Around the Blogosphere

Maclean’s author Jason Kirby wrote this week about Canada’s housing correction, saying, “Canadians are finally getting a taste of what a world with rising interest rates will look like, and one thing is painfully clear: we’re not ready for what happens next.” National home sales are projected to post a double-digit decline when the final…

This year was a challenging one for investors. We’ve been so used to seeing positive gains in our portfolios it’s a shock when markets don’t cooperate! The TSX is down 12.26 percent on the year. The S&P 500 is down 7.03 percent. International markets, as measured by MSCI EAFE, are down 13.94 percent. With seemingly…

What’s the difference between a run of the mill stock market correction and a blood in the streets bear market? By definition a market correction is a loss of around 10 percent over a short period of about two months or less. A bear market is a loss of 20 percent or more and typically…

One of the benefits of tracking our expenses each year is that we can identify spending trends and highlight any areas of concern. One troubling area is our overall household spending, which is on the rise. Those of you with growing families know that there’s the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which has hovered around 2.3…

The investment giant and indexing pioneer Vanguard has made a lot of noise in Canada this year. Already a big player in the ETF space since entering the Canadian market in 2011, Vanguard added four mutual funds to its line-up this year, plus introduced its new asset-allocation ETFs, a one-ticket solution for investors. They’ve also…

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…

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