I recently borrowed a book from the library that focuses on the neurotic habits of writers.  It is interesting to see that some writers like to write in empty rooms and alone, while others do it on ships, coffee shops and middle of living rooms with kids around.  Then some people have quirks all the way down to writing a first draft in pen with a specific brand of pen and the colour of the paper (apparently yellow is often used for drafts).  Of course while reading this I started to realize some of my own neurotic habits around writing.  So in the interest of some entertainment of how things work to generate this blog I present: my neurotic head.

I keep a small black moleskin notebook with me most of the time to write down random ideas for blog posts. Everything from noting an interesting survey on TFSA’s where 92% of people didn’t get all five questions correct to wondering if the decay of the financial standing of the US will lead civilization’s downfall.  Perhaps at best half of the ideas get used.  The other half are often too short of a post or get lost in the idea bank.  I consider writing for the blog more habit than difficult and generating ideas take no effort at all. Yet I will go out of my way and invent things to do avoid writing other things, but I will always write for the blog (unless I’m sick).    Somehow I find the other writing more stressful than blog (even including the book based on the blog, ironic eh?).

To warm up some days for some writing I’ll open a file and just type what ever happens to come into my head for ten minutes.  I often have a candle lit near me because I find the smell and the motion of the flame soothing.  I prefer to write early in the morning because I enjoy the quiet of the house.  Yet I can also write with the kids less than 10 feet away and playing.

I’m terrified at times at having success with my writing, like some how having a huge blog or a decent selling book would create expectations that I couldn’t live up to.  I often wonder if I’m a fraud for having the readership I currently do on this blog.  It’s like the feeling that you, the readers, can’t possibly be interesting my opinion of personal finance.  I’m just some guy from the prairies with a wife, two kids and a crazy dream.  I have often doubted that anything I’ve ever written was even good, despite the assurances of many others that at least parts of it are good.

I get downright bitchy if I don’t have some time to myself each week and it will even show up in my writing if I fail to get away for an hour.  The post/page will lose a certain readability that occurs with my better writing.  Interestingly enough I can handle negative feedback fine at work on my writing, but are more sensitive about my other writing.

So that’s a snap shot of my neurotic head.  So if you have any doubts, yes all writers, including bloggers have their habits and odd beliefs around their work.  It just comes with the job.  So if you do any writing, what are your habits around it?  Do you have a chair you love or an item near by when it do it?  Or can you write on post it notes in the bathroom?

A a personal finance blogger I had to admit I got fairly excited about a concept of a task force to look into improving financial literacy that is taking submissions from the public.  In general I think there are lots of great bloggers out there that try to help others as they learn about paying off debt, retirement savings and living in your means.  Yet a national push on helping people learn could be a good thing, but I suspect they might not hear a too many different points of view.  Since I suspect a lot of submissions will be from banks, brokerages and insurance companies.  Hence I’m putting together a submission of my own.

In mine I’m going to suggest a few ideas on educating people in general, but I do want to point out a few major themes such as:

• Money is an emotional thing.  Lots of plans to educate people about money fail for one simple reason: money is an emotional thing.  If it were not an emotional thing educating people would be easy since most basic personal finance concepts are fairly damn easy to learn: live below your means, compound interest, or don’t try to time the market.
• Avoid too many ‘rules of thumb’.  Since money is emotional we tend to do all sorts of things that make no sense on a math basis, but do make sense on a personal basis.  So a ‘rule of thumb’ tends to become useless very quickly since decisions always have an emotional part to them.
• You can’t force education.  I haven’t been part of the education system for long, but I can tell you a common problem is how to engage kids to learn.  That is with them being required to be at school, now image the problem across all ages groups and not being in a school setting.  You get the idea how difficult a task this will be to get people interested in their money.  You will need some plans to engage people.
• Don’t go to extremes.  Often many personal finance books are geared towards those with higher incomes since they do tend to be the most interested in personal finance.  What people need to see is example for lower incomes as well.  Saving 10% of your income sounds easy, but try doing it with a $40,000 family income with two kids living in Toronto.  Aim examples at many different levels of income for the best results.

That’s just a few themes that I’m planning on discussing.  What would you put in to a submission?

It’s been often said “Time flies when you are having fun.”  Apparently I must be having a blast since I didn’t realize that this last Monday was the third birthday for this blog.   WOW, I can’t believe I’ve been writing posts for three years already.

So for those that are curious the stats stand as follows:

• 2 writers as of this month
• 765 posts (including today)
• 4209 comments
• 178,942 site visits
• 344,426 page views (including 49,311 from the old blogger site)

If you estimate a modest word count of 300 words per post that would mean I’ve written about 229,500 words which would translate to a 918 page book.  Damn that’s a lot of writing, but really it’s only a fraction of what you have done in the comments.  Collectively if we assume 100 words per comment all of you have written about a 1683 page book. Yikes!

