Short Takes: Forgery at Banks, Investing Heroes, and more

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

High Housing Costs vs. Avocado Toast

Against the Gods

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

If forgery by banks is as widespread as this CBC article makes it out to be, we have much bigger concerns than whether banks are up-selling us.

Phil Huber has a very interesting take on the unsung heroes of investing.

Patrick O’Shaughnessy interviewed David Chilton in this interesting podcast.

Because Money interviewed Preet Banerjee who shared several interesting findings from research in finance. One question he answered was why mutual fund companies have so many mutual funds. It turns out that it helps them capture performance-chasing clients.

Robb Engen has some blunt words to describe the state of financial advice for people of modest means.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand says it is during calm times like we’re experiencing now that we have to plan how we’ll react to the inevitable downturn. It’s hard to get people to pay attention to a message like this during good times, but now is the right time to decide how to react to market losses.

Big Cajun Man says he hasn’t had much success trying to maintain a budget. Many others would say the same thing. At the very least, if you track your spending accurately, you will naturally cut back in areas where you see unreasonably high spending.

The Blunt Bean Counter explains how hang-ups we have talking about money and death combine to form a “virtual tsunami of taboos” about creating and discussing wills.

Million Dollar Journey compares the cost of owning a global ex-Canada ETF such as VXC or XAW to the cost of owning 3 slightly cheaper ETFs that collectively own the same stocks. The focus here is on ETFs that trade in Canadian dollars rather than U.S.-dollar ETFs that offer potentially higher savings for more effort.