (101 Centavos)
- Should I Buy a House? (Little House in the Valley)
- Why Should You Downsize to a Smaller Home (Tight Fisted Miser)
Investing
- Articles on the Return Predictor, the Risk Evaluator, the Scenario Surfer and the Strategy Tester (A Rich Life)
- Manners Show Status (Overcoming Bias)
- News Update: Dividend Increase (The Passive Income Earner)
- On A Quest To Turn $3000 Into 100000 With Trader Mark Li, DMS (Investing Thesis)
- The Alberta Bakken Oil Play (Beating The Index)
Miscellaneous
- 70 Post Ideas for Your Blog (brokeprofessionals.com)
- ACCOMPLISH MORE BY DOING LESS (Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance)
- Daniel Cates Biography screen name Jungleman12 (Poker Blog)
- Failure: The Pathway to Success (Personal Finance By The Book)
- Gambling With Your life (Yakezie)
- Guest post: Fulfillment (Early Retirement Extreme)
- My Awful Best Buy Customer Service Experience (The College Investor)
- My 500th Post: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been (The Amateur Financier)
- Start up Careers for Anyone (First Gen American)
- Take-up of Government Benefits (Canadian Capitalist)
Personal finance
- Creating Your Finance Corner (MomVesting)
- Our Extra Money (Budgeting in the Fun Stuff)
- PF advice in American is broken… (7million7years)
- The LifeStyle Creep (brokeprofessionals.com)
- What are the Best Credit Cards for You? (Money Smart Life)
- Who Pays on the First Date: A Financial Lesson Learned (Squirrelers)
Thanks for all of the feedback and support, everyone; you help to make the site great!
Video of the week
Thanks to The Biz of Life for sharing this.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Thanks for including my post about Best Buy!
Thank you for the (double) mention! Some really interesting posts here!
I need to catch up on so many things. Great list. I was surprised to see that you indicated weather temperatures in C. I am so used to Farenheit by now that it was somewhat nostalgic to see someone referring to Celsius.
Thanks for the kind link to the article describing the four calculators (The Return Predictor, etc.), Kevin. That means a lot to me.
Rob
Wow, can you really peel a potato like the video shows? Pretty cool! Thanks for mentioning my post on choosing the best credit card for how you spend.
Excellent round-up. Thanks for the mention!
Yes, the weather around here has been all over the map. It was cold enough that I needed a winter coat last Sunday, got warm enough that I went out in a T-Shirt on Thursday (and didn’t even take my jacket with me to visit my fiancee this weekend), and now it’s below freezing again. It’s nuts; here’s hoping things settle down soon (preferably with some nice, decently warm weather).
Thanks for linking to my posts, and for the insightful comments that you left on each of them. It’s much appreciated.
Glad that you made it back home without slipping and cracking your tailbone.
You’re right that life must have been difficult in the past… mind you, they probably didn’t need to jet off to Business Depot when the parking lot was a skating rink 😉
Have a good week, Kevin.
Thanks for the link, Kevin. With weather like that, you’re liable to bump into a brass monkey looking for a welder. Hope you’re you’re as snug as a bug in a rug in your new place, with lots of hot toddies.
Thanks for the great comments and for stopping by, everyone. I’m looking forward to Spring! 🙂
Excellent list of links Kevin. Wow.
Also, wild picture. That’s some real winter weather. (Damn I hope this season ends soon 🙂
Cheers,
Mark
Wonderful breath of articles. And I liked the video too, I gotta try that potato peeling one! Thanks for the mention.
Hoping it ends soon, too! 🙂 Thanks for stopping by, guys.