Author: Larry C.

Investing doesn’t have to be complicated.  It shouldn’t be complicated but bankers and financial planners want to complicate things so you need to go to them for advice. Here’s the newest thing I’ve heard of with respect to simplifying investing, something I’m trying to do with my blog. The index card you see above came from a University of Chicago […]

  In this blog, I tell my readers that the Vanguard low cost index funds VCN, VXC and VAB are highly recommended by our investing all-stars. I personally own both VCN and VXC. However, I have recently stopped buying both and have replaced them with a relatively new product that I’d like to tell you about. It’s also important for […]

The financial industry likes to scare people into saving more money than necessary. The pitch goes something like this: If you don’t save 15% of your working income, you may run out of money before you have the good sense to die. They do this because every dollar you save, they shave off 2 or 3 percent for themselves. It’s […]

Lots of people dream of being able to retire before age 65. Not only can working be stressful, it may not be that much fun. It definitely can’t compare with your vacation time, which for many people, if how they imagine retirement will be. If you are convinced that early retirement is for you then you will need to save […]

Part of the plan to retire well requires you to save 6% of your income each and every year of work between the ages of 25 and 65. This advice came from actuaries who studied the spending habits of Canadians during their working and retirement years. The 6% figure, it was concluded, meant that Canadians could save enough for retirement […]

In a previous blog post, I wrote about how successful dividend investing has been in the past 20 years in Canada.  I wanted to provide a little more colour on how dividend investing has performed vs. index investing so I did a little number crunching to see which stocks outperformed the S&P 500 and which did not.  I looked at […]

In a nutshell, some stocks and all government bonds are expensive today, probably because interest rates are so low. That pushes investors to buy stocks and bonds which means that future returns will probably be lower than they were in the past 25 years. Canadian and European stocks are actually not too over valued especially compared to US stocks. Canadian […]

Many Canadian investors believe that you can obtain market beating returns by investing in companies that have a long history of paying dividends. It’s even better when these companies are increasing their dividends year and after year. In Canada, suitable stable dividend companies are found in a few sectors like financial services (banks and insurance), utilities (electric and pipeline), food […]

If you spend any time watching or reading about the stock market, I’m sure you will often hear debate on whether now is a good time to invest.  Some will argue that the market is overvalued and is due for a drop, while equally intelligent sounding people will argue the market is not expensive and now is a good time […]

Investing articles can be long and boring.  How about I read the article and provide you with the important information for DIY investing success. Here it is. If you have the misfortune of retiring when the stock market peaks and you see a big decline in your first few years of retirement, the safest way to ensure your money doesn’t […]