Among the biggest items of financial news this month, March 2023, has been the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) followed by Signature Bank. This has Canadians wondering about the security of their deposits at our banks. Deposits at banks that are members of the...
Read More
“Industry organizations are calling on the federal government to raise the age at which RRSPs must be converted to RRIFs and to reduce the annual RRIF minimum withdrawal rates.” “Industry groups call for changes to RRIF rules,” by Rudy Mezzetta, Advisor’s Edge, March 13, 2023 What is...
Read More
Two years ago, when I last wrote about the table of returns across asset categories, I observed, “the consistently steady performance of the US stock market.” It appears that things have not changed despite the poor performance of American stocks last year. As I did in...
Read More
On February 13, 2023, Statistics Canada released a report that found one in four Canadians was unable to cover an unexpected expense of $500. The report went on to compare age groups, racialized groups, and regions. If you are 35 to 44 years old, Black...
Read More
I have been approached a couple of times to offer a second opinion on a person’s investments. I know what I do, but I wondered how “second opinion” is presented by financial institutions and their investment advisors. A quick search yielded several results, including an...
Read More
With the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contribution deadline for 2022 coming up soon and the personal income tax filing deadline close behind, most Canadian adults are focused on this annual task. I am a financial planner, not a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), so I do...
Read More
On February 7, 2023, the Bank of Montreal (BMO) released its latest survey of the Canadian public’s estimate of how much they need to retire with confidence. The survey resulted in a figure of $1.7 million. You may think that this is quite a large figure....
Read More
Someone who is in or nearing retirement has many ways to invest a financial windfall. Here’s how to ensure the money serves you well. I wrote this article for the Qualified Advice column of MoneySense, the online Canadian personal finance magazine. Qualified Advice is written by...
Read More
Occasionally I read about people who regard themselves as fairly sophisticated investors entering into a strategy of beginning to receive the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) at age 60 while continuing to be employed. There may be multiple reasons for making this choice. The most ill-informed reason...
Read More
One of the reasons why people love dividends, especially in the accumulation stage, is that they like the idea of being paid from their investments and using those investments to buy more of the same securities. This can be done in an automated matter by...
Read More