Welcome to the jungle

A very warm pfblog welcome is in order for my good friend Andy's brand-spanking new personal finance blog, unspending. Andy's a twentysomething who's decided to face up to her financial life before it gets out of her control.

She's a self-described financial newbie, but expect well-written posts on budgeting and saving while she finds the right balance in her financial life. She's starting with the basic ABCs of finance (like we all do) but I've no doubt she'll be cranking out 3,000-word odes on ABCP, P/E ratios, EBITDA, the BRICs and ETFs before long. :)

Unspending's barely more than a weekend old, and she's already taken the fantastic first step of realizing that paying bank fees is death by a thousand cuts.

Read her. Welcome her. Add her to your blogroll.

Blogroll update

Slowly getting around to updating my blogroll on the right hand side of the page.

I must admit, I was embarrassed to discover that I hadn't already linked to these blogs, as I've been reading them all for a while. Still, it's never too late to throw someone a little link love.

Nancy Zimmerman's blog can be found here. Nancy's a Vancouver-based money coach (NOT a financial planner, she'd hasten to add) who wants to engage Canadians to take care of their financial health. Sounds like an admirable goal to me. The fact that she works for Citizens Bank of Canada is another feather in her cap, as far as I'm concerned.

Wooly woman's blog is more debt-related (as opposed to investing, I mean) and even though I've managed to sidestep a lot of major debt pitfalls so far in my young life, I still find blogs like hers inspiring and informative.

Strictly speaking, JanePlain is a Canadian, which is why she gets primo placement in my coveted blogroll. :) But she's actually an ex-pat living on the West Coast, in silicon valley I believe, in a high-tech, high-paying industry, in an expensive city. Those are several things I have no frame of reference for, which goes part of the way toward explaining why I find her blog so interesting. Hers is such a different perspective from my own, yet we seem to think alike. Hers is one of the newest personal finance blogs I've stumbled upon, but I like what I see so far. And speaking of California, I'd like to share the funniest description I've ever heard of silicon valley. My sister, upon returning from a trip to San Jose/Cupertino, was asked how it felt to live in a part of the world with such a high percentage of single, successful bachelors. Her synopsis? "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."

I'm sure she probably ripped that off from somewhere, but it always made me laugh.

At any rate, welcome to the newbies and blog veterans alike. I've heard rumours that a good friend of mine who recently discovered my blog is thinking about starting a pf blog of her own (hint, hint) to help get her financial house in order. I hope she does. There's a space waiting on my blogroll whenever she does.

Tech support

Forgive the non sequitur, but technical help from any HTML idiot savants I happen to have as readers out there is greatly appreciated on this one.

According to Statcounter my site's hits have fallen off a cliff this week (0 registered on Tuesday, and 1 on Wednesday, and 0 on Thursday) but I know that's not the case because I've had posts and even comments on those days.

In short, I think the same number of people are coming here daily as they always have (usually in a range of between 20-50 unique hits per weekday) but my statcounter isn't registering them for some reason -- thus defeating the purpose of having a statcounter.

I'm on the new blogger template, as I have been for awhile, but something definitely appears to have gone awry this week. Any theories? Do I need to reinstall counter code or re-ping something?

Any bloggers who blog on blogger (how meta!) out there, I'd appreciate some theories.

Bloggiversary

Just wanted to point out that this site turns one year old this week. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried — we’ve had informative discussions on the benefits of putting dividend-paying equities inside or outside a registered retirement portfolio.

Thanks to everyone who’s stopped by. I’m positive I’ve learned more from you than vice versa, but I like to think I add something of value to this personal finance blogosphere.

After a bit of a self-imposed hiatus, I’ll be back to regular posting shortly, I promise.