The subject of foreign workers is heating up in the U.S. right now, and has been a hot topic in Canada in recent years.  Local workers often see foreign workers as cheap labourers who take away their jobs.  Employers see foreign workers as a way to find scarce skills and cut costs.  As is common in debates, both sides are partially right and partially wrong. In a simple but flawed view of the world, there is a fixed set of jobs available in a country, and workers compete for these jobs.  With this way of thinking, when a foreign worker gets a job, that’s one less job available for local workers, and when a foreign worker leaves (or any worker retires), there’s one more job available to local workers. This way of thinking is reasonable for most jobs, but it’s wrong for the most skilled positions.  There are only so many highly skilled people to go around.  These workers help make businesses succeed.  They create more jobs than the one job they occupy....

Recently, Braden Warwick at PWL Capital created an excellent CPP calculator that we can all use.  One of the numbers this calculator reports is the IRR (Internal Rate of Return) you’ll get between your CPP contributions and the CPP pension you’ll collect.  Some financial advisors (but not Braden) decide it makes sense for their clients to take CPP as early as possible (age 60), and invest the proceeds.  Their reasoning is that they believe they can earn a higher return.  Here I explain why this logic compares the wrong returns. The return you’ll get on your CPP contributions depends on the contributions you and your employer have made and the benefits you’ll get.  These amounts depend on many factors about your life as well as some assumptions about the future.  Typically, the return people get on CPP is between inflation+2% and inflation+4%.  (However, it can go higher if you took time off work with a disability or to raise your children.  It al...

Inflation is a risk we have to face in financial planning, particularly in retirement.  We need to measure inflation risk correctly to be able to make reasonable financial plans.  The best guide we have to the future takes into account past inflation statistics.  But the field of statistics is full of subtleties, and even Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) can make mistakes. DFA creates good funds, and their advisors tend to do good work for their clients.  I’d prefer to find errors in the work of a less investor-friendly investment firm, but they provided a clear example to learn from.  They misapplied a statistical rule, and as a result, they misinterpreted the history of inflation over the past century. I discussed this issue with Larry Swedroe in posts on X.  I respect Larry and have followed his work as he tirelessly explains evidence based investing to the masses. A Simple Example To explain the problem, let’s first begin with a simpler example.  So...