Around the Blogosphere

Aloha! We’ve spent the past week in Maui escaping the cold winter back home and taking a much needed break. The past few months have been stressful and anxiety-ridden as I transitioned from a day job + side hustle to full-time entrepreneur. I’m happy to say that life as an online entrepreneur is going better…

One of the biggest decisions retirees face is when to take their Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits. There’s a case to be made for deferring CPP until age 70, or taking CPP at 60, or somewhere in between (like the standard age 65).  You can view your estimated monthly CPP benefits online using your My…

Savers rejoice! We’re in the midst of a high interest savings war. The battle for your business isn’t being fought by the big banks, but by upstart FinTech companies looking to build up deposits. Indeed, the big five have mostly ignored the high interest savings account market. Why bother, when they’re hauling in record profits…

2019 was a terrific year for stock market returns. This bull market has gone on for so long now that investors can’t help but wonder, are we due for a correction this year or in the near future?  It’s a question I get a lot from my clients these days, especially the soon-to-be-retired and the…

What are your worst financial planning fears? Some answers may include longevity risk (outliving your money), sequence of returns risk (the impact that negative stock market returns has on your withdrawal strategy), or poor investment performance (earning a lower rate of return than you expected).  A recent discussion on Twitter teased out more answers from…

Happy New Year and welcome back to the blog! With an unforgettable 2019 now in the rearview mirror we look ahead to 2020 and what’s to come. Goal setting is such a powerful motivator for me. This year, as I move to full-time blogger, freelancer, and fee-only advisor, it’s even more critical to map out…

How well did your investments perform in 2019? Investment performance is critical to achieving your retirement goals, yet it’s one of the most misunderstood concepts in personal finance. Why? Because we need to put our performance into proper context. In other words, we need to compare our returns to an appropriate benchmark. Investment managers are…

I don’t write much about the business of blogging but I’m constantly amazed by the growing community of readers who stop by here for their weekly dose of personal finance info. It has been a record year for viewership here on Boomer & Echo with an incredible 2 million + pageviews so far in 2019. …

I’ve long advocated for people to take a bill negotiation day – a day off work once a year to call their bank, telecom provider, and other other service providers and negotiate their monthly bills. These companies are not known for voluntarily offering loyalty discounts. Banks add new service charges and increase monthly account fees…

I love sending readers and clients on a mission to test their financial advisor. I get them to ask about lower cost portfolio options such as index mutual funds or ETFs. The responses are typically hilarious – so much that I wrote an entire post on the sh!t my advisor says. A reader I’ll call…