Weekend Reading: 2 Million Pageviews Edition

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. 

As the year winds down I wanted to say thank you to everyone who takes the time to stop by here regularly to read, comment on, and share my blog posts. I’m so fortunate to get to do this full-time now and your support means a lot to me.

Like most established blogs, the majority of traffic comes from Google – people searching for specific topics or answers to their unique questions. They stumble upon a blog post that I wrote and hopefully like it enough to stick around and subscribe to receive new posts by email. 

That’s the next highest traffic source – those of you who get my new posts by email and click through to read.

Social media is a big driver of traffic and many of you visit from Twitter or Facebook where we have 10,000+ followers. We also get a lot of traffic from the news aggregator Flipboard.

One of the biggest supporters of the blog over the years has been The Globe and Mail’s Rob Carrick. He’ll often share our posts in his weekly newsletter – Carrick on Money. 

I’m also grateful for the long-time support from fellow bloggers such as Million Dollar Journey, My Own Advisor, Gen Y Money, and Michael James on Money. I don’t get around the blogosphere to comment as much as I used to but know that your links, shares, and comments are always noticed and appreciated.

A special thanks and shout-out to PWL Capital’s Ben Felix and Cameron Passmore, whose incredible support of my fee-only financial planning practice has led to unprecedented growth in the number of new inquiries and clients in the past few months. Their weekly Rational Reminder podcast is hands-down the best investing podcast out there for Canadians.

I plan to be much more active here in the new year – aiming for three posts per week – with a goal of reaching 3 million page views in 2020. As always, thanks for your continued support. Sharing is caring, so please tell your friends and family to subscribe 🙂

This Week’s Recap:

I wrote a comprehensive guide to TFSAs – including how to open one, what to invest inside it, how to use it in retirement, and of course the TFSA contribution limit.

In my Smart Money column at the Toronto Star I wrote about why you should save for a house down payment inside your TFSA and not your RRSP.

From the archives: How a ‘first 60-days’ assessment saves us taxes year round.

I’ll have a few more posts to share before the new year, most notably my year-end net worth update and a look at how my investments have performed.

What I’m Listening To, Reading, and Watching:

My wife and I get a rare date-night (thanks to my in-laws) and are going to see the new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. We also can’t get enough baby Yoda from the Mandalorian on Disney+.

I started reading Loonshots this summer but put it down to focus on other projects. I picked it back up a few weeks ago and I’m nearly finished. I highly recommend it for anyone who manages a team or wants to know how individuals, organizations, and countries can nurture the crazy ideas that transform the world.

Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog (Nike) and Robert Iger’s The Ride of a Lifetime (Disney) come highly recommended to me and are next up on my reading list.

Finally, in addition to my usual podcast line-up I’ve started listening to Cautionary Tales from economist Tim Harford. True stories about mistakes and what we should learn from them. Tim’s a great storyteller.

Weekend Reading:

Cineplex Cinemas just sold to British-owned Cineworld. So, are your SCENE points still safe?

Alex Bryan from Morningstar takes a closer look at the merits of common arguments against index investing.

A Kiplinger author shares the nine types of people you’ll meet in retirement:

The Reluctant Spender: Although retirement is often portrayed as the time to live life to the fullest, the attitude of many retirees is quite different. After saving all their lives, they are reluctant to spend money, even on their retirement goals.

Great news for investors in every province except for Ontario. Regulators agreed to ban deferred sales charge (DSC) funds from being sold.

A Wealth of Common Sense blogger Ben Carlson has a new goal in life – to avoid a mid-life crisis.

Here are some good tax reminders for the end of 2019.

An interesting idea from Matthew Ardrey: Why investors should pay for all investment fees out of non-registered accounts.

Preet Banerjee says if you want to save a bunch of money on your discretionary food spending then delete the food-delivery apps from your phone:

Financial advisor Darryl Brown gives some excellent advice to a reader who has been accumulating cash and waiting for the market to crash.

Rob Carrick shares the top 10 hard money truths for teens and young adults:

“We need to raise our game in teaching teenagers about money and, no, that does not mean finding new ways to explain the wonders of compound interest.”

Here’s how much Canadians are going in to debt just to pay for a car and how much you should realistically be spending.

In part three of his tax-loss selling series, PWL Capital’s Justin Bender shares and compares the approaches used by robo-advisor Justwealth and PWL.

Of Dollars and Data blogger Nick Magguilli explains why affluence increases in steps.

3 key things ultimately contribute to our true financial success: reasonable expectations, a close eye on fees, and great financial coaching.

My Own Advisor blogger Mark Seed shares his financial decade in review. Well done, Mark!

Finally, Netflix latest filing reveals previously unknown details around its Canadian revenue and subscriber count.

Have a great weekend, everyone!