Let the games begin! Today the Rio Olympics start, and hopefully it will all go off relatively well. Speaking as a Montrealer that lived through the 1976 Olympics and the financial aftermath, hopefully Rio has not written a cheque that will take decades to pay off. I still remember seeing Lasse Viren running up Rockland Road during the Marathon.
I am on vacation this week, so I have been watching with a high level of confusion what is going on in the U.S.A.. There are even pundits claiming Mr. Trump might actually be trying to throw the election? Seems far-fetched, but I believe the main-stream media wants all of this, and would relish a Trump Presidency, just because folks would be watching the news every night! All we have in Canada is a shirtless PM wandering around caves, and then surfer PM appeared as well? #WTF?
Sometimes we forget the importance of taking time off, and as I get closer to retirement, I am starting to figure out, I am going to need to figure out how to enjoy myself, and not think about work. I learned when I got laid off, that nothing is that important at work (since the things I was worrying about the week before I got canned, didn’t matter 5 minutes after I got laid off). Learn to enjoy, and take time off, I am still figuring it out (maybe I will take up surfing?)
My Writings for Week Ending August 5th
I am on vacation this week, and I finally wrote my review of the one financial tool I keep using, even though the developers seem to have abandoned it, and I vent my frustration in Quicken 2016 Canadian Edition Review . Don’t buy it. Investor Junkie has a much more positive view on things in this review, but give this year a pass (unless you must get it).
A Money Thought
As usual Kerry from Squawkfox hits the nail on the head with this tweet.
Some Huge Financial Stories
As the father of 3 wonderful daughters, I am always glad to see equality of payment (for equal work) and I was happy (and unhappy it took this long to fix it) to see my Alma Mater correct things in, University of Waterloo boosts salaries of female faculty. If they are doing the same job, they should get the same pay, that simple.
Should couples have “the money talk” before they get married? Jamie Golombek from CIBC says, “Yes they should”, however very few do, as he points out in his report For richer or poorer: Financial Planning Tips for Newlyweds (PDF). The talk should also include about whether to own or rent a home, however a lower home price (or the bursting of the bubble) may not be everything folks hope for, or so Tom Bradley says in his piece Lower house prices – Be careful what you wish for. I have, on occasion, to sit on the back deck and after a few beverages, dreamed of the future, however, Mark from My Own Advisor gives us something a bit better with, 2016 Predictions Summer Update. Mark likes the dividends, and this WSJ piece shows that tech companies might be on his radar some time soon, Tech Stocks’ New Attraction: Dividends.
Friend of this site, Larry MacDonald wrote in the Globe and Mail about another investor in his article, Mathematician opts for stability with diversified ETF portfolio. Sounds like some sensible investing ideas.Speaking of friends, Barry from Money We Have gives us 5 Money Moves to Make now.
Michael James asks Is Your Allocation to Stocks Too High? As usual the title may not reflect the opinion you think he espouses. My opinion, your allocations shouldn’t keep you awake at night. The most interesting title for the week has to go to Frugal Trader with Why I Don’t DRIP my Leveraged Smith Manoeuvre Portfolio, that is a lot of topics for one article.
