By Sheryl Smolkin

After two weeks of vacation in lovely (except for the mosquitoes) Muskoka, I’m back. And so are all of our favourite personal finance bloggers with lots of interesting material. In particular, we welcome back Kerry K. Taylor (aka Squawkfox) who has been on sick leave.

In her classic comeback post Kerry questions whether Dollarama’s $3 HDTV antenna is worth it.  The bottom line is that she was able to receive as many channels on the $3 antenna as on the $67 model she bought at Future Shop. Her readers also have made interesting comments about what worked and what didn’t in their part of the country when they ditched cable or satellite TV.

Alan Whitton (The Big Cajun Man) gives us three financial rules of thumb to live by: Spend less than you make; don’t confuse spending less with saving money if you are buying an item you don’t really need; and lifestyle creep is dangerous and an excuse to build up debt.

Sean Cooper wrote about how he reached $500,000 in net worth by age 29 in this post on Million Dollar Journey. He worked at multiple jobs, lived with his parents until he had a significant down payment on a house and rented out the top floor of his home while living in the basement apartment.

Mark Seed at My Own Advisor joins the legion of Canadians who are opting for VOIP telephone services instead of Bell or Rogers. For $4.95/month he got to keep his home phone number using Fongo Home Phone and after several months he states categorically that it was the right decision.

And last but not least, a free e:book Understanding Unretirement written by Today’s Economy blogger and Sun Life Financial Assistant Vice-President, Market Insights Kevin Press draws on six years of company research to explore why retirement in today’s economy is different and harder to achieve but could be better than ever before.

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.