Short Takes: The Party in Stocks, Guessing a Person’s Salary, and more

A friend was asking for some financial advice.  It involved what to do with the proceeds of selling a rental property.  It turns out his sister’s financial guy made her a lot of money lately.  I tried to explain that she made money because the stock market went up.  A financial guy can help you find an appropriate mix of stocks, bonds, and cash, but whether you make or lose money in the short term has nothing to do with the financial guy.  

People always look skeptical at this point.  They seem to firmly believe that whether or not their investments do well is 100% attributable to the “moves” their financial guy makes.  I always lose credibility by saying something that is true but the opposite of what is widely believed.  Such is life.

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

Behavioural Issues with Variable Asset Allocation

The Boomers Retire

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Tom Bradley at Steadyhand says investors are dancing like it’s 2007.

Big Cajun Man shows how you can determine someone’s income if they reveal when during the year CPP stopped coming off their pay.

Ellen Roseman interviews Dan Bortolotti, a.k.a. Canadian Couch Potato, on the Moneysaver podcast.  They discuss index investing with ETFs and robo-advisors and Dan’s new book Reboot Your Portfolio.

Andrew Hallam tells an interesting story about people making the mistake of trading life satisfaction for more money.  It’s worth reflecting on whether we’re doing the same thing.