Best Canadian dividend stocks + MORE Jul 3rd

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Welcome to some Weekend Reading for my friends who like to celebrate Canada Day all week and those partying south of the border for July 4th this weekend.  This week I only managed to sneak in one post about driving my 15-year-old car other than some national holiday cheers.  Next week I hope to publish my latest dividend income update (you can read the May update here) and maybe talk a bit about why bonds are not for us or anything else that comes to mind.
Enjoy this Weekend Reading edition and see you here again next week.
In a few thousand words Cash Cow Couple decided saving between 25 and 33 times your annual expenses is enough money to retire.  That’s in line with these quick retirement rules of thumb.
This Canadian couple told CBC due to their fat mortgage: once they pay the rest of the bills and buy groceries, “there is nothing left”.  The homeowner describes their existence as living “hand to mouth…

Government cheerleading for stock prices leads to blame when they fall.

CBC.caWhat will Sunday's Greek vote mean? Here are some possible outcomesCBC.caAfter missing a €1.6 billion ($2.2 billion Cdn) payment to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday, Greece has gone into technical in default on its loans, the first developed economy to do so in the IMF's 71-year history. The country is now in …Hopeful Start to Greek Debt Negotiations Quickly SouredNew York TimesPoll Suggests 'Yes' Has Marginal Edge in Pivotal Greek ReferendumWall Street JournalThe EU's handling of the Greek crisis risks helping the 'better-off-outers'Telegraph.co.uk (blog)Financial Times -The Australian Financial Review -The Guardianall 16,997 news articles »

Best Canadian dividend stocks (Creative Commons/401(K) 2012)
As spring turns into summer the land becomes festooned with farmers’ markets. The one in my neighbourhood offers a wide variety of tummy-pleasing goods from fresh berries and pies to peameal bacon sandwiches. It’s an old-fashioned food fair where credit cards are scarce and cash is king.
Like farmers, investors love cash. They’re particularly appreciative of profitable businesses that pay dividends. That’s why I recently scoured the Canadian market for big cash generators and spotted eight of them.
I started my search with 324 dividend-paying stocks that trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange. While their yields vary dramatically, all of them send at least some money to shareholders.
I narrowed the list down using a combination of three classic value investing ratios. Bargain stocks trading at low multiples of earnings from continuing operations (P/E), cash flow (P/CF), and free cash flow (P/FCF) were favoured.
For those who aren’t familiar with the measure, free cash flow is equal to a firm’s cash flow minus its capital expenditures…

(Getty Images/Arda Guldogan)
If you’re considering buying your first home, or cottage, or other type of property then you’re probably in the market for a mortgage. But to do that you’ll need to learn mortgage basics.
A mortgage is a loan you obtain from a bank or other lender that helps you finance your real estate purchase. Any quick Google search of mortgage calculators will bring up thousands of hits that can help you determine what you can afford—but mortgages are more than just math. Mortgages reflect the values we hold, the hopes and fears of the future, as well as our tolerance for risk and uncertainty.
To pick the best mortgage, then, you’ll need to understand your options.
Typically, a mortgage will consist of two parts: the principal sum (the amount borrowed) and interest (the cost of borrowing that money). In general, the best plan is to minimize the amount of interest you pay. However the decision on what mortgage to select has become more complicated over the last decade—interest rates have dropped to historical lows, and mortgage lenders have created and offered a variety of variations to the once-standard types of mortgages…