It’s my turn to host the Yakezie Carnival today (in case you don’t know, it’s a collection of the best personal finance blogs on this planet, basically), and given the current events in Japan, I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, but wanted to encourage everyone to think about Japan today and consider donating to the red cross. It’s the least we can do.  Rachelle from Landlord Rescue has a very creative way of determining how much you should donate (e.g. if you have ever eaten sushi, donate $5; if you own a Sony, donate $5…)

In Canada you can text ASIA to 30333 to donate $5 (will show up on your cell phone bill)

If you live in the US, you can text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10  (will show up on your cell phone bill)

I’m not sure what the difference in dollar amounts of set donation amounts say about us in Canada (that we are cheap?) but if you want to donate more, you can go directly to the redcross website (Canada and US) to donate more.

Now on to the Yakezie Carnival:

This week, it’s my turn to host and I have the honor of receiving the torch from last week’s host, Dr. Dean!  Next week, it’ll be Control your Cash who will be hosting the Yakezie Carnival, so be sure to tune in and follow the Yakezie torch

• My Personal Finance Journey discusses about Why A Credit Score Boost Is Necessary For Most Consumers.  Jacob looks at the various factors that go in to calculating your specific credit score and a reminder of the benefits of keeping it as high as you possibly can.
• Squirrelers has a light-hearted blog post, a post looking at some Crazy Keywords. He says “it’s often funny to see the keywords people use to find their way to your blog. Someone came to my blog looking to find out about humans
  exterminating alligators!”  Hmm I wonder what that post that was referring to?
• Kevin over at Invest it Wisely has a great post I found very useful as a first time home buyer-  called “Don’t Get Suckered by the Banks: How Much Can You *Really* Afford to Spend on a New Home?” In this post he proposes spending no more than 33% of your net worth on ALL housing costs including mortgage, utilites, taxes, etc.
• Dr. Dean over at the Millionaire Nurse Blog has a great post too, titled “Buy and Hold: Is It Dead?“  Buy and Hold as an investing strategy has been declared dead by many.  In the post are his thoughts this and a poem to boot, too! (Dr. Dean sure is a creative cat!)
• Don at Money Reasons has a creative post (all these creative cats in the Yakezie, I tell ya!) “Best Way to Crush Aluminum Cans“.  The article is about how his son’s aluminum can recycling experiment has accumulated in the garage and how Money Reasons discovered an easier way to crush the cans to make the process much quicker.
• Krantcents has a great article I really enjoyed myself, called The Emotional Side of Retirement.  Planning retirement is more than just savings, what are you going to do?
• Bucksome Boomer talks about how to dispute a credit card charge
• Joe from Retireby40 blog discusses who really loses in a short sale
• A Yakezie challenger, the Ultimate Juggle reveals how you can work remotely (one of my ultimate dreams).  In this post, ultimate juggle talks about the adjustment she had to make when she started telecommuting into work.  She still drives to work a few days a week and that’s a piece of cake.  But with a baby at home, working remotely required an adjustment period.  She hopes this helps other that are following a similar path!
• Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff gives  you the low down on how to buy a car.

That’s it for the yakezie carnival this week, folks!  Please tune in to next week’s host, Control your Cash as he catches the torch and passes the Yakezie light on.

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

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If you read about the blogiversary  bonanza giveaway a few posts back, you’ll know that today is cause for celebration!  Today officially marks “one year” that youngandthrifty.ca has existed in this internet realm.

I just want to say that I honestly cannot believe that my blog has survived for one year.  I remember when I was starting out, I would be excited if 10 people visited my site…in a week.  Now there is an average of 350+ people who stumble by my site in a single day!  Most importantly, through this blog, I have learned so so so much, about blogging, wordpress, html, coding (er.. maybe), personal finance, friendship, networking, social media etc. etc.  the list goes on.

(more…)

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Fabulously Broke (a fantastic no-nonsense female blogger) approached me to see if I was interested in participating in a one time carnival about our experiences in our industry, noting whether it was female or male dominated, and sharing an experience where I felt that there was male/female disparity.  She wanted me to share a bit about my background and my industry.  So here goes!

