Short Takes: Public Service Pensions, Bad Investor Behaviour, and more

I wrote only one post in the past two weeks, but I think it’s worth reading for anyone who understands that investing is important but would rather think about almost anything else:

How My Sons Invest

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

The C.D. Howe Institute explains how public service pensions are much more expensive than the federal government claims. A side effect of this fact is that government employees contribute much less than half the cost of their pensions, even though the split is supposed to be 50/50. The full report in pdf form is written to be understood by non-specialists.

Frederick Vettese points out some serious problems with the Public Service Pension Plan and how it should be fixed.

Morgan Housel “describes 20 flaws, biases, and causes of bad behavior I’ve seen pop up often when people deal with money.” The ninth one is “Attachment to social proof in a field that demands contrarian thinking to achieve above-average results.” It’s true that you can’t beat the market by following the crowd. However, it’s possible for a large group of index investors to match the market by following each other.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand previews the likely end to our long bull market in stocks. With markets setting new records daily, it’s hard to get people to think about whether their stock allocations are too high, but that’s what they should be doing. Right now, I’m set up to weather 5 years of poor stock returns without having to sell low. This feels dopey as I watch stocks continue climbing, but it’s important to know I’ll be fine no matter what happens in the markets.

Big Cajun Man reviews Doug Hoyes’ book Straight Talk on Your Money. I reviewed this book as well (https://www.michaeljamesonmoney.com/2017/09/straight-talk-on-your-money.html).

The Blunt Bean Counter tells us about the issues he’s been seeing with his clients’ Notices of Assessment (NOA). It seems that the NOA may say you owe money when you’ve already paid, and there have been issues with alimony claims.