Here are my posts for the past two weeks: The Stock Market Only Goes Up Victory Lap Retirement Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Preet Banerjee interviews investor, spy, billionaire, and holder of 11 honorary doctorates, Stephen Jarislowsky. As an added bonus, Preet uses his latest Drawing Conclusions video to show us what kind of income you need to be able to afford rents in various cities across Canada . Canadian Couch Potato uses his latest podcast to answer questions about the role of bonds in today’s portfolios. The Blunt Bean Counter reports from the tax-hell trenches about financial institutions sending incorrect capital gains reports to their clients. Big Cajun Man reports on an unfortunate side-effect of the Federal Civil Service’s inability to pay its own workers properly. Workers are afraid to make any changes to their pay which means they’re avoiding automated charity donations.

Mike Drak and Jonathan Chevreau argue that the traditional approach to retirement where you work full-time until some magic day where you fully stop working makes no sense. In their book Victory Lap Retirement , they say we should add another phase of life between full-time work and full-stop retirement where you work part-time doing something you find spiritually satisfying. Another strong theme of the book is trying to persuade readers to quit the job they’ve grown to hate. Mixed in with the notion of a victory lap of part-time work is the idea of financial independence. It obviously takes some resources to be able to afford to quit full-time work. The authors suggest entering a victory lap after achieving financial independence, but their definition of this term differs from mine: “the point where your basic (non-discretionary) living expenses are covered by your passive (non-work) income.” As a young adult, I lived very frugally. I know my wife and I could get by if we spe...

Here’s a chart of the S&P 500 total return for the past 8 years: The only conclusion my lizard brain can draw is that the stock market only goes up. In Daniel Kahneman’s terms from his great book Thinking Fast and Slow ( my review here ), my brain’s “System 2” knows that the stock market may crash in the future, but my automatic “System 1” is sure the stock market will keep going up forever. As my human capital dwindles, I get closer to the age where I should be shifting some of my portfolio into safer investments than stocks. I’ve done this by building up a cash reserve, but perhaps it’s not as big as it should be at this point. It’s very hard to shake the feeling that I’m losing out by not having this cash in stocks right now. My System 2 has determined that I should have some fixed-income investments just in case stocks begin a large drop. But my System 1 resisted hitting the sell button. Younger investors have bigger concerns. Those who have been investing for 8...

I was on vacation for most of the past two weeks and managed only one post about debt: Managing Debt Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Canadian Mortgage Trends explains recent changes to how your credit score affects your mortgage interest rate. It certainly makes sense to charge more when the risk of default is higher, but I’m not sure that credit scores are a very good measure or default risk. But maybe they’re the best we’ve got. Canadian Couch Potato tries to clear up a common point of confusion about bonds: the fact that higher interest rates mean lower bond prices. Where Does All My Money Go interviews Sandra Foster, an expert on personal finance and estate planning. Big Cajun Man takes on the common misconception that a Tax-Free Savings Account can only hold cash like a regular savings account. Boomer and Echo calls for an overhaul of the finance industry. My Own Advisor considers the possibility of trying harder for financial independen...

Debt is a big part of modern life. The high cost of university leads to student debt, and sky-high real estate has many Canadians in large mortgages. And that’s just the kinds of debt that most easily justified. Then we have the growing lines of credit and credit card balances that come from failing to save up for the cars, clothes, electronics, restaurant meals, and home upgrades we want. Finance Blog Zone asked bloggers for their takes on how to manage debt. (Web crawlers think this article's address is broken but it seems to work: https://www.financeblogzone.com/advice-for-managing-debt/).  I read through them all and found 7 of them that caught my eye either because I found the ideas interesting or because I disagreed. Here’s my take on their takes. Brave New Life Brave New Life says “College debt and a home mortgage are the only two acceptable debts. Ever.” And for emphasis: “No debt for cars.” There may be narrow circumstances when other forms of debt make sense,...