Around the Blogosphere

Savers rejoice! We’re in the midst of a high interest savings war. The battle for your business isn’t being fought by the big banks, but by upstart FinTech companies looking to build up deposits. Indeed, the big five have mostly ignored the high interest savings account market. Why bother, when they’re hauling in record profits…

2019 was a terrific year for stock market returns. This bull market has gone on for so long now that investors can’t help but wonder, are we due for a correction this year or in the near future?  It’s a question I get a lot from my clients these days, especially the soon-to-be-retired and the…

What are your worst financial planning fears? Some answers may include longevity risk (outliving your money), sequence of returns risk (the impact that negative stock market returns has on your withdrawal strategy), or poor investment performance (earning a lower rate of return than you expected).  A recent discussion on Twitter teased out more answers from…

Happy New Year and welcome back to the blog! With an unforgettable 2019 now in the rearview mirror we look ahead to 2020 and what’s to come. Goal setting is such a powerful motivator for me. This year, as I move to full-time blogger, freelancer, and fee-only advisor, it’s even more critical to map out…

How well did your investments perform in 2019? Investment performance is critical to achieving your retirement goals, yet it’s one of the most misunderstood concepts in personal finance. Why? Because we need to put our performance into proper context. In other words, we need to compare our returns to an appropriate benchmark. Investment managers are…

I don’t write much about the business of blogging but I’m constantly amazed by the growing community of readers who stop by here for their weekly dose of personal finance info. It has been a record year for viewership here on Boomer & Echo with an incredible 2 million + pageviews so far in 2019. …

I’ve long advocated for people to take a bill negotiation day – a day off work once a year to call their bank, telecom provider, and other other service providers and negotiate their monthly bills. These companies are not known for voluntarily offering loyalty discounts. Banks add new service charges and increase monthly account fees…

I love sending readers and clients on a mission to test their financial advisor. I get them to ask about lower cost portfolio options such as index mutual funds or ETFs. The responses are typically hilarious – so much that I wrote an entire post on the sh!t my advisor says. A reader I’ll call…

The last quarter of 2018 was a miserable time for investors. The S&P 500 had reached an all-time high on September 21, 2018. Three months later it had fallen nearly 13 percent – erasing 18 months of gains along the way. The TSX also fell more than 13 percent. Panic ensued, with many pundits predicting…

My investing philosophy is pretty straightforward. Invest in a low cost, globally diversified portfolio of index funds or ETFs. Add bonds to help smooth out the volatility in your portfolio. Contribute regularly to meet your savings targets. Ignore everything else. This approach comes from the belief that investing has become largely commoditized. Index tracking ETFs…