Monthly Link Love - Plutus Awards ... - Sustainable Personal Finance

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We were plesantly surprised to discover that our fellow bloggers nominated us as finalists.? The Plutus awards celebrate the best financial blogs by writers unaffiliated with mainstream media and commercial financial products.? We were nominated as finalists, top 5, in the Best Green Blog and Best Canadian Personal Finance Blog category.? Quite an honour for us to get a 2nd set of nominations for a blogging award in our first year!

In the Best Canadian Personal Finance Blog category we?re up against some real heavyweights:

• Best Canadian Personal Finance Blog:

In the Best Green or Sustainability Finance Blog category we?re head to head with some of our blogging buddies in P.E.T and SLB.? This is a tough category as well with well known blogs in DIY Natural and TGH as finalists.

• Best Green or Sustainability Finance Blog:

We?d love to get your vote in both categories.? Click here to VOTE ? and you can pick and choose which categories you care to vote on.

Now onto our monthly links.? It certainly was difficult to whittle down the selection to 10 great reads, 4 editors picks and the grande finale as the best of the 15 we highlight, our Editors Favourite for August.? We?ll start with the 10 great reads ? here goes!

10.? Peer to Peer lending intrigues me.? Why?? Well, it is a social form of lending / investing.? I haven?t gotten into P2P yet, heck, i?m not even sure if Canadians qualify for Lending Club (I think we do).? When I am ready to take the P2P leap i?ll be coming back to Beating Brokes how-to article, Lending Club: How I Select My Investments.

9.? Do I think i?m qualified to be a Financial Professional?? Heck no!? When I came across Jacob?s 7 Reasons Why Being a Financial Blogger Could be Better than Being a Financial Professional I was naturally intrigued.? It?s fair to say, after getting a degree and a diploma I don?t want to go back to school again!

8.? Boomer and Echo sure do like to discuss pensions and other investments and I for one and super stoked when I see a new article from the dynamic mother/son team.? This time Echo wonders whether you should contribute to your RRSP if you have a pension.? Stellar material given Mrs. SPF and I have pensions and we are always trying to balance our RRSP contributions against our TFSA and our forced pension contributions.

7.? When our great pal Miss T discusses sustainable / green investing it is an automatic must read. I really like to see different perspectives on the concept of socially responsible investing and Miss T aligns quite closely with our own, but not 100%.?? Either way, Miss T does a great job discussing growth of sustainable finance to support the environment and given 2/3rds of our site name are in the article heading it had to be a great article, and it was!

6.? I?ve written extensively on housing and our entire experience buying a home and selling our house quickly.? So your house is for sale and the months are piling up?? Well, Free From Broke explores 11 Reasons Why Your House Isn?t Selling and How to Finally Get Your House Sold which provides some really neat reasons why houses don?t sell.? I?m just glad our Real Estate Agent didn?t suck ? but yours might if your house isn?t selling.

Engine ? by Accretion Disc

5.? We have a trustworthy mechanic in Dan & Dave @ Douglas Automotive here in town.? Their shop used to be our next door neighbour!? Honest trustworthy auto mechanics are worth their weight in gold.? Our guys may cost a little more but we saved big from their help, service, referrals and friendship.? Financial Samurai needs to find a great mechanic for Moose.

4.? Ahh, the ever discussed emergency fund.? I read a lot of articles on WHY you should have an emergency fund but Mike @ Money Smarts Blogs switches this around and discusses why HE has an emergency fund.? Always a sucker for different perspectives I really enjoyed this article.? Our reasons for keeping reserve cash aren?t as refined as in the article, but we do participate in saving for a rainy day.

3. ? There is a lot of repetition in the PF blog realm.? It is inevitable ? there are only so many topics.? There is always a unique way to approach some topics.? Robert came up with a really novel idea in his post The Internet is Like High School and he?s dead on.? A great analogy presented in this post.

2.? So we like our pension.? But pensions, like any investment vehicle, carry some risk.? While we do count on our pensions for our retirement we do pay attention when the blog that inspired me to think about creating Sustainable Personal Finance, Million Dollar Journey discusses 5 Pension Myths.

1.? I like Darwin?s attitude and fearlessness in calling it as he sees it.? This past month he examined Rent vs Buy and concludes that renters are deluding themselves.? Need I say more?? Check this article out.

These 10 articles were extremely good.? Since we switched from a weekly round up to a monthly round up we knew it would be hard to pick a small slice of the great reading that is delivered month in, month out by our peers.? However, there are a select few articles that I thought were outstanding and I want to share these with our readers.

Here are our editors picks, but be sure to stick around for our Editors Favourite for August.

Public Domain Photos

EP3:? I really love seeing a sustainable living / financial subject get broken down to the base financial data involved in the sustainability topic.? So when someone does the math regarding Urban Chickens I really wanted to learn more.? Apparently it takes a few years to get a ROI on raising your own birds in the backyard but then you get 5+ years of yummy, healthy, no-hormone egg love.? We really like eggs ? they do a body good.

EP2:? I have an awful time sleeping.? If I get 5 hours sleep it is a minor miracle.? 5 consecutive hours of sleep? Doesn?t happen.? So when PFFirewall discussed the issues his wife has sleeping I had to check it out. Jesse has a keen and personal understanding about people who have sleeping problems after discovering Fitbit and the Sleep Patterns and the Importance of Tracking.? Thanks for the heads up on a gadget I need to get myself Jesse.

EP1:? Whaddya know ? My Own Advisor makes the cut here @ SPF.? Why?? He produces gold PF articles.? So I read the piece by Echo and then use the great information MOA talked about how he?ll maximize his TFSA first.? Agreed!? For many it makes a lot of sense to look at the TFSA before the RRSP.

Money Mamba is a newer blog and it is becoming one of my favourites.? Do JT and I agree on everything? Nope.? He?s not into ?green? or the ?green lifestyle? ? and he admits it.? Where do we have common ground then?? We both believe that proof IS IN THE NUMBERS.?? So when we write about sustainability or green topics we do two things: try not to preach and present the facts as we see them.

We discuss buying local and supporting local businesses often.? It is part of our personal approach to life and finances.? JT examined the idea of Locavesting ? Would You Invest in a Small Local Business? and as he predicted, we have.? Community development, supporting the small guy (not the Wal Mart!), farmers markets and local (ya, backyard!) chickens is the way to go.?? We all benefit from local community development.? It may cost a bit more here and there but the greater benefits that can?t be easily measured with dollars and cents.

A new park, less crime, less reliance on social programs ? it has to pay off, right?

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Source: http://sustainablepersonalfinance.com/monthly-link-love-plutus-awards-finalist-deux/

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