Money Audio
From the Blessed by the Potato folk, an interesting audio rant from the post Passive Investing and Non-Linearity
2016 Random Thoughts
- January 7th, Market Meltdown, TFSA, WildCard Weekend and #MoneyStories
- January 14th, Cheap Oil, Cheap Dollar, Dead Folk, and #MoneyStories
- January 21st, Loose Money, High Household Debt, Weak Loons and #MoneyStories
- January 29th, Doomsday Clocks, Rogue RRSP Receipts, Cash Crops and #MoneyStories
- February 4th Bouncing Loonies, RRSP Season, Superb Owls and #MoneyStories
- February 12th Lent is Here, Bricked iPhones, Love Day and #MoneyStories
- February 19th Digging Out, Ransomware, RRSP Time and #MoneyStories
- February 26th RRSP Time and #MoneyStories
- March 4th Welcome Americans and #MoneyStories
- March 11th Bank Rate Stays Put, Spring Forward and #MoneyStories
- March 18th Financial March Madness, Budgets and #MoneyStories
- March 25th, Easter is Here and some #MoneyStories
- April 1, Money Fools, Ronnie, and #MoneyStories
- April 8, Tax Time, Spring Delayed, Panama Papers and #MoneyStories
- April 15,Loose Money, Free Stuff, Hockey and #MoneyStories
- April 22,Disabilities, Tax Time, The Queen and #MoneyStories
- April 29,Pitter Patter Tax Time, RESPs are For Rich Folk and #MoneyStories
- May 6, Fort Mac, Mothers and #MoneyTalk
- May 13, Panama Papers, Google & PayDay Loans, Full Moons and #MoneyTalk
- May 20, Victoria Day, The People’s Elbow, Haircuts and #MoneyTalk
- May 27, Loose Money and #MoneyTalk
- June 3, CRA Itunes Pmts, RESP Scams and #MoneyTalk
- June 10, Portal to Hell Opens in Ottawa, BoC FSR and #MoneyTalk
- June 17, Fathers Day, Trump Housing Bubble, and #MoneyTalk
- June 24, Brexit, Fete National, Enhanced CPP and #MoneyTalk
- July 1, Happy Canada Day and Best Mid-Year Financial Stories
- July 8, Brexit Market Mayhem, Millenial Bashing and #MoneyTalk
- July 15,Brexit Hurts, Loose Money, Postal Strikes, Recounts and #Moneytalks
- July 22,More Pensions, New CTC, and #MoneyTalk
- July 30, Unknown Long Weekend, Windows 10 and #MoneyTalk
My Twitter feed is where I re-tweet many great articles by some of my featured writers (and make the occasional odd or off-color commentary on life (in 140 characters or less)). I am also on reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest , Flipboard, Instagram and other Social Media sites (look for the BigCajunMan userid) as well. If you have social media accounts, don’t forget to vote for my posts (see the nifty dashboard on the bottom of each article, where you can cast your votes).As they say in Quebec, vote early and vote often!
Thanks for the mention, Alan!
Keep up the good works!
Re (above): “Friend of this site, Larry MacDonald wrote in the Globe and Mail about another investor in his article, Mathematician opts for stability with diversified ETF portfolio.”
The author could have avoided all the fuss with investing in various index funds by simply investing in a one stop balanced mutual fund like the globally diversified Mawer Balanced Fund which returned 11.8% (2011-06-30 to 2016-06-30) annually instead of the author’s stated 9%. MY DGI portfolio returned a little over 13% annualized over the same period but it’s much more hands-on than the indexed ETF approach.
So you buy a fund whose top 10 holdings are MAWER funds (mimicking what you could do yourself) and it still charges a 0.97% MER for this? And then the “Index” funds some of them have 1.5% MERs (Mawer Global Small Cap A), so you have more fees to pay? Why not just do it yourself?
bigcajunman,
Incorrect. The total wrap MER for the Mawer Balanced Fund is 0.97%. The fess of the individual Mawer funds held within the Balanced Fund are waived. It would be more expensive to do it yourself.
Of course there are no guarantees that Mawer Balanced Fund will continue to outperform the equivalent global balanced index but I’d say the odds are pretty good. They’ve been on top 14 out of the past 16 years by an average of 2.6% per year (8.2% vs 5.6%).
OK well that is a good one to know. As you pointed out whether it can keep up the gains remains to be seen. Interesting that they create one big fund, from a bunch of their own funds, even more interesting is that TD hasn’t thought to do the same with their E-series funds too.
TD has done something along the same lines with their “Comfort” series. I don’t see them as very “comfortable” though as the fees are over twice as high as Mawer Balanced Fund and performance numbers are mediocre.
FYI…I just compared Mawer Balanced Fund’s 10 year performance to a 60% equity (20% Cdn/20% US/20% Int’l) / 40% fixed income (Cdn Bond) mix of TD e series funds. Mawer beats 8 out of 10 individual years by an average of 2.0% annually (8.4% vs 6.4%). I was only able to get 10 years data for TD (via Morningstar). The blended MER for the e funds computes to 0.44% vs 0.94% for MAW104.
More food for thought
I’m not optimistic about more people talking about money before they get married. Pair bonding is not a process dominated by rationality. Thanks for the mention.
Yeh, they will talk about pretty much everything else, but money for some reason is taboo?