As a member of the Financial Planning Association of Canada (FPAC), our overarching goal is to professionalize financial services in Canada. One way in which we seek to get the word out about FPAC’s mission is by providing a regular column, Qualified Advice, for MoneySense,...
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Financial planners often encourage their clients to think long-term. We are more cautious about the risk of living too long, longevity risk, than we are about dying young. I subscribed to the print version of MoneySense magazine for many years before it went fully online. I...
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Mutual Funds Often Have a Cost Disadvantage In my previous post, I wrote about several advantages of investing with mutual funds. That post invited a few comments about the costs of mutual funds outweighing the behavioural advantages. Although there are a relatively few mutual funds that...
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Norman Rothery’s Heated-Up Version of the Couch Potato Portfolio The Original Couch Potato Portfolio The original Couch Potato Portfolio came from a 1991 article by Scott Burns, then a writer at the Dallas Morning News. He advocated for a simple two-fund portfolio using index mutual funds. One...
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Every once in a while in my earlier career, I was approached by people who were interested in market-linked Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GICs). These are investment products that protect your principal but give you the opportunity to participate in the growth of the stock market....
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AN INTRODUCTION TO ESTATE PLANNING – PART 3.1 When people get around to making a will, they often think of their family first. If they are married, they will think of their spouse first. Some assets can be inherited directly, outside of the will. Here I...
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An Introduction to Financial Planning – Part 3 A question was put to me via Twitter in response to my last post on retirement planning. In a nutshell, how do couples do retirement planning when there is an age gap between spouses? I will interpret an...
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