Canadian Personal Finance News | December 2014

1) Many (but not all) roads lead to Rome. "We" in the investment business like to discuss and debate the finer points of factor models and small/value tilts and tax loss harvesting and rebalancing strategies and global allocation and treatment of real estate and the merits of backtested portfolios.

“Never wrestle with a pig because if you do you’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.” – Charlie Munger In a speech to USC Law School graduates, Charlie Munger shared his thoughts about the problem with extreme … Continue reading →

In a perverse way, the stock market correction we experienced this past few months was a welcome relief. OK, no one likes watching their portfolio fall in value, but we really did need a wake-up call. Over the previous couple of years I'd heard from countless investors who seemed to have forgotten that stocks can actually go down.

Can You Select Long-Term Fund Winners? Yes, yes you can. But it will probably be an accident. And selecting them won't even be the hard part... In a fascinating post at Research Affiliates about the perils of real-time performance measurement, John West and Amie Ko look at the longest-term winners in a mutual fund data series that goes back to the 1970's...

It's easy to lose sight of the longer-term movements in the stock market when we're in the midst of such a strong bull market. As Charles Ellis once said, "The average long-term experience in investing is never surprising, but the short-term experience is always surprising."

When you contribute to CPP, how much pension will that buy you especially if you contribute the maximum CPP amount

Here’s how to get a read on how much investment risk you’re taking and whether you should dial it back—or dial it up.

Decumulation is a trending topic in the pension and broader financial services industries. A Google search on decumulation (and variants) and retirement filtered on Canadian domains yields about 65,000 results! Notwithstanding the discourse, recent experiences of my 80-year-old mother with her retirement portfolio demonstrate that the financial services industry currently does a very poor job when it comes to decumulation.

I barely have time to buy laundry detergent let alone brew up my own batch...But for now, I’m not only finding more time to spend with my family in these important years, I am also finding that I save more every month using these strategies — and ultimately, spreading that gap between what we earn and what we spend is what will help us build wealth in the long run.

The daily practices of a life with direction can either be onerous, and chafe so much that you give up or grumble your way through a miserable life, or you can settle into them with an attitude of contentment and get happy on the way to your goals, not just when you eventually reach them.

One of the best parts of my job is when I can help people with their retirement plans. Unfortunately too often, I get humbled from these face to face meetings because I realize that not all retirements happen with a happy ending.

Raising a baby is expensive. I'd say, "Don't get me started," but many of you started this journey LONG before me, and many of you are thinking of starting soon. I know this because I get email daily asking for advice on ways to save on the hefty cost of raising kids.

In 2015, would you like to improve your money management, minimize taxes and ensure your loved ones have a financial road map? Then this holiday season, in between your family gatherings and watching the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championships consider undertaking a financial cleanup. So what is a financial cleanup?

What To Expect When You're Expecting We often spend far too much time worrying about things beyond our control; how will stocks do next year, will rates rise, etc. It's easy to overlook one of the key elements to successful investing; setting realistic expectations.

Two major issues make the concept of retirement planning difficult to grasp for many members of Generation Y. This group, also known as the millennials, ranges in age from the young twenties to the mid thirties. At this age, they have anywhere from 30 to 40 years (or more) of a working career ahead of them.