Around the Blogosphere

I’ve been looking for a phrase that captures the odd behaviour that investors exhibit when they change strategies based on current market conditions. Ben Carlson at A Wealth of Common Sense neatly summed up this behaviour as investors always fighting the last battle. It’s perfect: “Not every investor does this but there is a tendency…

Sometimes I think I’m the poster child for what not to do with your TFSA. I opened an account immediately when the TFSA launched in 2009 and contributed the maximum annual amount for three years, investing those funds in a couple of dividend paying stocks. I cashed out in 2011 (with a tidy $4,500 profit)…

Regular readers know that I update and post my net worth twice a year, including a year-end summary. They should also know that I didn’t post an update at the end of 2022. It’s not because I’m embarrassed that my portfolio suffered losses for the first time in recent memory. That’s a feature of financial…

Welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading! I’m on holidays but I wanted to share a quick update and thank you to all of my readers and clients for your support this year.   I started this blog back in 2010 during what I’d call the height of popularity for personal finance blogs. Today, the preferred…

Inflation. It’s on everyone’s mind as the cost of goods and services have been on the rise since early 2021.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures changes in the cost of a fixed basket of goods over time, including food, shelter, transportation, furniture, clothing, and recreation. While inflation may have peaked in June of this…

We’re building a new home and should have possession of it sometime in February. I’ve been asked a few times if we are going to hang onto our existing home and rent it out. After I stop laughing I explain why I have no desire to own a rental property. I admit that I have…

It was a sobering week for crypto bros, as yet another epic collapse has exposed the supposed “future of money” as little more than a house of cards. Crypto trading platform FTX, which landed high profile partnerships with the likes of Tom Brady and Steph Curry, and signed a $135M agreement with the Miami Heat…

Most of my work as a financial planner boils down to helping clients use their resources to achieve their financial goals over time. But where do those goals come from? How do we know they’re the “right” goals?  The team at PWL Capital dug into the research around goal setting and found that, “people are…

I’ve never heard so much interest in GICs before this year, but with stock and bond markets down and interest rates up it’s no surprise that investors are looking for a safe and profitable place to park their savings. Just two years ago, a five-year GIC was paying a paltry 1.5% interest, while a two-year…