Around the Blogosphere

Welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading! I’m on holidays but I wanted to share a quick update and thank you to all of my readers and clients for your support this year.   I started this blog back in 2010 during what I’d call the height of popularity for personal finance blogs. Today, the preferred…

Inflation. It’s on everyone’s mind as the cost of goods and services have been on the rise since early 2021.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures changes in the cost of a fixed basket of goods over time, including food, shelter, transportation, furniture, clothing, and recreation. While inflation may have peaked in June of this…

We’re building a new home and should have possession of it sometime in February. I’ve been asked a few times if we are going to hang onto our existing home and rent it out. After I stop laughing I explain why I have no desire to own a rental property. I admit that I have…

It was a sobering week for crypto bros, as yet another epic collapse has exposed the supposed “future of money” as little more than a house of cards. Crypto trading platform FTX, which landed high profile partnerships with the likes of Tom Brady and Steph Curry, and signed a $135M agreement with the Miami Heat…

Most of my work as a financial planner boils down to helping clients use their resources to achieve their financial goals over time. But where do those goals come from? How do we know they’re the “right” goals?  The team at PWL Capital dug into the research around goal setting and found that, “people are…

I’ve never heard so much interest in GICs before this year, but with stock and bond markets down and interest rates up it’s no surprise that investors are looking for a safe and profitable place to park their savings. Just two years ago, a five-year GIC was paying a paltry 1.5% interest, while a two-year…

One question retirees face when setting up their retirement income plan is whether to convert their RRSP to a RRIF or to make withdrawals directly from their RRSP. There are pros and cons to each approach, depending on your age, how much income you require, whether you have a spouse, and where your RRSP account…

Many of my clients and blog readers are looking to change their investing strategy to a simple indexing approach using a single asset allocation ETF. This can make a lot of sense if you want to reduce fees, improve diversification, and simplify your portfolio. Indeed, investing complexity has been solved with all-in-one ETF products. Making…

I’ve written before about how buying new vehicles every few years can be a major wealth destroyer. Indeed, next to housing costs, a car payment (or two) can easily be your largest monthly expense.  A recent Globe & Mail article (subs) by Rob Carrick caught my attention when he wrote the average monthly car payment…