Short Takes: Inflation, Drawing Down RRSPs Early, and more

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 down RRSPs slowly prior to age 71.

Robb Engen has decided that he’d rather work less hard for a longer time than hustle like crazy to retire early.  Fortunately for him, the type of work he’s doing lends itself to this approach.  He’s likely to enjoy the work more if it doesn’t dominate all his time.  I’ve certainly known people who’ve claimed to be using this type of strategy, when in reality they’re just lazy or scared of looking for work.  But this doesn’t seem to apply to Robb at all; his reasoning is sound.