By Sheryl Smolkin

In this week’s roundup we feature series of blogs about the pros and cons of home ownership plus blogs from some of our other favourites that are great reads. 

In How To Figure Out If A Home Is A Good Investment, She Thinks I’m Cheap teaches you how to do the math to find out whether you can afford a home. He also explores whether or not it makes sense to buy the largest home your bank or mortgage broker says you can afford.

Since the end of July, Gail Vaz-Oxlade has published excerpts from Chapter 4 of her book Money Rules. This very readable five part narrative tell the story of Jason (divorced with two children) and the issues he encounters when purchasing a home.

Chapter 4: A Home of My Own (Part 1)

Chapter 4: A Home of My Own (Part 2)

Chapter 4: A Home of My Own (Part 3)

Chapter 4: A Home of My Own (Part 4)

Chapter 4: A Home of My Own (Part 5)

Whether you are saving for a new home or saving for retirement, you may think you have cut out all of the fat and you can’t allocate another dollar a month from your budget to savings. That’s when Canadian Dream: Free at 45 blogger Tim Stobbs  Avoids Saving Boredom by taking risks and trying out new money-saving ideas even if many don’t work.

A continuing theme in all of the blogs we write or refer you to is that saving money is not rocket science. You just have to spend less than you make. On Retire Happy blogger Jim Yih reiterates the basic principles of saving while readily acknowledging that Building Wealth is Simple, Not Easy

And finally, Kerry K. Taylor aka Squawkfox learns that The crazy cost of daycare in Toronto is about 1/3 more than she paid in B.C. and calculates how much she has to earn in order to afford it.

Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere. Share the information with us on http://wp.me/P1YR2T-JR and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.

By Sheryl Smolkin

This week Jon Chevreau, the editor of Moneysense magazine celebrated his 60^th birthday and the release of the U.S. edition of his book Findependence Day. You can listen to a podcast interview I did with Jon last summer.

In a “must read” blog he wrote to mark the occasion, Jon made an important distinction between early retirement and financial independence:

“Financial independence is not the same as retirement,” Chevreau says. “Ideally, it precedes retirement by decades. It means you continue to work because you want to, not because you have to.”

Exploring a similar topic, on Darwin’s Money, the author debunks some myths about extreme early retirement and says, “The problem I have with people declaring that they’ve retired in an ‘extreme’ fashion is that they’re either not really retired, or they’re relying on a spouse, which, well, isn’t really the same thing.”

So based on the discussion in the two posts above, did guest blogger Robert (a financial planner) on Canadian Dream: Free at 45 really retire at age 35, or has he simply achieved financial independence? To find a purpose in “retirement” he has gone back to school with the goal of eventually living and working overseas.

The same question may be asked of accountant “Retired Syd” who retired in her 40s. On Retirement: A full-time job she muses about the best place to live for the next chapter in her life. Because her priority is friends and family, she concludes that living close to the people she loves is more important than any dreams of settling in a more distant locale.

But She Thinks I’m Cheap has already made the leap to London with his wife and in his latest blog you can read about their experience relocating overseas and re-entering the workforce.

Do you follow blogs with terrific ideas for saving money that haven’t been mentioned in our weekly “Best from the blogosphere?”  Send us an email with the information to so*********@sa*********.com and your name will be entered in a quarterly draw for a gift card.