Blog Bash Winners

Posted by Canadian Dream on December 21, 2011

I feel  a little like Santa this week.  I finally had a draw for all of those winners from the 5 year blog bash contest (yes I feel bad it got pushed off so long).  So if you have won you likely already have an email from me, if you don’t and you have won, please check your spam filter.

The grand prize winner of a Kobo Vox tablet was: Jeff Windatt, who is very excited and if the mail system is helpful may have his prize before Christmas.

The secondary prizes were won as follows and for everyone who has contacted me it will be in the mail by today:

• Sophie W  – Wise Investing Made Simple by Larry Swedroe
• Shawn – Juggling Dynamite by Danielle Park
• Outlier Model (via Twitter) – The New Investment Frontier III by Howard J. Atkinson
• Being_light (via Twitter) – What Investors Really Want by Meir Statman
• Ping – Understanding Wall Street (5th Edition) by Jeffrey B. Little
• Be’en – Uncontrolled Risk by Mark T Williams
• Nora – The Wealth Cure by Hill Harper
• Amanda – The Wealthy Barber Returns by David Chilton
• Dee – Findependence Day by Jonathan Chevreau (signed)
• Sean – Free at 45 by Timothy Stobbs (signed)

Thanks again for everyone who tweeted, commented or link to that post and sent me an email.  I appreciate your support and I thank you all for reading and commenting.  Happy holidays everyone!

Where to Go From Here?

Posted by Canadian Dream on August 4, 2011

Dear Reader,

I apologize for the drop in the frequency of posts and the quality of my writing for the last month or so.  I was little overwhelmed from the new day job and really needed a solid break from everything, which I did manage to do during my vacation in July.  Unfortunately this blog got the short end of the stick during it. By quirk of fate I was also reading a few books regarding life planning and doing lots of thinking about what do I want from life.  I was defining what is working, what isn’t working and what would I change next.

So while I’m not totally done that process yet I am getting closer to defining what I do want to keep and this blog is firmly in that camp.  So while I get back into the routine of writing more and paying attention to the quality of the writing I thought this would be a good time to ask you for your opinion.

What would you like to see from this blog?  Please feel free to name topics, posts you would like to see an update to, excel tools or even short ebook ideas.  Heck I’m even open to the idea I should just finish switching this blog over to a group blog by picking up a few more regular writers since we are half way there already.  Frankly feel free to ask for the moon if you like, I may not be able to do it, but you can ask for it.  Or if you find it easier feel free to outline what isn’t working for you on this blog.  I’m open to any and all feedback that is constructive.  You can either leave a comment on this post or send me an email at candian.dream.free.at.45[at]gmail.com.

Thanks again for your patience during this period.

Tim

The Meetup Results

Posted by Canadian Dream on July 28, 2011

To the management of Bowness Park: I’m sorry for taking over your park facility with 300 people and turning it into a media circus…just kidding.

Actually our first meetup was a lot of fun.  Robert and his family came along with our regular commenter Alex and his family and of course my family.  So while the event was small we did have a lot of fun doing a wiener roast and playing with the kids and of course getting a chance to talk a bit more in person.  Overall it went so well that we decided we should do this at least annually since I am typically near the Calgary area just about every summer to visit family anyway.

What perhaps stuck me the most about meeting everyone was the fact we all are fairly damn normal people.  Not to say I expect any of us to be weird or anything, but rather given our focus on financial independence on this blog we actually didn’t spend that much time talking about money at all.  It was really just like hanging out with some friends and their families for the afternoon.  Perhaps my only regret on the day was I made dinner plans so I had to leave about 5pm when I could have easily spent more time with everyone.

A huge thank you for Robert who picked out the park and the supplies for the event.  I also appreciate him managing to get a great spot in the park without a reservation which of course saved us some money… come on the guy is financially independent at 34, what did you expect? *grin*