This male middle management colleague of mine is a hard worker, great to work with and drama-free, but sounds very “traditional-circa-1950′s-male-and-female-role-playing” in his home life.  But I might be making assumptions.

“If I were a Boy” Carnival

This post is part of a series of bloggers sharing their candid experiences or observations about women in the workplace which is not at all meant to be a male-bashing expedition whatsoever.

Please head over to these other wonderful bloggers and read about their experiences.

 

• Jacq of Single Mom Rich Mom — Accounting, 40s
• Fabulously Broke in the City — Consulting, 20s
• Stacking Pennies — Engineering, 20s
• Musings of an Abstract Aucklander — Publishing, 20s
• Little Miss Moneybags — Publishing — 20s
• Dog Ate my Finances
• Young and Thrifty — Public Sector, 20s
• Paranoid Asteroid
• Insomniac Lab Rat — Science, 20s

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In about two weeks, it will be officially ONE YEAR since I wrote my first post (you can see it here. As you can see, I was likely the only one who read that post lol).  I can’t believe that I have survived a year! It’s been great and I have learned so much (you can read me yammering on about how much youngandthrifty.ca’s grown with respect to what I have learned this first year of blogging on the actual blogiversary post in two weeks).

To celebrate this momentous occasion, the wonderful personal finance bloggers over at Yakezie (who are youngandthrifty’s heart and soul!) have generously donated some wonderful books and gift cards to celebrate this first year blogiversary (and hopefully not last, lol!).  I will be throwing in a VISA gift card as a first prize, too (just to show how much I appreciate you as a reader!).

How much do all these prizes add up to? Over $250+ in prizes to be won!!

FIRST PRIZE:

A $100 VISA Gift Card courtesy of moi!

This gift card should be able to be used in the United States, but will be $100 in Canadian funds (which works out to be about the same now anyway )  So my American friends please enter this contest too!

BOOK PRIZES:

• Couple Money is generously donating a  subscription to Kiplinger’s personal finance magazine ($36 value cover price)

Elle has been blogging over at Couple Money on how she and her family handles their finances while building mobile income based on their passions.  She’s a really nice person to boot! One of my fave posts is 11 ways to save money at the grocery store.

• Budgeting the Fun Stuff is donating a copy of The Simple Dollar by Trent Hamm ($19.99 value)

Crystal over at Budgeting the Fun Stuff sees money as a tool that is used to provide for our needs, our future, and the fun stuff in between.   She also has an allergy ridden pug too- which automatically deserves big props as I have one too.

• Suba at Wealth Informatics is donating a copy of Your Money: The Missing Manual
  by J.D. Roth (a $21.99 value)

Suba strives to provide Information empowering debt reduction, financial planning, informed consumerism, savvy investing, fun & frugal living leading to financial freedom.  She also is a big fan of paying yourself first

• Invest It Wisely is donating a copy of The Elements of Investing by Burton G. Makiel ($20 value)

Invest it Wisely is a both great Canadian and Yakezie read, one of his most popular posts is what you need to do to get out of the rat race and achieve financial freedom

• Jesse from PF Firewall will giveaway a copy of I Will Teach you to be Rich by Ramit Sethi ($13.95 value)

PF Firewall will be used to track everything going in or out of his personal finance and he will try and provide any ways he has found to patch breaches in my personal finance firewall (awesome analogy!)

• Evan from My Journey to Millions is donating a book from “The Skinny On..” series ($14.95 value)

Evan, a lawyer, dad, husband to The Wife and personal finance blogger has great posts, including an explanation on our mutual love, dividends.

• Sam from Financial Samurai is donating “How Rich People Think” by Steve Siebold ($16.99 value)

Sam is the guru behind the Yakezie and a fantastic writer with posts that are always thought-provoking. I have a ton of favourite posts from him, two being: his Samurai finance rules and How to Get your Super Motivated Boyfriend to Marry You

GIFT CERTIFICATES/ CASH PRIZES:

• Maximizing Money is giving away $25 via paypal

Maximizing Money runs my kind of blog- a blog focusing on financial tips on how to save money and earn extra cash be reaping the benefits of reward credit cards.

