Get new posts by email:

Short Takes: Pain of Spending, Condos, and more

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

 Avoiding the Stock Market

Where Retirement Income Plans Fall Down

10 Ways to Stay Broke Forever

Smith Manoeuvre Risk Assessment

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Joe Pinsker has a very interesting article about lowering spending by increasing the pain of spending. In the end, I’m suspicious that making yourself feel pain about all spending isn’t sustainable. Somehow we need to feel fine about sensible spending and feel pain for dumb spending.

Condo Essentials has a list of signs that will allow you to spot a bad condo before you buy it. I’m not a big fan of buying overpriced condos, but you should at least check for these problems before diving in.

Canadian Couch Potato compares bond ETFs to GICs for retirees.

Big Cajun Man explains why you might want to open an RESP for your disabled child instead of using an RDSP only.

Boomer and Echo review Larry Bates’ new book, Beat the Bank: The Canadian Guide to Simply Successful Investing.

<< Previous Post Next Post >>

Comments

  1. Alan Whitton (Big Cajun Man)September 14, 2018 at 8:45 AM

    Thanks for the inclusion this week, yes if there are more ways to save for your Disabled child, please explore them!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChristinaSeptember 15, 2018 at 12:25 AM

    Thanks for posting the article on spending tracking. I've tried tracking my eating out and felt guilty for going over budget. Then i didn't track it and i felt it increased. Now i will try tracking again. I liked Ariely's suggestion to record it before you spend it. Good to pay attention to frictionless spending like amazon iclick.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael JamesSeptember 15, 2018 at 12:28 AM

      @Christina: Ariely is a very smart guy. I hope his ideas work for you.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Short Takes: InvestorLine’s HISAs, 24-Hour Trading, and more

I recently moved some cash into BMO InvestorLine’s high-interest savings accounts (HISAs) that are structured as mutual funds.  Their designations are BMT104, BMT109, and BMT114, and they purportedly pay 4.35% annual interest (which they can change whenever they like).  However, the way they report the monthly interest payments is so baffling that I wasn’t able to sort it out in my first 15 minutes of trying.  A further complication is the following text in the HISA description: “The Bank may pay, monthly or quarterly, compensation to your Dealer at an annual rate of up to 0.25% of the daily closing balance in the BMO HISA.”  I couldn’t find any evidence of such a charge, but I haven’t been invested for a full quarter, and I can’t yet say that such a charge isn’t buried somehow in the confusing reporting.  I have more digging to do before I can recommend these HISAs. Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Preet Banerjee explains the dangers of Robi...
Read more

My Asset Allocation

I’ve resisted discussing my asset allocation for some time, but now is finally the time to describe it and the reasons behind it. I’m not holding it out as a model portfolio; I believe it’s suitable for me and not necessarily anyone else. With that warning, enjoy the discussion and feel free to ask questions or take some pot-shots. The main reason why I haven’t discussed my asset allocation in detail before now is that I don’t want readers to treat it like a model portfolio and follow it blindly. Everyone’s situation is different. The need for variation in asset allocation from one investor to the next usually isn’t huge, but there is no one-size-fits-all portfolio. A secondary reason for keeping my asset allocation to myself is that I can’t be sure I’ll never change it. For example, I recently made the minor change of switching from an ETF of small-cap stocks to an ETF of small-cap value stocks . I don’t have any plans to change my current allocation, but I may think differe...
Read more

What to Do About Crazy Stock Valuations

Image
The last time I had to put a lot of effort into thinking about my finances was back when I retired in mid-2017.  I had ideas of how to manage my money after retirement, but it wasn’t until a couple of years had gone by that I felt confident that my long-term plans would work for me.  I had my portfolio on autopilot, and my investing spreadsheet would email me if I needed to take some action. I was fortunate that I happened to retire into a huge bull market.  I got the upside of sequence-of-returns risk.  The downside risk is that stocks will plummet during your early retirement years, and your regular spending will dig deep into your portfolio.  Happily for me, I got the opposite result.  My family’s spending barely made a dent in the relentless rise of the stock market. However, stock prices have become crazy, particularly in the U.S.  One measure of stock priciness is Robert Shiller’s Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio .  In the U.S...
Read more

Archive

Show more