Short Takes: Calculating CPP Retirement Pensions, BMO Cutting Distributions on Income Funds, and more

My posts for this week were

A Strategy for GIC Investors to Maintain Deposit Insurance
Job Losses in Real Estate
Why Not Raise CMHC Mortgage Premiums?

Here are my short takes and some weekend reading.

Retire Happy Blog explains in full detail how to calculate your CPP retirement pension. I’ve been looking for this for a long time. Every other explanation I’ve ever seen leaves out a lot of necessary detail.

Dan Hallett reports that BMO is cutting the distributions on some of their income funds. This was inevitable. Investors’ dreams of indefinitely collecting income that exceeds investment returns are becoming nightmares of eroded principal and reduced income.

Big Cajun Man got a $113 RRSP account fee reversed.

The Blunt Bean Counter has a more comprehensive list of questions to stress-test your finances and see if your estate is ready if the worst happens to you.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand finds the current consensus that interest rates will stay low for the next few years to be extreme, and he thinks we should be preparing in earnest today for possible rate increases in the future.

Preet Banerjee says you should set aside time each year to call up all your providers of cell phones, insurance, internet, etc. and try to get your costs lowered.

My Own Advisor discusses three of investors’ biggest enemies. I think he hit the biggest problem spots.

Million Dollar Journey takes a look at Vanguard Canada’s line-up of low-cost ETFs that are bringing down the average cost of Canadian ETFs.