Blog Posts by Yahoo Finance Canada

There are few better ways to enjoy a summer vacation time than at a cottage by a lake. While there's plenty of ways to score a weekend at a friend or family member's cottage, if you're looking for a place of your own to enjoy long-term you have two options: renting or buying.

"The first thing I tell people is before you buy, you want the cottage experience — renting is a really good way to get that experience and gives you a chance to stay on the actual lake you're looking at, explore the town, and see what works for you," said Cottage Country Director Mark Bordo. "One of the biggest advantages of renting is it gives you a chance to experience cottage life and areas before making the commitment of buying."

Ownership of a cottage comes with a lot of responsibilities, both personal and financial.  "Renting allows you to have the best of both worlds," said Bordo.

However, a cottage can be a worthwhile investment, especially if there is an additional guest cottage you could rent out or if

MoneySense's 2012 Charity 100 issues reveals how charities spend their money.

Canadians donated $10.6 billion dollars to a myriad of causes in 2010 (the latest year for which data is available). The lion's share of that money went to Canada's biggest charities, household names focused on health-care, community services and international development.

Most Canadians expect that their money is being spent as effectively as possible. But not every charity produces their financial reports in the same way making it difficult for donors to know exactly where their money is going. How much is actually getting to the intended beneficiary after fundraising, publicity, utilities and program costs are paid for? And is that the only criteria to consider?

For the third straight year, MoneySense has graded Canada's biggest 100 charities based on charity efficiency, fundraising efficiency, governance and transparency and reserve fund size. Organizations not generally thought of as charities, such as

By James R. Barth, Gerard Caprio Jr., and Ross Levine, guest columnists

What underlies the eurozone crisis? Some people view it as a sovereign debt problem due to unrestrained spending by some member countries. Others look at it as competitiveness problem -- the periphery countries being less competitive at exporting their products than some of the northern members, most notably Germany. And still others see it as a banking problem, with banks having provided excessive amounts of credit, most recently culminating in the need to recapitalize troubled Spanish banks, and how to fund such efforts.

Banks Just Part of the Problem

The answer is that the crisis is a combination of all three, with the banking problem closely intertwined with the other two and encompassing the entire region. Just ask the Irish: their banking crisis led to a guarantee of bank debt by the government, thereby threatening Ireland's ability to repay its own debt and pushing the economy into a steep recession. Now

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg became the first female member of her company's board of directors on Monday, a move that many in Silicon Valley saw as a long time coming and one that finally shakes up the male-dominated board that has led the social network since its earliest days. Sandberg has been with Facebook since 2008 and serves as CEO Mark Zuckerberg's second in command.

She joins Zuckerberg on the now eight-member board, which also includes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Washington Post Co. chairman Donald Graham, former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel and James Breyer.

"Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years," Zuckerberg said Monday in a statement. "Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board."

Facebook under pressure

The appointment

Be careful what you click on when searching the Web; the international cybercrime community is coming for you.

That's the message from Internet security firm Blue Coat, which earlier this year found that poisoned search engine results remain the number one malware threat on the Web, accounting for a full 40 percent of all cyberattacks in 2011. The popular bait-and-switch tactic is nearly four times more likely to snag unsuspecting users than the once common email-based approach, which now only accounts for 11 percent of attacks. Social networking rounds out the top three threats with 6.5 percent.

The Blue Coat report was based on an analysis of the Web traffic of more than 75 million users.

"Searching is at least as dangerous as going into your email in-box and clicking on things," Chris Larsen, Blue Coat's chief malware expert, recently told USA Today.

The scam works like this: The bad guys set up themed "bait sites" using terms that are likely to show up in search engine results, as

Every day, Michelle Leder and the crew at Footnoted.com pick through Securities and Exchange Commission filings in search of interesting tidbits on executive compensation. Every month she joins us to discuss some of the highlights and lowlights. In May, we learned that companies showered lavish compensation on well-known casino magnates, and at executives at highly visible firms like Abercrombie & Fitch and Dell.

The Suite Life with Sheldon Adelson. Sheldon Adelson, who presides over the Las Vegas Sands (LVS) empire, is a larger-than-life figure. A multibillionaire, he injected himself in the presidential campaign by bankrolling Newt Gingrich's quixotic primary effort. Adelson also lives large. And the company he controls helps to foot the bill. The company's proxy, filed in early May, revealed that Las Vegas Sands shelled out $2.6 million to cover security costs for Adelson and his family. That sounds like a lot of money. But the company reported that the controversial Adelson needs

There's a new product on the market that is selling like hot cakes, with 100 million units sold in just 10 weeks. And no, it is not the iPhone or any other Apple product.

It's Taco Bell's new nacho cheese flavored Doritos Locos Taco, which sells for $1.29 and features a shell made from a Doritos chip on the outside, maintaining the same taste as a Taco Bell classic crunchy taco on the inside.

"To put some perspective on the 100 million tacos sold, Taco Bell notes that McDonald's sold its first 100 million burgers in 1958 — 18 years after the first McDonald's burger stand opened, and three years after Ray Kroc started his first McDonald's franchise," reports The Orange Country Register.

The new taco — which debuted in Taco Bell's 5,600 stores on March 8 — has quickly become the company's most successful product launch in its 50-year history. It even led its parent company Yum Brands (YUM) to a 73% profit jump in the first quarter of this year.

You can safely bet the Doritos taco won't

Republicans in the House of Representatives are taking a stand for your right to light -- progress and savings to the American consumer be damned.

These valiant defenders of the Constitution, according to Bloomberg, "adopted a provision designed to save traditional incandescent light bulbs by blocking what one lawmaker called the 'energy police' from enforcing an efficiency standard."

As Bloomberg points out, bulb makers such as Royal Philips Electronics and General Electric have already worked to make bulbs more efficient. In fact, like any other corporate endeavor in the known universe, they're in favor of greater efficiency. They also see the benefit to giving the Energy Department the ability to enforce efficiency standards, as it would prevent lesser foreign products from negatively impacting the business.

In essence, House Republicans are fighting to preserve your right to choose an increasingly outdated technology with few benefits even if it means putting themselves at odds