Many Canadians have a reasonable degree of net worth. Millionaire households are not that unusual if you consider the value of housing, especially if you have been a homeowner for 20 years or more, which would be the case for many who are approaching retirement....
Read MoreDividends and Dates When I worked at a discount brokerage, I routinely fielded questions about dividends, in particular, the record date and the ex-dividend date (often abbreviated as “ex-date”). Investors would often get confused by these two dates and the impact they would have on their...
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The bucket strategy divides your investment assets into three categories. The Immediate or Short-Term Bucket This bucket covers a period lasting between two to five years. Money in this category is typically held in savings accounts, Guaranteed Investment Certificates (GICs), and Short-Term Fixed-Income (Bond) Funds. Assets in...
Read MoreYou have had it. You cannot stand even one more winter of shovelling snow or fearing the loss of your fingers and toes from frostbite. You are going to retire to Panama, or Malaysia, or Portugal, or… There are lots of lists on the internet...
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Debt is not a fun topic. Well, maybe it is if you like engaging in stories like those of the Four Yorkshiremen, later popularized by Monty Python, who sought to outdo each other with their personal histories of poverty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAdlkunflRs Poverty and debt are not, of course,...
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Give it away, give it away, give it away now Give it away, give it away, give it away now Give it away, give it away, give it away now* You have reached a level of wealth that gives you a sense of contentment. You are confident that...
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In my student days, I remember an ethics professor saying something to the effect of, “That which is not prohibited is permitted.” Of course, one pithy sentence does not exactly provide the full range of nuance that was elaborated on over the semesters that I...
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As I wrote on my website, one of the major reasons I began to work in financial planning is because I saw multiple DIY portfolios that were not founded on any rational approach to investment planning. Many seemed to view investing as a variation on...
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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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Everybody wants to be in on the ground floor of THE NEXT BIG THING. They want to be an employee of the next Amazon, Apple, or Microsoft, when those companies were in their start-up phase, and be granted stock options that will grow from zero...
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