Short Takes: U.S. Fiduciary Rule, Jack Bogle, and more

I attended the Canadian Personal Finance Conference (CPFC16) recently. Here are my favourite quotes:

“A house is a forced spending plan as much as it’s a forced saving plan.” - Rob Carrick, columnist for The Globe and Mail on the CPFC Housing Panel

“You don’t borrow money from a bank, you borrow it from yourself.” - Preet Banerjee on learning how to hate debt again

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

The Real Reason Why a Big Mortgage is a Bad Idea

Loyalty Points Battles

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Brokers and insurance companies are desperate to preserve their right to deceive their clients. The latest effort to stop a fiduciary rule is an appeal to free speech.

Jack Bogle always gives a good interview, but this one is great. One gem concerns the path to real learning: “I glance at anything favorable to indexing; I pore over anything unfavorable. You don’t need people to tell you you’re right all the time. You need people to tell you that you’re wrong.” Another good quote is “Wall Street is a casino, that’s a fact.”

Justin Bender explains the catch behind commission-free trading of ETFs at National Bank Direct Brokerage. The result is that those who like to get new contributions working right away have to pay commissions.

Canadian Couch Potato has started a new podcast and the first episode is about DIY investing.

Potato announces a new web site for comparing robo-advisors (co-created by Sandi Martin). The focus is on comparing costs, but they take into account differences in other aspects of the robo-advisor offerings as well.

The Blunt Bean Counter sees a lot of estate planning mistakes, and he lists the top 10 here.

Boomer and Echo question whether reward points should be allowed to expire.

My Own Advisor interviews Ken Kivenko, a tireless advocate for individual investors. I admire Ken’s work, but after his description of his own investments, I’m not sure I agree when he says he is “very conservative.”

Big Cajun Man says debt is a four-letter word.