Posts by Robb Engen
Weekend Reading: The Problem With FIRE Edition
The FIRE movement (Financial Independence, Retire Early) has taken the personal finance blogosphere by storm of late, with numerous bloggers chronicling their journey towards financial independence. Several high profile bloggers have even achieved FIRE, gaining wide spread attention from mainstream media and leading to book publishing opportunities. The quest for financial independence certainly isn’t new…
Read MoreWhat Are You Doing With That Tax Refund?
**This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Alterna Bank. All opinions are my own. Canadians are usually an optimistic bunch come tax season, with the majority of tax filers expecting to get a refund. In fact, many of us count on a tax refund to pay off debt, cover the cost…
Read MoreSolving The Home Bias In My Portfolio
Canadian investors tend to suffer from home bias – a preference to hold more domestic stocks over foreign equities. This is actually true of investors in most countries, but it’s particularly troubling in Canada where our stock markets are highly concentrated in the financial and energy sectors. The federal government could be partially to blame…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: One-Ticket ETF Edition
In the last five years we’ve seen the rise of robo-advisors offering low cost online portfolio management to investors large and small. Investors pay a management fee of around 0.50 percent plus another 0.20 percent or so for the robo-advisor to hold the underlying ETFs. This is a massive improvement from a traditional mutual fund…
Read MoreHow To Save Money On Everything That Matters
Regular readers will know that I haven’t had a salary increase at my public sector job in five years. Meanwhile our family is growing, with two kids coming up on seven and 10 years old. Stagnant wages plus rising household expenses meant our family was losing purchasing power every year. What’s a personal finance blogger…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter Edition
It never gets old. I’m talking about Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. The famous Oracle of Omaha beat the market again, increasing the market value of Berkshire by 2.8 percent versus the 4.4 percent loss suffered by the S&P 500 in 2018. Buffett’s letter always includes a good dose of wisdom and…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Dividend Aristocrats Edition
Dividend investors tend to have an almost blind faith in the steadiness of companies in which they invest. They want to invest in businesses that have paid dividends for many years and, more importantly, have a track record of growing those dividends each year for decades or more. Reliable dividends mean never worrying about the…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Value Of Financial Advice Edition
In 2012, personal finance commenter Preet Banerjee wrote a piece for the Globe & Mail debunking a widely quoted research paper on the value of financial advice. The study, published by the CIRANO group, reported that “on average, participants retaining the service of a financial advisor for more than 15 years have about 173 percent…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Super Bowl LIII Edition
I’m a die-hard football fan but even I’ll admit that it’s getting tougher to follow the game with the same religious fervor that I once had. The NFL is plagued by many issues, including domestic violence, racial division, substance abuse, and player injuries resulting from repeated head trauma (which the league ignored or denied for…
Read MoreExamining Canadians’ RRSP Contribution Habits
It’s perhaps the greatest tax-planning tool available to Canadians, yet RRSPs still remains a mystery to some and are underutilized by many. BMO’s 9th annual RRSP study digs into the data to examine Canadians’ RRSP contribution habits and highlight key trends. Average amount held in RRSP The study found that the average amount held in…
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