While my personal consumption of Canadian Football League (CFL) games has dwindled to about one per annum in recent years, this has more to do with the realities of parenthood than it does the quality of its broadcasts. I remember growing up in the 1970s, watching the Ottawa Rough Riders and their superhuman tight-end Tony Gabriel. I wore his black No. 77 jersey proudly, as often as my Mom would let me. (There were summer days when this was ill-advised, but such was my keenness.)

Thank goodness for on-demand television. I’ve fallen behind on Dexter, the hit Showtime Networks program about a blood splatter expert who doubles as a serial killer. I’m five one-hour episodes behind in season six. Despite being swamped with work, I am determined to catch up.

This weekend I heard about a man who used to hand out penny stock certificates to the local kids at Halloween. Imagine the squeals of delight he must have been greeted with as he stuffed those rolls of stiff parchment into bags weighed down with chocolate, gum and those awful beige Halloween candies no-one ever eats. Picture the parents, unraveling the certificates and wondering if this would be the year their kids’ haul would make them even just a little rich.

Kerry Taylor’s latest on Squawkfox, The cost of collecting, is a must-read for all of us who’ve accumulated embarrassing amounts of stuff-I-can’t-possibly-live-without. “Collections scare me,” she wrote. “It doesn’t matter if the collection contains knickknacks, chotskies, baseball cards, coins, stamps, records, figurines, or Barbie doll heads. A big compilation of similar stuff often overwhelms my senses – mostly ’cause I’m compelled to add up the cost.”

Growing risks, a whiff of inflation and driving south to fly south.

It’s customary at this time of year to focus on the positive, to think about those aspects of our lives that we’re thankful for. As corny as that can feel, it’s a worthwhile exercise once or twice a year. Here’s my list.

Job growth in Canada, a stalled recovery in the U.S. and Europe explained.

Close your eyes and imagine retirement. Do you picture yourself on a golf course? Under a palm tree? Travelling the world? Doug Treen, author of Psychology of Executive Retirement, has bad news for you. You’ve got it all wrong. You are, in his words, applying a “vacation model” to retirement and it won’t work. You are setting yourself up for three or four weeks of relaxation followed by years of boredom and stress. How’s that for an eye-opener?

Canada’s own Black Friday, holiday shopping tips and the decade’s best money movies.

There is a remarkable post up on Million Dollar Journey called When Money Doesn’t Matter. It was posted by Kathryn last week. The piece is about her son – 18 months old at the time – becoming seriously ill during a stay on a remote island in the Philippines. She and her husband faced every parent’s worst nightmare; their son was dying and no-one could help. The story of how they got him to a Manila hospital, without regard for the cost, obviously, is one of the best I’ve read in a long while. It’s a wonderful piece of writing.