Posts by Robb Engen
Weekend Reading: Vancouver Edition
My wife and I celebrated our 10th anniversary with a trip to Vancouver last week. We found round-trip flights from Calgary for less than $300 and then decided to splurge by staying at a boutique hotel downtown. The location was perfect, as we could walk everywhere from Stanley Park to Granville Island. We took a free shuttle…
Read MoreA Big List Of Behavioural Biases
There’s a fascinating link between psychology and money that tries to explain how we think and behave when it comes to saving, spending, and investing. It was Meir Statman’s book, What Investors Really Want, that first opened my eyes to behavioural biases and how to make smarter financial decisions. Later, it was Carl Richards’ The Behavior Gap that showed the…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: New Mortgage Rules Edition
The big news out of Ottawa this week saw the federal government taking steps to cool the housing market by introducing a financial stress test to all insured mortgages and closing a tax loophole for foreign real estate buyers. Starting October 17th all home buyers must qualify at the bank’s posted rate, or the Bank…
Read MoreBuilding Your Confidence As A DIY Investor
Whether you’re a novice investor or experienced trader, most of us can stand to gain more knowledge about the stock market and different investing strategies. Investor education is exactly what Scotia iTRADE had in mind when it launched a series of free direct investing courses online. Through the Scotia iTRADE U education platform, investors can…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Ending Canada Savings Bonds Edition
Canada Savings Bonds are still a thing? The legacy savings program that was built to fund the Second World War is now in its 70th year of sales and costs the federal government $60 million per year to run. But savings bonds that once paid double-digit interest rates now yield a paltry 0.5 percent in today’s low rate environment.…
Read MoreAdvice To Millennials: Starting Your Investing Journey
I was born in 1979 – a year that places me at the tail-end of Generation X but still makes me cool enough to give advice to Millennials about investing. My mom worked in a bank and encouraged me at an early age to save and invest. I started investing in mutual funds at 18…
Read MoreDo What You Love (On The Side)
I’m a big believer in having multiple streams of income. A side-hustle can help you reach your financial goals faster and fuel your entrepreneurial spirit. Do what you love, on the side, and you can strike the perfect balance between entrepreneurship and a steady paycheque. When I left my job in the busy hospitality industry…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Air Miles Class Action Edition
It was only a matter of time. Air Miles has faced plenty of criticism in recent months, not just for instituting an expiry policy, but mishandling communication to its collectors about the new policy, automatically defaulting existing reward miles into their ‘Dream Miles’ category, not allowing members to transfer miles between their Dream and Cash Miles accounts, hiding…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Vancouver Real Estate Edition
Greed has a powerful effect on asset bubbles as speculators and insiders try to exploit every available loophole to profit from rising prices. First we had mortgage brokers behaving badly. Then we had shadow-flipping real estate agents. Now The Globe and Mail has exposed a new scheme where a Vancouver real estate speculator is buying homes financed with investor money from…
Read MoreA Twist On The RRSP vs. Mortgage Debate
It’s an age-old financial dilemma. Should you use your extra savings to pay down the mortgage or contribute to your RRSP? A simple answer is to compare the expected return from your investments to the interest rate on your mortgage. In today’s low rate environment, where mortgage rates sit well below 3 percent, many assume…
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