Posts by Robb Engen
Dollars and Sense: Book Review and Giveaway
Most personal finance literature focuses on the numbers. How much you need to save, where to find the best deals, which investments earn the highest return, why you should pay off your high interest debt first. But there’s a growing body of work exploring our financial behaviour and why certain decisions about money are made…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Exploding Sunroof Update Edition
Long-time readers might recall last summer when the panoramic sunroof in our 2013 Hyundai Sante Fe spontaneously shattered while my wife and I were driving on the highway towards Lethbridge. I filed a complaint with Transport Canada, and after searching online and finding multiple instances of exploding sunroofs, wondered why a recall hadn’t been ordered.…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: CPP Reality Check Edition
Repeat after me: The Canada Pension Plan will be there for me when I retire. In fact, CPP is sustainable over the next 75 years according to the most recent report issued by Canada’s Chief Actuary. This projection assumes a modest 3.9 percent annual real rate of return over that time. The plan is operated…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: How Much Should We Save Edition
Financial writer Jean Chatzky caused an uproar this week when she tweeted some advice on age-based savings benchmarks that, to some, seemed unattainable. By the time you’re 30, aim to have 1x your annual income set aside for retirement. At 40, 3x; at 50, 6x; at 60, 8x; and by retirement, 10x. — Jean Chatzky…
Read MoreDouble Dip the Savings with RBC and Petro-Canada
This post is sponsored by RBC and Petro-Canada. All expressed opinions and experiences are my own words. In the classic Seinfeld episode, The Implant, George Costanza gets into an argument at a funeral reception with his girlfriend’s brother, Timmy, when accused of double dipping a chip. “Did you just double-dip that chip?” “Excuse me?” “You…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: The Undoing Project Edition
Long-time readers know I’m fascinated with behavioural psychology and how we make decisions, particularly about money. Of course, the most influential research in this field came from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in 2002 for his and Tversky’s work on judgement and decision-making (Tversky died in 1996), and his book,…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Tougher Mortgage Rules Edition
Earlier this week, the Office of Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) – Canada’s banking watchdog – introduced tougher mortgage rules to take effect January 1, 2018. This new ‘stress test’ applies to homebuyers with down payments greater than 20 percent and requires the mortgage applicant to qualify for the higher of the Bank of Canada 5-year…
Read MoreCoping With Stock Market Losses
Imagine you’re at the stage where you finally have a decent amount of money to invest. After a painstaking amount of research you carefully construct a portfolio of low-cost ETFs with broad exposure to global markets, plus a healthy dose of bonds to smooth out the ride. You determine your rebalancing threshold and then set-up…
Read MoreHow Often Should You Service Your Vehicle?
How often should you service your vehicle? This table shows the difference between the owner’s manual recommendations and the guidelines offered by Mr. Lube:
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Nobel Prize Edition
One of the most influential books I’ve ever read was Nudge by behavioural economist Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The book is all about subtlety or gently steering people into making better choices to improve their health, wealth, and happiness. Policymakers around the world caught on to his groundbreaking research, which have been widely applied…
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