The Blog

Trying to time the market means trying to pick a time to buy your stocks, bond or etfs. So instead of buying when they have cash available, an investor waits and holds cash waiting for an opportunity to buy low. Does this strategy work?   No.  It’s too hard to do and not even the “pros” can’t do it consistently.  Furthermore, even […]

If you listen to mutual fund sales people and most of the mainstream media, you will often hear that people need to replace 70% of their income when they retire. We’ve already discussed why that number is not accurate. The point of this post is to show you exactly why saving to make up 70% of your working income is […]

If you are close to retirement, I recommend you try out this retirement spending calculator created by Morneau Shepell, a large Canadian human resource company.  It’s the most involved and accurate calculator I’ve discovered for Canadians. The man behind the calculator is the recently retired chief actuary at Morneau Shepell, Fred Vettese, (author of The Real Retirement, a fantastic book […]

Do I Need To Save For Retirement If I Have A Pension Plan At Work First of all, consider yourself lucky that you are one of the few remaining workers in Canada that can still count on a pension plan at work. The once common defined benefit pension plan that paid out a guaranteed amount to a retiree every year […]

Many people are surprised when they are told that they can have the same standard of living in retirement as their working years with only 50% of their working years income. Thankfully, actuaries have researched the spending habits of working age and retired Canadians. I’d like to provide you some evidence of their 50% rule conclusions to help convince you […]

William Bernstein is a well know personal finance writer who tries his best to convince people to save for retirement using low cost broadly diversified index funds.  He has written a few books on the topic but recently released a short e-book for young people who need help investing.   You could read this book and learn quite a bit on […]

Can Your Really Save $250,000 By Doing-It-Yourself Short answer. YES! Here’s the math. According to Morningstar, a financial website that knows everything about mutual funds and index funds, the average mutual fund in Canada has a Management Expense Ratio of 2.5%. That means for every dollar you have invested with this fund, they take 2.5% away each and every year. […]

Below you will find a blog post I wrote in June 2014 questioning the “expert” prediction of a well known and respected Canadian economist. His book sold incredibly well and I’m certain many people believed his predictions about oil prices heading for the stars and loaded up on oil stocks and oil company debt. A year and a half later, […]

One of the best books I’ve read on passive or index investing is The Elements of Investing by Burton Malkiel and Charles Ellis. The book is full of proof that buying mutual funds is a losers game for us, the investors. One point they discuss that is not widely considered is the significant capital gains taxes that mutual fund investors […]