Short Takes: Behavioural Economics, Renting vs. Buying a Home, and more

I decided to check out the Microsoft software class action settlement.  They say “If you bought PC versions of Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows, Office, Word, Works, and/or Excel between December 23, 1998 and March 11, 2010 (inclusive), you may be eligible for compensation from this settlement.”  There is a link to submit a claim online.  I bought 4 computers during the relevant period, each with Windows and Office.  They assigned a claim value of $13 for Windows and $8 for Office (at least in my case).  So my claim total came to $84.  You have until 2021 Sept. 23 to submit a claim and if you get any money, it won’t be until 2022 sometime.  By then I will have forgotten about it and any money I get will brighten my day.

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

The Myth of Simple Interest on Loans

Your Money or Your Life

The Total Money Makeover

The Right Way to Calculate Net Worth

Is Delaying CPP “Actuarially Neutral”?

The Sleep-Easy Retirement Guide

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Kerry Taylor interviews Dan Ariely, well known behavioural economist and best-selling author.

The Stress Test Podcast (Episode 6 of Season 2) brings in Preet Banerjee for a sensible discussion of the rent vs. buy decision for your home.

John Robertson takes a first look at Tangerine’s new mutual funds with lower MERs than their old funds.

<< Previous Post Next Post >>

Comments

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