Short Takes: Credit Hygiene, Defending Buy-and-Hold, and more

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

The Limits of Offering Investment Help

Think Twice Before Taking a 5-Year Closed Mortgage

A Canadian’s Guide to Money-Smart Living

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Canadian Mortgage Trends explains why you should care about your credit “hygiene” and not your credit score.

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand defends buy-and-hold investing.

Canadian Portfolio Manager explains your ETF’s currency exposure.  (This article has a second part).  Many investors get confused about buying identical baskets of stocks in different ETFs that transact in different currencies.  The situation would get even more confusing if we tried to explain that measuring U.S. companies’ stock returns in U.S. dollars is merely a convention; companies with international operations are affected by changes in many different currencies.

Big Cajun Man looks at RESP statistics showing that lower income families aren’t opening RESPs, even though they could be getting the Canada Learning Bond without even making an RESP contribution.

Boomer and Echo discusses the challenge of sticking to your financial goals during the pandemic.