How To Avoid Cell Phone Data Roaming Charges When Traveling To The United States

by Mike Holman

Or more accurately – “How to get ripped off a little bit less by your phone provider when traveling to the US”. I’m going to be traveling to the United States in the near future and one of the things I’ve been researching is data charges for my iPhone in the US. I need to [...]

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LinkStuff – Kingston Visit Edition

by Mike Holman

Last weekend we went to the lovely city of Kingston, Ontario.  It was a short trip – we left early Saturday morning and got home at dinner time on Sunday.  A friend of mine invited us for a bbq and we decided to go (at the last minute), since I hadn’t seen him and a [...]

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Can Home Owners Benefit From Falling Real Estate Values?

by Mike Holman

Real estate values have been holding up in Canada reasonably well, but the American real estate market is down 33% from the peak in 2006 as measured by the Case-Shiller index. Most people view falling real estate values negatively and would prefer to see their houses increase in value. The net worth of an average [...]

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LinkStuff – Erasure Edition

by Mike Holman

Last weekend I went to see the band Erasure who played at the Sound Academy (used to be the Docks) here in Toronto. It was the first concert I had been to in a few years and was it ever good! Andy Bell can really sing (still) and they put on a fun show. The [...]

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A Practical Way To Estimate And Budget For Home Maintenance Costs

by Mike Holman

As a home owner, I’ve seen various methods of estimating annual home maintenance costs. These methods involve calculating a percentage of your home value – usually between one to four per cent, and using that value as the annual maintenance estimate. Being a bit of a skeptic, I never had much faith in these estimation [...]

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LinkStuff – Globe & Mail Online Chat Edition

by Mike Holman

On Wednesday I participated in a Globe & Mail online Q&A chat on RESPs – you can read all the questions and answers here. The Q&A was a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure what to expect in the way of questions, but there were a lot of good topics covered. Thanks to Roma Luciw [...]

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Compare Unit Prices – Especially When Buying Steam Whistle Beer

by Mike Holman

When people fill up their cars with gas, they try to get the best price. All the gas stations list their price for a litre of gas (gallon for Americans), which makes it very easy to compare unit prices.  One litre of gas at gas station A is exactly the same as a litre of [...]

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How To Find A Fee-Only Financial Advisor

by Mike Holman

I received a question from Lily Leung of ExploreForAYear.com who asked about finding a fee-only financial advisor in Toronto for a younger investor: Quick question on financial advisors – a friend was asking me about how to a financial advisor (she’s in Toronto), do you have any suggestions on resources on: 1.) How to select an [...]

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LinkStuff: Globe & Mail Mentions and Canadian Tire Parking Lot Edition

by Mike Holman

I bought a few more camping supplies last weekend at Canadian Tire. There were no price discrepancies this time, but it wouldn’t be a CT trip without some kind of incident. I was walking along the sidewalk to our car with my two kids riding in the shopping cart. Up ahead there were two carts [...]

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