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Welcome to the Globe and Mail Personal Finance Reader. I’m Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist at The Globe, and each week I compile a list of articles, blog postings, videos and websites that represent the best of what the online world has to offer on money-related subjects.

With more than a month to go in 2009, and the first decade of the century, we are starting to see what will undoubtedly become a massive wave of best and worst lists. I will do my utmost to keep up with the list trend in my columns in the weeks ahead. For now, though, I’m using the Personal Finance Reader to present a nice little collection of lists about all things financial. Best investing books and blogs, best jokes, worst mistakes – they’re all covered here.

Other topics covered this week include those high-flying emerging markets – is there still time to get in? – as well as car leasing and home inspections. Coming up next week: The holiday shopping edition.

Found something on the Internet that your fellow investors might enjoy? Talk to me at rcarrick@globeandmail.com .

From The Globe and Mail and Globe Investor

Boost your investment returns, courtesy of the government. Gail Bebee's tips on how to benefit from tax sheltered or tax free programs offered by the government.

Having 'the talk' with today's youth. This slightly risqué financial literacy website may be just what's needed to get young people interested in money.

Charitable giving can help others - and yourself. Tim Cestnick's tips on how best to make the gift that keeps on giving.

Buried under a mountain of debt? High student loans and credit-card debt mean many young people are living in their parents' basement. The solution is discipline, a budget and time

Investors are from Mars, savers are from Venus. Can they work together?

Must Reads From Around the Web

Best and Worst of Times

-Three financial events are featured in what Time magazine calls the 10 worst things about the worst decade ever – the stock market meltdown of September 2008, the Madoff fraud and the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Just a thought: Wouldn’t the 40s be a worse decade? Six years of world war, and all.

-Here’s an amusing list of investing fads and fashions since 1996, courtesy of The Reformed Broker blog.

-Kiplinger Magazine’s financial best-of-2009 lists. (Ignore the first list on best U.S. mutual funds. You can’t buy any of them).

-Five errors in judgment that investors commonly make.

-Ten myths about exchange-traded funds, the investing vehicle that is challenging the hegemony of mutual funds.

-The Top 50 investing blogs, as chosen by a blogger called The Dividend Guy.

-Best investing jokes of 2009

-Amazon.com’s list of the 10 best investing and financial books of 2009.

-The 10 best investing books ever.

-Bonus: Six good books I’ve read this year (none of them financial).

1. Positively 4th Street, by David Hajdu
2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, By Junot Diaz.
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. Legacy of Ashes, by Timothy Weiner
5. Don Cherry's Hockey Stories And Stuff, by Don Cherry and Al Strachan
6. Everyman, by Philip Roth

Investor’s Corner

I’d like to introduce you to Globe Investor Forums, a place where readers can exchange views on all kinds of financial topics. We've noticed that many readers who want to discuss broad themes such as the economy or investing usually do this in the comments on particular stories, but those discussions can get abruptly cut off once the story is archived. Globe Investor forums offer a way foster an ongoing conversation. Have your say, and we welcome your feedback on topics you'd like to add.

One of the lessons of the past decade is how dangerous it is to invest in something after a very sharp run-up. This brings us to a discussion on the CNN Money website of a reader’s question about whether emerging markets are the next bubble. Year to date, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index is up about 71 per cent in U.S. dollar terms.

The competition between active investing – that’s what mutual funds do – and passive investing – where you simply track major stock and bond indxes – could be the most intense rivalry in the financial world. Here’s a Wall Street Journal article on how active management doesn’t look so good when you factor a risk element into the analysis.

One thing both mutual funds and ETFs have in common is the year-end distribution of capital gains. This is a subject that many investors don’t understand well, so I’ve included a primer by investor advocate Ken Kivenko.

Here’s a look at the benefits of investing in unglamorous utility stocks, which here in Canada have dividend yields in the 3.5 to 5 per cent range.

This New York Times article looks at how investors hurt themselves with the decisions they make, and how you can turn things around with two basic strategies, dollar-cost averaging and regular rebalancing. This is basic stuff all investors should know about.

A handy description of how gains on foreign investments owned by Canadians are taxed. Print and put it away for future reference.

Lessons on Leasing

A discussion of the intricacies of car leasing by a pair of personal finance blogs, Michael James on Money and Million Dollar Journey. MDJ’s conclusion on leasing versus buying: “The benefit of a lease is obvious, lower monthly payments and the ‘benefit’ of returning the vehicle after the term. However, the lower payments usually result in a higher overall cost in the end.”

Inspecting the Inspectors

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has rocked the home inspection field by ruling that an inspector must pay $192,920 to clients whose home he checked over as a condition of purchase. The inspector estimated repairs needed on the home at $15,000 to $20,000, while the actual cost was $212,920.

Editor's note: If you don't receive Rob Carrick's newsletter each week by email, you can sign up to get it for free at Globeandmail.com. All you need to do is login and look for the Personal Finance Reader and other newsletters in your profile under Alerts. Other financial newsletters include:

-Business Ticker, a summary of the day's top business stories

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-Globe Investor Magazine, a biweekly collection of smart investment ideas and portfolio management stories