What’s really mind blowing is if you track my net worth posts to the beginning.  I started off this blog with a net worth of about $66,000 in Nov 2006 by Oct 2009 it was $281,400, which works out to a compound increase of about 62% a year.  Obviously that includes the house value going up so I can’t take credit for all of it, but I’m still blown away it is that high.

So a big thank you to each and every one of you.  For every idea, debate and laugh that you have given me over the last three years.  You really are the reason that I do this.  And to thank you all I’m giving away a $75 gift card ($ CDN) to a store of your choice to one lucky reader (provided I can order the gift card online or pick one up where I live).  To enter just leave a comment on this post before Nov 19, 2009 (8pm CST).  Limit one entry per person and please use a valid email so I can contact you if you win.  Winner will be selected by a random number generator.

Best of luck and thanks again for reading.

So last night was interesting for many reasons. First off, our civic election day happened yesterday so this morning I’m now officially a school board trustee.  It was a little surreal to go to the polling station and see my name on a ballot with the word ‘acclaimed’ beside it, but also a little exciting.

Also what was exciting was the volume of comments on the posts of the last two days.  You have might have noticed I was staying out of it and not commenting on either post.  That was on purpose I didn’t want to hint to anyone what I was thinking about when reading the posts or the comments.

In the end picking one of the two of them was very difficult.  On one hand I’ll be honest I had no idea that Candidate #1’s post would cause that much of an uproar.  Granted I thought the tone of the post needed work, but I won’t have guessed at the response overall. On a purely publishing viewpoint controversy isn’t a bad thing, so I won’t hold that against him.  He also was honest and put some emotion into his response to the comments while remaining composed while under fire.  Keeping your cool in a debate like that is difficult so I was impressed.

On the other hand Candidate #2 was obviously the better writer overall.  He had a easy to read style and obviously did some good research into the post.  Yet something in his writing was bothering me and when I was talking to my wife I hit on finally what it was.  It was like reading a newspaper paper article, which is fine for reporting the news but this is a personal finance blog.  I want something that reads closer to an editorial.  I want the majority of the post to be the writer’s viewpoint and thoughts not just quotes from what other people think.  Personal finance should be personal and I didn’t have much of that feeling with Candidate #2.

So in the end I didn’t make the decision on logic.  I went with emotion and picked Candidate #1 for the job.  I thought over the long run he would fit in the best overall.  So I’m proud to introduce, Dave as the new second blogger on Canadian Dream: Free at 45.  Dave is a CGA from Ontario who also dreams of retiring by age 45 at the latest.  Dave’s younger than I am so we will see how early he can pull it off.    I’ll be setting Dave up on the blog over the next week and you will start seeing his posts in November.

For those of you who liked Candidate’s #2 writing I’ll give you some good news.  He’s the regular commenter, The Rat, who already has his own blog Ending the Rat Race.  So you can continue to enjoy his writing by subscribing to his feed.

Thanks to everyone who applied to the position .  It was an interesting process to go through and I appreciate the work that everyone did on their sample posts and cover emails.  I also want to thank everyone who commented in the last two days.  Those comments really helped me look at both candidates in more  ways than I would have come up with on my own.

Ok, I realize with a New Year and a sudden jump in new readers recently I should likely give a little introduction to the blog.  After all its evolved a long way in the last two years.

So what’s Canadian Dream: Free at 45 about?

Well the main thrust of the blog is a dream of mine to become financially independent by my 45 birthday (I’m 30 now).  So there is a fair about of discussion about early retirement planning and investing. Yet with all those extra decades of retirement planned I’m also want to ensure I’m happy then and now as well.  So happiness tend to come up a fair amount as well (See the Must Read Posts for some samples).

Then during last year I started a regular feature on Friday’s called the Green Spot which deals with the environment.  Now some of those posts are about just saving money on your consumption while others talk about ideas to change the world.  All in all the goal with them isn’t to make you feel guilty (like most environmentalists) but rather provide some information and hopefully be entertaining.

Who the hell are you?

Hi, I’m Tim.  I’m married with two small kids and my day job is a engineer for a power utility company in Regina, SK.  I’ve got a rather obsessive tendency to read a lot and write lot.  So the blog was a natural outlet for my hobby obsession about personal finance.  I’ve been interviewed by the Globe and Mail and the National Post and I also feature interviews on this blog with authors and other bloggers.

Where do I sign up to read more?

You can sign up be email on the right side bar or add the RSS feed to your reader.