Short Takes: A New Father’s Financial Advice, Taking CPP Early, and more

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

Credit Card Bill

Typical Spending vs. Average Spending

Contest Winners – Let’s Get Blunt about Your Financial Affairs

How Dividends Affect Stock Prices

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Morgan Housel writes a brilliant piece offering financial advice for his new son. The high quality of his 10 points is in sharp contrast to the embedded ad made to seem like part of the article at the bottom.

Preet Banerjee explains how taking CPP early or late affects your monthly payments.

Rob Carrick gives us one of his short videos explaining the Liberals’ tax plans. He hits the high points clearly, but I’m not sure why he refers to “high net worth earners.” I think he just means “high earners” because you get hit with this extra tax on high incomes whether you’re a millionaire or you owe a million. The most amusing part of this video was the preceding ad touting active management in investing. Apparently, the “power of active management” “can protect capital long term,” “can tap global insights,” and “can seek to outperform.” Envious passive investors should rest assured that they can protect their capital long-term as well, that tapping global insights is highly overrated, and that seeking to outperform almost always ends in long-term underperformance.

Million Dollar Journey explains the virtues of the new Tangerine credit card. I’m normally not at all excited about credit cards, but Tangerine’s new card looks quite good.

Big Cajun Man tells the cautionary tale of how his mother became unable to get insurance on her home.

The Blunt Bean Counter explains the tax implications when Canadians sell U.S. real estate.

My Own Advisor asks Frugal Trader at Million Dollar Journey about his approach to dividend investing. Frugal Trader is one of the rare stock pickers who actually reads company annual reports. I have my doubts about his or anyone else’s ability to beat the market, but I have little doubt he’ll roughly match the market’s return over the long term. I have more doubts about the ability of other investors to match his approach.

Boomer and Echo tell us where first-time home-buyers are getting their down payments.