What’s in a Title?

Regulating the Use of Financial Planner or Financial Advisor If someone were to tell you that they were a financial planner or a financial advisor, what would be your first thought? Mutual fund salesperson? Or perhaps, life insurance salesperson? Before I became involved in financial services...

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Sequence of Returns Risk

Coping with the Uncertainty of Investment Returns Imagine that you have been putting away $10,000 at the beginning of each year from 2002 until 2019. For the sake of this example, taxes and commissions are excluded; you have been investing that money into the Canadian stock...

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Why do People Stay Poor?

As I write this in mid-September, there are rumblings in the media that the upcoming throne speech from the Government of Canada will include a significant push toward some version of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Is Canada ready for this?   The “Mincome” Example While Mincome, the “Manitoba...

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Breaking Your Mortgage Contract

Low Interest Rates Make This an Option Worth Considering When my wife and I bought our first house, the interest rate was 7.5%. That sounds awfully high today when you can sometimes see mortgage rates posted for less than 2%. On the other hand, we were...

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Financial Elder Abuse

Several years ago, I received a phone call at the discount investing call centre where I worked. An older woman was on the line. She wanted to buy a particular investment. I noticed that she was being “coached” by someone near her on what she...

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When should I begin taking CPP?

It is the nature of my profession that I read a lot about personal financial matters. One of the most difficult of such matters has to do with retirement. Financial economists will say that retirement planning is difficult because there are so many variables, or...

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