Around the Blogosphere

Ahh, Black Friday. The day for personal finance experts to get up on their soap-boxes and preach about the evils of consumerism and spending. It’s also the time for news media to reach out to said experts and get their ‘tips and tricks’ to combat the evil forces of The Black Friday, as if we’ll…

Long-time readers might recall last summer when the panoramic sunroof in our 2013 Hyundai Sante Fe spontaneously shattered while my wife and I were driving on the highway towards Lethbridge. I filed a complaint with Transport Canada, and after searching online and finding multiple instances of exploding sunroofs, wondered why a recall hadn’t been ordered.…

Repeat after me: The Canada Pension Plan will be there for me when I retire. In fact, CPP is sustainable over the next 75 years according to the most recent report issued by Canada’s Chief Actuary. This projection assumes a modest 3.9 percent annual real rate of return over that time. The plan is operated…

Long-time readers know I’m fascinated with behavioural psychology and how we make decisions, particularly about money. Of course, the most influential research in this field came from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in 2002 for his and Tversky’s work on judgement and decision-making (Tversky died in 1996), and his book,…

Earlier this week, the Office of Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) – Canada’s banking watchdog – introduced tougher mortgage rules to take effect January 1, 2018. This new ‘stress test’ applies to homebuyers with down payments greater than 20 percent and requires the mortgage applicant to qualify for the higher of the Bank of Canada 5-year…

Our inbox is overflowing with questions about investing, so while we answer those individually we’re also fairly positive these are burning questions for many of our readers. Look for more investing posts in the coming weeks covering topics such as rebalancing, tax-efficiency, safe withdrawal rates, asset allocation, and much more. For now, enjoy this latest…

I remember three years ago reading then MoneySense Editor-in-Chief Duncan Hood’s confession that he – a lifetime renter – got caught up in a bidding war and purchased a home in downtown Toronto. I remember reading how elated he felt when his final offer secured his dream home, as if overpaying by tens of thousands,…

It’s over. Mercy rule in effect. The losing side took their ball and went home. At the end of 2007, investing legend Warren Buffett famously made a million dollar bet with hedge fund manager Ted Seides of Protégé Partners. Buffett wagered that a low-cost S&P 500 index fund would perform better than a group of…