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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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Yesterday, my neighbour’s son was over for a visit. He’s a twenty something living in Newmarket, ON and working in construction. He is doing quite well for himself and was recently chosen to be trained as a foreman. We started talking about how frustrated he was with the price of real estate in the Toronto area and how we was […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. So if you give them $1000 in […]

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 […]

Easy recipe for investing success: Save 10% of your income. Every once in a while buy the Vanguard product with the symbol VGRO. Do this over and over again, every year for 40 years and there’s a really good chance you won’t have to worry about money when you stop working. It seems so simple.  This is the sort of […]

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 […]