Last Box of Books Giveaway: Business & Marketing + MORE

This post is from staff writer April Dykman. I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I’m in the process of renovating a house. This includes a complete kitchen remodel, new fireplace, drywall to replace wood paneling, refinishing the ceilings, paint and wall repairs in every room, and more…

You know, it just occurred to me that it might cost a pretty penny to ship all these heavy ass books to you winners! Haha… oh well… what are bloggers for? 🙂
Speaking of winners, before we go and launch our last box giveaway here, let me go and pick the two from last week’s boxes before I forget…

There has been an angry uproar recently because Apple has paid hardly any extortion fees in the past four years on its billions of dollars in profits. Why this warrants an angry uproar and not a giant cheer for them for not supporting criminal governments is beyond me. But the slave-on-slave action has been thick on this one…

The promise of airline frequent flier credit cards relies on a premise — cardholders will actually be able to redeem a reasonable amount of their miles for award flights a reasonable amount of the time. Yet too many airlines have such poor award availability at the lowest mileage levels that customers feel rightfully betrayed by the airlines and the credit cards that offer their frequent flier miles…

The median weekly earnings for someone with a bachelor’s degree is $1,066, compared with $652 for those who have only a high school diploma, says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.So college seems well worth the effort, even though Forbes says earning a four-year degree at a private university actually takes an average of 55 months (roughly 4…

Happy Friday everyone. I am happy to say summer has finally shown up here. Yay! The sun is shining and the temperature is warm. It is amazing how much a city can come to life once the weather changes. You can’t go anywhere without seeing someone biking, walking, or out on a patio. I love it. A fresh air stroll after a long days work is just what the doctor ordered…

Choosing the right credit card can be a tricky game. Banks seem to enjoy highlighting their cards’ best features, and burying terms that penalize cardholders. But as consumers and regulators have caught on to this game, the banks have started to compete for new customers by offering simpler cards with fewer fees…

Yay! It is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of the summer! The weather has been crappy this week in Portland, but I’m sure it will warm back up soon enough. I’m having a serious case of Spring Fever and I can’t stop thinking about all our trips we are planning this summer. We are just taking road trips this year, but they will be a ton of fun…

Life insurance tends to be pretty low on the list of financial priorities for most people, but it really shouldn’t be. If you’re married or have young children, life insurance is one of the most important things to have if others depend on you. What kind of financial hardship would your family be in if the unfortunate happened to you? These things are not fun to think about and that’s another reason life insurance usually gets put on the back burner…

Gary Dek is a contributor at Gajizmo.com and has a background in financial analysis and valuation.
Everyone has looked at their neighbor’s new car, tech gadgets, home renovations, or vacation pictures and wished they had a better job, owned a business, had a side income, and generally made more money…

Naked With Cash is the year-long series on Consumerism Commentary where seven readers’ households share their financial progress on a monthly basis. I’ve partnered with financial planners who will offer some guidance along the way. Read this introduction to learn more about the series. Anonymous S is a 24-year-old engineer earning $67,000 a year plus bonus…

Taxes on investments increased for 2013; and there’s a good probability they’ll increase again, at least for some of you. Some tax increases are direct, such as the increase in the rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 20 percent from 15 percent. Others are indirect, such as the Medicare premium surtax on higher incomes…

How high can stocks go? Since breaking through a record closing high on March 5, the Dow Jones industrial average has continued to post fresh highs. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index has more recently done the same. 
Those were heady times back in October 2007 when both the Dow and S&P 500 closed at all-time highs…

Farmers know how to get the most out of every dollar spent. Nothing goes to waste when you live on a farm — they even recycle manure! For many farm families, living frugally is a way of life passed down from generation to generation. Frugality is an intentional part of raising farm kids.
Here are five lessons on frugality for kids from the farm…

Who’s been looking at your credit score?
There are people in your life who have a bias against you and your poor credit. The mistakes that you have made with debt not only put blemishes on your credit report and lowers your credit score, but they let people in your life hold your bad credit over your head in some way…

This week Rob Carrick of the Globe and Mail shared his insight into Mutual funds vs. ETFs: Know the Nuances in the Fees You Pay.
We all know that priorities help us get the important things done and that’s why Retire Happy discussed how to go about Setting Financial Priorities.
Boomer and Echo revealed How TFSAs Can Make You Rich…

Welcome to the weekly Friday giveaway roundup! Every single Friday we post giveaways ending within the next week. If you want to make sure you never miss one of these posts be sure to subscribe via RSS or Email.
Well, I’ve spent the past few days on the couch recovering from sinus surgery. Thankfully I felt well enough to put together this giveaway post…

I am living pay cheque to pay cheque and a new Canadian survey conducted by the Certified General Accountants Association Of Canada (I bet they have wild Christmas parties) confirms that I am not the only one.  1/3 of Canadians rely on their next paycheque to pay their basic bills.
I have $507 in my emergency fund and so I would be alright for 1 week but I get paid every 2 weeks…

Here’s a piece from the Wall Street Journal that says families with teens going to proms spent an average of $1,139 on the event last year.All I can say is “wow”.Most of the cost is in the attire (as you might expect), but there are also costs for transportation, flowers, photography, and tickets for the event…

I just found some data from the IRS on tax refunds, which, I found interesting (and hope you do too).
Let’s look at the numbers.
As of May 10, 2013, 134,349,000 tax returns have been submitted. This excludes extended returns, but is a large majority that will be submitted for the 2012 calendar tax year…

There have been many, many times over the past several years when I have felt completely overwhelmed by the huge gap between where I am right now and where I want to be.
My big dream is to reach true financial independence. By that, I mean that I have enough money socked away in relatively stable investments so that the income from those investments provides me with enough for my family to live on regardless of whether I’m actually earning income…