Around the Blogosphere

The federal government released its ‘Indexation adjustment for personal income tax and benefits amounts’ (IAFPITABA), which shows the increases to 2019 tax bracket thresholds, plus increases to income-tested benefits like the GST credit and Canada Child Benefit. These increases are tied to inflation using Consumer Price Index data from Statistics Canada, which pegged inflation at…

The month of October was not kind to investors. A volatile stock market erased all of 2018’s gains and then some. My own portfolio plunged 5.72 percent in October after being up 4.73 percent from January to September. Time to panic? Not a chance. In yet another example of why it’s best to ignore the…

CBC Go Public continues to do excellent investigative reporting and this week they caught banks behaving badly again, this time misleading and upselling customers on pricey credit card insurance. Known as balance protection insurance, this product charges a hefty premium (typically around 99 cents per $100 balance) to “protect” cardholders from missed payments as a…

I was caught by surprise when Daylight Saving Time ended this weekend but I’m thankful for the gift of time with an extra hour I didn’t know I had Sunday morning. Many jurisdictions have considered abandoning Daylight Saving Time, including the European Union. The EU Commission surveyed 4.6 million people and found that 84 percent called…

We partner with a comparison site called creditcardGenius to share the best rewards cards in Canada and keep you informed of the latest promotions and sign-up bonuses. I prefer it over other comparison sites because creditcardGenius offers an objective, math-based scoring system that sorts through 189 Canadian credit cards and recommends the best rewards card…

My wife and I hiked up Grouse Mountain yesterday. It’s a gruelling three kilometre, 2,830 step, near vertical climb known as the Grouse Grind. At the quarter mark there’s a sign warning hikers that the trail gets even more narrow and steep from here, and if you can’t go on, this is the only point…

There’s wide evidence showing that wealthy families tend to lose their fortune by the third generation. One of the most famous examples of squandering generational wealth comes from the Vanderbilt family, which is chronicled in the book, Fortune’s Children: The Fall of House Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilt story is a classic case of the old adage,…

This week I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Rational Reminder podcast with PWL Capital’s Ben Felix and Cameron Passmore. We discussed how I built the blog, my switch from dividend investing to indexing, my thriving fee-only financial planning business, and simplicity versus optimization in your investment portfolio. Check out the Rational…

No, I’m not starting my own podcast. But I have started listening to a few good investing podcasts lately and I wanted to share three of them with you. I like these podcasts because they’re smart, quick-hitting, 30-minute talks about investing, personal finance, and current market trends. The first one, which you’ve likely heard of,…

Earlier this summer the Canadian Securities Administrators disappointed investor advocates and did a disservice to Canadian investors when it announced watered-down reforms that failed to address conflicted investment advice and a best interest standard of care. Instead of much needed reform, investors got three paltry concessions from regulators: Banning the deferred sales charge option (DSC)…