Short Takes: Aging Financial Brain, Buying Nothing, and more

With Easter upon us, I’ve compiled my short takes a day early. Here are my posts since my last set of short takes:

Bad Advice on Retirement

Is it OK to Pay Off Your Mortgage before Saving for Retirement?

Personal Financial Education Can’t Solve All Problems

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Jason Zweig explains some of the things that happen to an aging brain and how they affect investing decisions. I’m guessing that most of us are sure this won’t happen to us, but we’re almost all wrong.

Mr. Money Mustache says that while spending on experiences makes us happier than buying things, buying nothing at all makes us happiest.

Preet Banerjee was a victim of financial fraud recently. He describes what happened and how he solved the problem.

Potato announces his new “Automagical Financial Planning Ballparkinator” to answer the question of how much you need to save. I like the fact that he advertises clearly that any such calculation is necessarily just an estimate.

Alexandra Berzon explains the hidden game behind professional poker where players invest in each other.

Canadian Couch Potato explains that tracking the adjusted cost base is different with U.S. listed ETFs than it is with Canadian ETFs.

Squawkfox offers a rule of thumb for fixing or replacing: if it costs less than half the original purchase price to fix the item then fix it.

The Blunt Bean Counter lists some of the common mistakes his clients make on their taxes.

Big Cajun Man got way out of date with his data in Quicken. I found the same thing happened to me in my brief experiment with Quicken. I prefer to track a few things with spreadsheets.

My Own Advisor has some advice for his younger self.

Million Dollar Journey explains that the Canadian tax deadline has moved to May 5 among other tax advice.