Short Takes: Financial Frauds and more

Larry MacDonald did a great job of capturing my investment philosophy in his “Me and My Money” column in the Globe and Mail. Check it out if you want to see details about my portfolio and why I invest that way. You’ll also find out that “James” is actually my middle name.

 Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

What will happen to the Canadian Dollar?

Credit Card Q&A

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Financial Mentor has a comprehensive and interesting list of financial frauds to avoid.

Preet Banerjee discusses socially responsible investing and robo-advice with ModernAdvisor CEO Navid Boostani.

Insureye has an interesting infographic showing who owns whom among car and house insurance companies.

Big Cajun Man lays out what you need to do to get Apple Pay. Personally, I’m not looking for ways to make paying for stuff easier. Cash and credit cards work fine for me for now. No doubt I’ll eventually move to newer technologies, but I’m definitely not someone looking to be on the bleeding edge of payments, even though I do some work in this area.

My Own Advisor explains the taxation of U.S. Master Limited Partnerships. This type of thing is somewhere around fifth or sixth on my list of reasons for switching to index investing.

Marie at Boomer and Echo discusses the sharing economy and the fact that she rents out one of her condo storage spaces that she doesn’t need. This made me think of the possibility of a retired person with only one car renting storage in half of a two-car garage. Then I thought about the possibility that a renter would store weapons, drugs, or something alive. So much for that idea. It’s one thing to rent out a condo storage space, but quite another to bring other people’s stuff into your home.

The Blunt Bean Counter brings in an expert to explain the laws around severance and termination costs. This is told from the point of view of the employer, but employees may find it interesting as well.

Comments

  1. Big Cajun Man (aw)May 20, 2016 at 9:00 AM

    I find it is the folks that work on the technology that always have a level of trepidation when attempting to use that same technology. Familiarity sometimes does breed contempt. Thanks for the inclusion this week.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael JamesMay 20, 2016 at 3:42 PM

      @Alan: In my case, working with the stuff all day takes away being impressed by the technology itself. I just focus on what it can and can't do for me.

      Delete
  2. SSTMay 20, 2016 at 9:27 AM

    re: MOA & Taxes -- I had complex issues with US private equity investments that took a couple of years to simplify. Lessons learned! Appropriate taxation situations can be highly valuable, for almost everyone this means as simple as possible.

    re: B&E sharing economy -- I'm toying with the idea of renting an area of my land space to tiny house owners. Since they are mostly built on trailer beds (i.e. wheels) they are not considered permenant structures thus have far less municipal rules & regs to deal with. As well, I don't have to expend any capital to build a rental unit then spend decades recouping the costs before I see profit. The renters bring their own structure, I provide space and utilities.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael JamesMay 20, 2016 at 3:40 PM

      @SST: I hope it works out for you. I'm sticking with the lazy route and sinking all my money into stocks.

      Delete
  3. My Own AdvisorMay 23, 2016 at 8:20 AM

    "This type of thing is somewhere around fifth or sixth on my list of reasons for switching to index investing."

    :)

    Thanks for the mention my friend - have a great sunny weekend!

    Mark

    ReplyDelete

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