• Frugal Zeitgeist is donating a $10 Gift Certificate to Amazon

Frugal Zeitgeist lives my ultimate fantasy- living in Cairo, Egypt.  One of his popular articles is how to simply your life

• Bucksome Boomer is donating a $10 Gift Certificate to Amazon

Bucksome is a personal finance blogger writing from a boomer perspective.  She shares with us how her budget has changed over the last 12 years (us young’uns can learn from her experience)

• Squirrelers is donating a $10 Gift Certificate to Amazon

Squirrelers was launched to help Mr. Squirrel himself and others share thoughts on money, and help us reach our financial goals – while having fun doing it.  He has a fun series called “Squirreling gone wild”, in which the most recent edition was about The Extractor

• KNS Financial is donating a $10 Gift Certificate to Amazon

Khaleef combines faith and finances is a fantastic and introspective personal finance blog.  He also helps people out in real life with budgeting assistance.

Here’s how to Enter in the youngandthrifty.ca Blogiversary Bonanza:

1 ENTRY: Subscribe by RSS (please comment below to show you have entered so I can get your email address- don’t worry it won’t be shared) or email subscription.  If you’ve already subscribed (thank you!) just comment below.

1 EXTRA ENTRY: Follow youngandthrifty on twitter and tweet:

youngandthrifty.ca BLOGIVERSARY GIVEAWAY thanks #Yakezie $250+ to be won! http://bit.ly/9KIwpc (via @youngandthrifty)

Contest ends Sunday November 28, 2010 at midnight PST.  Winners announced on Monday November 29.

The twelve winners will be picked by random.org (13! Good odds!)

One winner per prize (so you can’t win a $100 Visa Gift card AND a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate, sorry!)

Good Luck and thanks for reading!

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The first week of summer has passed already, only eight or so more weekends to take in and savor.  Hope everyone is having a great summer so far.

I went shopping (walked through, really) Holt Renfrew yesterday and saw that there was sale.  Holt Renfrew is this high end designer department store (super duper duper high end).  People were shopping there like there was no tomorrow!  It honestly did not look like a recession to me- what happened to saving money and not succumbing to instant gratification?  Just out of curiosity, I checked out the shoe section and browsed at some of the shoes that were there.  Coach shoes, Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos…all these shoes were in the price range of $350-$800!  I stuffed my foot into a $500 shoe (just for kicks- sorry- had to say it… get it? kicks??) just to feel what $500 would feel like on my foot.  It felt nice, the craftsmanship of the shoes were really nice, but I can not justify paying $500 for a pair of shoes…that’s like a month’s rent!

Last night my sister called me and said her car ran out of battery at the grocery store.  She didn’t have the jumper cables in her car so I went to save the day.  I hooked up the jumper cables (and managed not to electrocute myself, to which I am grateful for) and we started our cars and nothing happened.  I did have a suspicious that it might not start because my battery was leaking (and had been leaking for quite some time).  A nice lady came to really save the day.  She hooked up her car to my sisters car and voila- my sister’s car was good to go.

The Good Samaritan said that someone helped her when her battery died and it was pouring buckets (yes, the 300 days a year when it’s raining here in Vancouver), and so she wanted pass it on.  She asked us to pass on the good deed too (as well, told me that my battery needed changing).  Thanks and I will!

So Good Samaritans still exist!

Have you encountered any Good Samaritans that have helped you renew your faith in mankind lately?

Here are some links from around the web:

• Financial Samurai concludes that West Coast Living- is really that much better (can’t agree more!!)
• Early Retirement Extreme gives some tips on how to spend less eating out
• Len Penzo tells you to visualize your financial future
• Money Funk gives you tips on how to control emotional spending
• Wealth Pilgrim analyzes whether it’s a good time to buy a house
• Bucksome Boomer‘s first blog cheque came in the mail! Woot woot!
• Little House looks at strategy discount shopping
• Money Reasons tells the Financial Neo to Wake Up (Keanu Reeves can wake up next to me, too??)
• Frugal Zeitgeist lets you know how long to keep financial records
• Squawkfox gives you a great tip on how to make Pie in a Jar to give as presents
• Financial Cents has a 5 part series analyzing which Telco to buy

Have a fantasmic weekend everyone!!

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