Posts by Robb Engen
Stop Asking $3 Questions. Start Asking $30,000 Questions
Frugality can only take you so far on the road to financial independence. That’s because there’s a limit to how much you can save. We all need a place to live, food to eat, Netflix to watch. It’s right there on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Strip your budget down to the bare bones and you’re…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Upside Down Mortgage Rates Edition
In a normal interest rate environment, fixed rate mortgage tend to be more expensive than variable rate mortgages. Borrowers pay a premium for predictability – knowing exactly what their interest rate and mortgage payment will be for a five-year period. For that reason, a common strategy for saving money on your mortgage has been to…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Disappointing TFSAs Edition
A study published in the Canadian Tax Journal raised doubts about the effectiveness of Tax Free Savings Accounts and whether TFSAs really help Canadians save more. The study showed that one-third of TFSA contributions would have otherwise gone into RRSPs – something the authors called a displacement effect. Furthermore, the remaining 66 percent of contributions…
Read MoreThe Easy Way Or The Hard Way
It’s hard to find a direct flight from Calgary to Dublin. WestJet offers one that leaves Calgary at 8pm and arrives in Dublin the next morning at 11am – a total flight time of eight hours. The problem was cost. A round-trip flight for our family of four was nearly $5,000. I decided to try…
Read MoreNet Worth Update: 2019 Mid-Year Review
I started posting my net worth updates several years ago with the audacious goal of reaching $1M in net worth by the end of 2020. It’s motivating to see this goal becoming a reality with each passing update. Last year ended with a net worth of $691,000, falling short of my goal thanks to the…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Update From Ireland Edition
Greetings from Ireland! We’re on day 11 of our two-week stay on a beautiful farm in Kilkenny, Ireland. Our trip has been amazing so far, with stays in Edinburgh and Inverness, a day trip to the Isle of Skye, and an overnight road-trip to Killarney National Park. Along the way we’ve visited castles and cathedrals,…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Summer Break Edition
We leave for Edinburgh this week, the first stop in our epic 32-day summer break in Scotland and Ireland. As we get closer to departure I’m starting to realize that I don’t know what I don’t know. For instance, I forgot to select our seats until recently (long story!) and now the flight is close…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Best New Ideas In Retirement Edition
The financial news outlet MarketWatch has been collecting ideas for a feature it calls the best new ideas in retirement. The goal is to explore the most innovative thinking on the subject, from how we save for it, to how we spend it, to what it all means. “Preparing mentally for retirement may be as…
Read MoreInvesting A Lump Sum vs. Dollar Cost Averaging: What To Do When Markets Are At An All-Time High
Despite the odd blip over the last decade, Canadian and U.S. stocks continue to reach all-time highs. Investors are understandably worried about the next correction or crash. In particular, investors who are sitting on large amounts of cash are nervous about deploying their capital at today’s frothy valuations. Research has shown that, since stocks are…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Student Loan Forgiveness Edition
It’s graduation season for university and college students across North America. The biggest story of the week came from tiny Morehouse College in Atlanta, where Morehouse’s commencement speaker and tech billionaire Robert Smith pledged to pay off the student loan debt of the entire Morehouse Class of 2019. Smith’s generous gift will wipe away student…
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