Weekend 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 MoreRetirees Can Sell Most Of Their Stocks As They Approach Retirement
Retirement can be a scary time for retirees who have considerable and even modest portfolios. We want to protect those assets. And certainly the risk tolerance level for most retirees will drop considerably. And that risk tolerance level will often drive the bus with respect to your allocation to bonds and cash and other risk…
Read More5 Sneaky Credit Card Marketing Tricks (And How To Beat Them)
Our emotions have a funny way of making decisions for us. Somehow, they find their way into our finances and can get us into trouble, either through credit card debt, applying for a credit card that turns out quite useless to you, or getting tricked by marketing tactics. A good credit card is a necessity…
Read MoreRenting In Retirement
Canadians value few things more than a home that is owned outright. This might be especially true for retirees. The thinking seems to be that once your mortgage is paid off, your housing expenses evaporate. Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. The alternative, renting, is often frowned upon. Renting is seen as…
Read MoreWhat I’ve Learned So Far In Retirement
Through most of the five years the Financial Independence Hub has existed, Boomer & Echo’s Robb Engen has been kind enough to allow the “Hub” to republish some of his blogs that first appeared on his own site. He recently suggested we turn the tables and invited me to write a guest blog for Boomer…
Read MoreUsing The Smith Manoeuvre On Cottages And Investment Properties
With Robb on vacation, I am honoured to have the opportunity to guest post on Boomer and Echo and meet some new readers! For readers here who don’t know me, I’m the blogger behind MillionDollarJourney.com. In the early days (the blog started in 2006), I wrote quite a bit on the Smith Manoeuvre and continue…
Read MoreHow To Maximize Your American Express Membership Rewards Points
Collecting credit card points is one of my favourite things to do and over the years I’ve decided to take things to the next level by really understanding how most of the rewards programs work. I’m not referring to Aeroplan or Air Miles which are both totally different beasts, but rather, I’ve recently dived deep…
Read MoreBeing Good With Money Is A Journey: Here’s Where To Start
Mastering personal finance isn’t something that can be done overnight. It’s a journey. One filled with a lot of little steps before you can wake up one morning, confident that your money is under control. That confidence is our goal. That’s why sites like Boomer and Echo and HowToSaveMoney were created. In fact, Robb and…
Read MoreAn Inside Look At Private Mortgage Lending
I’ve always been a bit of an odd guy. While the rest of my friends were off having fun immediately after high school and going off to higher education, I intentionally took a job working overnights at a local grocery store because it would kill my social life. If I didn’t have distractions then I…
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…
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