Short Takes: The 4% Rule and more

I wrote only one post this week:

Which is the best credit card?

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Norman Rothery points out that the 4 per cent rule for retirement withdrawals each year is based on the assumption that you pay no investment fees. This fact is rarely mentioned. I recreated the study behind the 4 per cent rule and then studied the effect of fees.

Boomer and Echo have a thoughtful list of 5 investing lessons learned. To the first lesson I‘d add that distinguishing skill from luck goes beyond comparing returns to an appropriate benchmark. Even if you beat a benchmark over a year or five, you may have been just lucky and have no expectation of beating the benchmark in the future.

Rob Carrick says “don’t sell your stocks if you’re worried about a market decline.” That’s good advice, and the second paragraph has a good lesson as well: “The market will fall at some point, but it’s pointless for most investors to try and predict when.” However, the rest of the article focuses on opinions of whether the market is overvalued and whether other investors are scared. Most investors should simply ignore such things and focus on their long-term plans.

Big Cajun Man is no fan of the land transfer tax. He gives an Excel formula for calculating this tax in Ontario.