Must Read Financial Blogs

Everyday I read (skim) no less than 500 blog posts using my Google RSS reader. Some articles are on marketing, some are on business, others are on golf (although I think all the golf blogs basically repost whatever Geoffshackelford.com is writing on – Tiger Woods infidelity at this moment), and a large number of financial blogs from all over North America.

Financial blogs are the most important of the ones I read given my industry. While one may not always agree with what these financial blogs have to say, their importance lies in their ability to take perspectives from completely different views. For example, some love realtors, others hate them, but by reading both perspectives one can draw their own conclusion. One must also be careful however to fully understand the views that are expressed and the accuracy of the information. Take for example Million Dollar Journey, one of my favorite financial blogs. Last year they did an article on cash back mortgages, with some miscalculated and diluted numbers that made a perfectly good product for some buyers seem as though it was a financial raping from the devil himself. I rebutted this article recently in Kirk Wants a Free Down Payment Mortgage. While Million Dollar Journey was trying to help its reader, if they accepted Million Dollar Journey’s numbers as fact without further investigation they would have been mislead.

Million Dollar Journey’s article, even with the miscalculations, probably made a few people think twice about getting a cash back mortgage, and that is a good thing because it probably also helped them understand a little bit more about what they were getting into. Thought provocation is what these blogs are all about, and that thought provocation may save you from making a huge financial mistake, which is the reason you must read these blogs. Let me know what you think!

In no particular order:
Million Dollar Journey
Canadian Capitalist
Canadian Dream
Canadian Personal Finance Blog
Get Rich Slowly
Quest for Four Pillars
Freakonomics– just for some added thought provocation!

Don’t forget to add asknolan.com to your reader!

About the Author: nolan

3 Comments

MDJ December 5, 2009 at 8:57 am

Hey Nolan, thanks for the mention. I just took a look back at the article and the calculation mistake wasn’t apparent to me. Can you explain a bit further?
- Nolan Matthias December 6, 2009 at 5:12 pm
  
  MDJ, thanks for following up on this. I love your blog and believe the information you provide is of substantial benefit to your readers.
  
  In my post ‘Kirk Wants a Free Down Payment Mortgage’ I re-ran the numbers from your original post. I have quoted from this post.
  
  FT calculated the interest paid over 5 years correctly on the cash back mortgage at $67,595.35, however when he calculated the interest on the discounted mortgage he miscalculated and came to $49,499.01. The number he should have come up with was $52,104.19. This would have made the difference in interest paid over the 5 years $15,491.16, not the $18,096.34 that he calculated. Furthermore, when he went to calculate the annual return needed to grow the $10,000 enough to make up for the cost of borrowing it, he calculated the return needed to make $28,000, instead of $8,096.34 (the difference between the additional interest cost and the $10,000 cash received up front), which lead to a calculation of 23%. The actual rate of return required to recoup the additional interest cost had the $10,000 been invested would have been closer to 10.98%.
  
  I checked, double checked, and triple checked these numbers, but if you have different calculations please let me know.
  
  Kind regards,
  
  Nolan
Nolan Matthias December 6, 2009 at 8:39 pm

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