First things first: No, I’m not dead.

Principal photography for “Million Dollar Neighbourhood”, which will air on The Oprah Winfrey Network in Canada starting in January 2013, wrapped up a week ago and so now I have time to focus on all the things I’ve neglected since filming began. Like blogging and podcasting. During the shoot, the days were long and taxing, and I was also writing a book (because I’m a masochist like that), which will be published in January of 2014.

So yes, the blog will be back in action as of right now. I decided to give the site a makeover. I hope you like what I’ve done with the place. It’s a work in progress, but if you notice anything weird, give it a day or two as I’ll be experimenting with the design, and since I’m no coding ninja, I expect to break the site frequently. ;)

Financial Literacy Month

Well, we’re a long ways away (still) from a cohesive national strategy on tackling financial literacy but just imagine what the national debt-to-income ratio would be without the work that has been done so far. Ok, don’t imagine it. We’re at an all-time high at about 163%. That number, while not enough to give a detailed picture about debt distribution, is scarier still since the boomer demographic, sometimes described as the pig in the python, is entering their retirement stage and the proper debt-to-income ratio for someone near retirement should be ZERO. So with the population distribution skewing older, that number should have a significant downward drag, which indicates those who DO have a debt problem, REALLY have a debt problem.

November is Financial Literacy Month in Canada and there are a number of financial literacy events taking place across the country. But my friends at''The Investor Education Fund have an “event” you can take part in with your computer right now. Their Cranial Cash Clash is a pretty nifty little game that helps assess one’s financial literacy. Try it out, and maybe share it with your kids, friends, and family. And next time they ask to borrow money, you can look up their Cranial Cash Class score first, to see how much interest you should charge.

Click on the image to try it out on their website.