Posts by Robb Engen
Weekend Reading: Shattered Sunroof Edition
Shattered. Shocked. Spitting glass. We had just dropped off our kids at their grandparents’ house for the weekend and were heading back into town to see a movie when, BOOM, the panoramic sunroof in our 2013 Hyundai Sante Fe exploded. Glass everywhere! It sounded like a gunshot. I wondered if something fell out of the…
Read MoreMy Four Biggest Investing Mistakes
I was 19 years old when I first started investing. I diligently set aside money every paycheque, starting with $50 every two weeks and eventually increasing that to $200 per month, to save for retirement inside my RRSP. Sounds like I was off to a great start, right? Wrong! Even though my intentions were in the…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Good Traffic Edition
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been writing about personal finance and investing here at Boomer & Echo for six years! Thanks to all of our subscribers and readers for following along on this journey. This week we reached an incredible milestone – 4 million page views all time! Despite all the success we’ve enjoyed with our blog,…
Read MoreHow We Juggle Competing Financial Goals
If your thirties are (or were) anything like mine, it can be a juggling act to try and balance all of your competing financial goals. We can’t afford to make the maximum contributions to each of our RRSPs, TFSAs, and the kids’ RESPs – let alone top-up our mortgage payments and still have money left…
Read MoreFinancial Independence Update: Still On Track For Freedom 45
It’s been a while since we checked in on our financial freedom goals. Three years ago I had the audacity to say that I’d be financially free by 40. Then a few unplanned expenses came up, reality set-in, and I pushed findependence back five years to age 45. Here we are today, a week from…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Heads I Win, Tails I Win Edition
Do you think you’re an above-average investor? Most of us do, and that’s the premise of Heads I Win, Tails I Win, a new book by Spencer Jakab, the former stock analyst who now writes the Heard on the Street column for The Wall Street Journal. In the book, Jakab refers to Lake Moneybegone, a place…
Read MoreMy TFSA Dilemma and Solution
I embraced the tax free savings account with open arms when it was first introduced back in 2009. I made the maximum $5,000 contribution in 2009 and again in 2010. My TFSA game was strong, indeed, as I invested those funds in Canadian dividend paying stocks and quickly turned $10,000 into $15,000. But then I…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Manufacturing A Raise Edition
My employer – acting on direction from the provincial government – is freezing wages for the 2016/17 fiscal year. No salary increase, plus inflation, means that our growing family will actually be earning less money over the next 12 months. It’s a frustrating situation but I’m determined to make the most of it by manufacturing my…
Read MoreBorrowell, Grow, and Mogo: 3 Online Lenders Compared
A new wave of financial companies is turning traditional banking on its head by leveraging technology to offer customers low-cost banking, lending, and investing solutions. At the forefront of the fintech revolution are three online lending companies that are carving out a niche by targeting borrowers who want instant loan approval without visiting a branch.…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Summer Vacation Edition
I’m on holidays for the rest of the month and we’re heading out to Kelowna, B.C. to spend our family summer vacation water-sliding and wine-touring in the Okanagan. For the fifth summer in a row we’ve rented a house through vacation rental site VRBO.com. We can find an entire house or condo to rent for about the…
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