Weekend Reading – Super savings habits, saving big bucks, free books, cash flow and more #moneystuff

Weekend Reading – Super savings habits, saving big bucks, free books, cash flow and more #moneystuff

Welcome to my latest Weekend Reading edition – where I share some of my favourite articles from the week that was across the personal finance and investing blogosphere.

Happy Easter Weekend everyone!  I hope you enjoy your downtime with family and those close to you.

These were my posts from this past week while I was busy travelling:

In this post, thanks for my partnership with BMO, I can save you big bucks with their low-cost investing solution here.

I also shared this self-assessment about our savings habits when compared to these super savers.  Overall, we’re doing OK but you can be the judge of that…

As a follow-up to this post in a series about our housing dilemma, we’ve started some spring cleaning along with a massive purge to downsize from our current home (in preparation to move into a condo later next year.)  As part of this purge we’ll be selling lots of furniture but also donating a number of items to local charities.

With respect to smaller items around the house, and personal finance stuff in particular, I’m going to giveaway a number of personal finance and investing books that we no longer have any room for.  The benefactor of this purge/move will include you, the lucky reader.

Here is my first of many giveaways.  Enter to win The Power of Passive Investing by R. Ferri.  Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Enjoy the following news and these articles.  See you next week when I will post my March 2018 dividend income update. 

Rob Carrick believes variable rate mortgages are a better deal right now.  Rob nailed something I’ve often thought about and written about on the site – “Think about lifestyle as well as finances when choosing a mortgage. If there’s a serious chance you’ll break your mortgages, the penalty in a variable-rate mortgage is simply calculated and often much cheaper than a fixed-rate mortgage. There’s value in having that flexibility, but only if your finances can withstand higher interest rates.”

Dividend Growth Investor shared a number of dividend champs to consider.

Money Crashers listed 8 things you should never buy online.

Krystal Yee wrote about something I think about often – how much should one be really saving?  Her article was good, her advice is sound.  My quick take on this remains:  personal finance is personal.  To answer her question in our house we strive to save at least 10-15% of our net income every year for retirement purposes, if not more. That may or may not work for you and your goals.  I believe in this better way to budget- but I’m biased because it is working so far for us.

Boomer & Echo shared these thoughts on generating cash flow in retirement.  Their summary was important:  “It’s important to build an appropriate level of flexibility into your plan so you can manage income needs and expenses, and also be able to choose to time the withdrawal of your capital when market conditions are the most favourable.”  I/we intend to focus on an income approach (can you really have too much dividend income???) but I know we’ll draw down the capital at some point.  What’s your plan?

Deals and reminders

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Save, invest and prosper.  Thanks for reading and enjoy your long weekend.