Weekend Reading: Kelowna Getaway Edition

A work conference had me off to Kelowna for two days of meetings. Trouble is, I’d miss my daughter’s birthday. Not cool. The solution: Bring the whole family out for a bit of a getaway prior to the conference.

We love to escape to the Okanagan once every year or so. What’s not to love? The warm weather, beautiful landscape, bustling downtown, not to mention all the wineries up and down the valley. Oh yeah, my parents moved out here too. A good excuse to hold our Boomer & Echo annual general meeting.

This Kelowna getaway was a perfectly timed break from the daily grind back home. Spring-time starts the madness known as “eating dinner in the car while shuttling the kids around to their various after-school activities.” Sometimes all you need is a short break to recharge before getting back into your routine. A little work-play vacation was just what we needed.

This Week’s Recap:

On Monday I interviewed intelliMortgage founder Rob McLister about whether you should use an online mortgage broker.

And on Wednesday Marie continued her monthly series with a look at what to do in the month of May for your financial health.

Weekend Reading:

MoneySense’s David Aston put together a comprehensive investor’s guide to robo-advisors for 2018.

Why did mortgage rates just surge? Rob McLister weighs-in on the mystery behind TD’s surprise mortgage rate hike and what it means for consumers.

Vanguard introduced its new line-up of all-in-one ETFs and investors are wondering how to incorporate them into their existing portfolio. Dan Bortolotti says to keep it simple:

“You may want to consider selling your existing holdings and going all-in with one of the new Vanguard asset allocation ETFs. Sure, it will cost you a few trading commissions, but this one-time expense will reduce both cost and eliminate the need to rebalance going forward. And isn’t that the whole point of a one-fund solution?”

How financial planner Sheila Walkington is helping people addicted to their lines of credit.

Holding too much cash can become an addiction for investors who don’t have a plan for deploying capital. Here’s Ben Carlson on why lump sum investing works best – just not right now.

The famous Schrodinger’s Cat paradox shows how something could, in theory, be simultaneously dead and alive. Ben Carlson neatly applies this to your investment portfolio with a look at rising interest rates and its affect on REITs.

A look inside the exclusive world of high-end investment clubs, where you might prefer to be the founder rather than a member.

PWL Capital’s Justin Bender explains how to compare your investment return to an appropriate benchmark – using the actual performance of an ETF portfolio using a sample ETF portfolio from his website:

Meanwhile, the Gen Y Money blog explains how to calculate the return on investment of your primary residence. Ahh, yes. One of my pet peeves as well:

“It irks me when someone says: I bought this house in 1992 for only $250,000, now in 2018, it’s $1,250,000. I made $1 million!”

You’ve gotta read this Maclean’s feature on the people who bought at the peak of Toronto’s real estate bubble, and then lost hundreds of thousands within months.

Would you rather pay a 1 percent fee or a $1,000 fee on $100,000 invested in a mutual fund? Before you congratulate yourself for noticing that 1 percent and $1,000 amount to the same fee in this example, finance professor Lisa Kramer explains that you may be making a related mistake in your own investment accounts that could be costing you buckets of money.

Millionaire Teacher Andrew Hallam on why too many choices makes us bad investors.

Jason Heath explains how to reinstate OAS after it has been clawed back, such as in the case of having extraordinary income in one year.

Cheers to this post from the She Picks Up Pennies blog – Here’s to strong women: The end of the damsel in financial distress.

Finally, a fascinating look at how Tesla’s Elon Musk has raised, and then spent, billions of dollars to put his electric-car company on the verge of bankruptcy (again).

Have a great weekend, everyone!