Short Takes: Unsustainable Income Funds, Bonds – Ontario vs. Italy, and more

Here is my only post for this week:

Target-Benefit Pension Plans: Pros and Cons

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Dan Hallett names monthly income funds that have unsustainable payouts. Many such funds have already cut their payouts. Some retirees want high monthly income so badly that they look past obvious signs that not only will their income not rise with inflation but will get cut even in nominal terms.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand compares bonds from Ontario and Italy. Unfortunately, Ontario doesn’t come out too well.

Sandy Martin takes Advocis to task for implausible claims about what will happen if advisor compensation is banned. “You know what banning embedded commissions will do? It’ll end the illusion that advisors on the commission system are anything more than salespeople.”

Rob Carrick explains the necessary evil of repeatedly negotiating package costs for television, internet, home phone, and wireless.

Canadian Couch Potato profiles Vanguard’s new All-World ex Canada ETF (VXC). It looks a little expensive for RRSPs and TFSAs. The MER is about 0.3%, but there are also some added withholding taxes that amount to about 0.45%. He also explains that he will be making some changes to his blog’s look as well as using a new subscription service to replace Feedburner. This makes me nervous because it seems that I will likely have to do something similar myself (shudder).

Big Cajun Man got caught by a subtle difference between insurance companies about how they apply the rule that they only pay for one pair of glasses every two years.

My Own Advisor reviews a very short but excellent book by William Bernstein called If You Can: How Millennials Can Get Rich Slowly.

Tesla Motors announced that they hit the 1 GWh supercharging milestone. I wasn’t even aware that this supercharging network existed. They seem to be pressing close to the point where electric cars are practical for typical consumers.