I received an email from Steve Carpenter yesterday. Typically when I receive emails from someone I don’t know, I’m enticed to “file” the message accordingly, however I opened this one, not knowing what to expect.

Steve is the founder and CEO of Cake Financial Corporation.

After reading his email, I found myself intrigued with his new service. Cake is a new online financial service that allows individuals to display their actual portfolio,and keep track of how the portfolio has done over a period of time. It also lets you share your portfolio and real-time trading information with trusted …

It comes as no surprise that EmigrantDirect has lowered it’s American Dream Savings account interest rate to 4.75%. A 0.3% reduction in the APY.

It’s one of the adverse effects of Mr. Bernanke lowering the fed funds rate (of which I believe he overdid), and makes the stock market look more attractive to investors at a time where savings needs to be promoted.

Of course, you can’t have your cake and eat it too…

At 4.75%, EmigrantDirect still beats my Bank of America money market account, so it’s still the place I go to stash cash for a rainy day.

I’m reading the Wall Street Journal this morning, and I came across a provocative article concerning the declining value of the US dollar versus the Canadian loonie.

Evidently, those in the “exotic dance” industry in northern U.S. states are seeing a workforce shortage. Not because morals and values are increasing, but because Canadian currency is increasing in value.

“The owner of five strip clubs in Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, says American dancers are heading to Canada to earn the strengthened Canadian currency, and Canadian customers are heading to Detroit because their dollars go further there. He’s fighting back by advertising more in the U.S. and offering free limo service to get …

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I’ve been sifting through the Pengrowth Energy filings in my spare time over the last couple weeks, and was not surprised to see them cut their distribution by 10% on September 14.

Reading through the Q2 financial results, I noted that their POR (pay out ratio) is 94%, which is fairly steep, especially for an oil and gas production company.

The fact that they are turning around and paying out 94% of their cash flow does not leave them much for capital expenditures and drilling.

“Development capital for the second quarter of 2007 totaled $44.4 million with approximately 82 percent spent on drilling and completions. Pengrowth participated in drilling …

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Now that I have things on cruise control with my rental house, it’s time to start putting some money into it.

Last week I contracted out a tree service to have the tree removed on the property line. I generally hate to remove good trees, but this one is right on the property line growing up through a chain link fence, and even worse, it was growing up through the electrical service lines to the house. That spells disaster when the limbs freeze up and take out the power to the house.

While they were at it, they ground out a second stump in the middle of the back yard.

All …