In a very small sample size I’ve noticed that owners of short-term rental places seem to be offering better than usual terms for letting renters cancel without penalty.  It’s hard to tell if it’s just a coincidence or if the owners recognize that a COVID-19 upsurge is a worry for renters.  I’m still hoping to go east to golf this fall and head south for the winter.  Fortunately, these owners have let me book without worrying about getting my money back if I can’t go due to the ongoing pandemic. In the past two weeks I reviewed a book of a different type than my usual: How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Chris Mamula objects to Vanguard’s report on the shortcomings of the 4% rule for FIRE enthusiasts .  His objection isn’t with any of Vanguard’s technical points; he just thinks the FIRE community already knows about the problems with the 4% rule.  While it’s true that there are FIRE bloggers who have made these...

Most of the books I’ve read about retirement have focused on saving, investing, and decumulation strategies.  However, the whole point of being able to retire is to enjoy life.  Not everyone deals well without the structure of work, but Ernie J. Zelinski is here to help with his book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free .  If even a small fraction of this book resonates with someone who finds retirement unsatisfying, it can help. For younger people who dream of having less time pressure in their lives, the idea that too much leisure could be unsatisfying may seem ridiculous.  However, many people end up having no good answer to the question “What will you do with your time if you have never learned to enjoy your leisure?”  Zelinski offers hundreds of ideas in categories of lifelong learning, friends, travel, relocation, and more. Whether we choose to stop working or have it forced on us by an employer, retirement is in most people’s futures.  Finances are an...

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about inflation lately.  The raging debate is whether the inflation we’re starting to see will be “transitory” or not.  The part of all this that amazes me is that so many twitterers think they know the answer.  I don’t know if inflation will be transitory, and I don’t believe anyone else does either, not even the U.S. Fed Chairman.  To be fair, the Fed has to choose some sort of action or inaction, so they have to have some sort of opinion about things they can’t possibly know with certainty.  But the truth is that they keep adapting to changes as they see them in the present to compensate for past predictions that turned out to be wrong. Here are my posts for the past two weeks: How to Respond to Rising Stock Markets Responses to Emails I Usually Ignore Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Alexandra Macqueen shows that even couples with modest RRSP savings can benefit (under the right circumstances) from drawing do...

I enjoy interacting with readers who have questions or comments on my articles.  I’ve benefited greatly from this joint pursuit of good ideas about investing and generally handling money well.  Here are some replies to emails I usually ignore. -------------------- Dear Darcey, I received your exciting “cooperation offer” to post ads on my website disguised as genuine articles.  I’m so grateful that I’d like to make a similar offer.  Please let me know when you’re available for me to drop by your home to dump garbage in your living room. Sincerely, Michael -------------------- Dear George, Please excuse the delay in my reply, but I wanted to wait a few months to see how your prediction of a “permanent” increase in bitcoin prices would work out.  So far, the answer appears to be “not very well.”  This setback has undermined my confidence in your more recent predictions.  I’m starting to think I can’t trust free unsolicited market predictions as a way to ...

As stock markets rise to ever larger price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios, the odds of a market crash grow.  However, we can’t know when such a crash might come, so I’m not interested in trying to time a sell-off of all my stocks.  Stocks remain the best bet for future returns, but how much higher can P/E ratios go before this is no longer true? When we examine the relationship between Robert Shiller’s Cyclically-Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio to the following decade of stock returns , the correlation is quite weak; the result is closer to a cloud than a straight line.  The most we can say is that when the CAPE is high, future expected stock returns appear to be somewhat lower.  There is logic to the idea that P/E ratios will likely return to some form of normalcy in the future, but this may take a very long time.  In the interim, stocks remain the best bet for future returns. But at what P/E level can we decide that stocks are no longer a good bet?  Shille...

I’ve known for some time that I need to be prepared to respond in some way if stock price-to-earnings ratios grow ever higher.  The problem was that I wasn’t sure of the best response.  Unfortunately, the extended exchange I’ve had lately with John De Goey concerning the possibility of a stock market crash hasn’t taught me anything new.  But this exchange did prompt me to solidify my plans.  The first step was to reduce my expectations for future returns which also reduces the percentage of my portfolio that I can spend each year .  I’ll write about the second step in the coming days, which is to gradually adjust my stock allocation percentage as a function of stock price levels. I managed only one post in the past two weeks: Portfolio Optimization Errors Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Jamie Golombek gets a CRA opinion on an interesting TFSA overcontribution case where a TFSA is empty but still has an overcontribution.  I wrote about t...