Around the Blogosphere

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…

The last quarter of 2018 was a miserable time for investors. The S&P 500 had reached an all-time high on September 21, 2018. Three months later it had fallen nearly 13 percent – erasing 18 months of gains along the way. The TSX also fell more than 13 percent. Panic ensued, with many pundits predicting…

My investing philosophy is pretty straightforward. Invest in a low cost, globally diversified portfolio of index funds or ETFs. Add bonds to help smooth out the volatility in your portfolio. Contribute regularly to meet your savings targets. Ignore everything else. This approach comes from the belief that investing has become largely commoditized. Index tracking ETFs…

One big decision I need to make as I transition from salaried employee to entrepreneur is whether to take a salary from my business or pay myself dividends. I set up a corporation for my online business back in 2012. My wife and I are 50/50 owners of the small business, and we’ve used the…

I publish my financial goals here every year to share my priorities with readers and to hold myself accountable to achieve them. The simple act of writing down your goals and reviewing them periodically can significantly increase your chance of success. My 2019 financial goals were fairly straightforward. Here’s a recap, along with the progress…

Well, that escalated quickly! Mere weeks after musing about quitting my day job to become a financially independent entrepreneur, I did just that – handing in my notice last week. I’m going to focus full-time on blogging, freelance writing, and growing my fee-only financial planning service. My wife and I did a lot of soul…