Weekend Reading: London Edition
Welcome to my latest edition of Weekend Reading. I’m writing from our flat in London, whilst enjoying a coffee on this beautiful Saturday morning. We’re on day four of our 24 day trip to the U.K. that will soon take us up to the Lake District and then into and around Scotland. London is an…
Read MoreDo You Need A Financial Navigator?
I get really nervous when driving in strange places. The anxiety comes from my poor sense of direction – I could get lost in a phone booth. My wife, on the other hand, makes a fine navigator. She could be trapped in an underground cave and still tell which way is north. We didn’t plan…
Read MoreNet Worth Update: 2022 Mid-Year Review
Stocks went down. Real estate went up. Yet I sold stocks to buy real estate. Welcome to 2022, where things no longer make sense. That’s right, we made a big decision earlier this year to purchase a lot and build a new house. Once we decided we were serious about taking this step (as…
Read MoreWhat’s Up?
No, I’m not asking how you’re doing (sorry, I know everything sucks right now!). I’m talking about your investments. Active managers love to tout their ability to capture all of the upside of the market while deftly avoiding the downside. We know empirically that is not the case (the SPIVA scorecard shows that more than…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: House Building Edition
I got a three-month head start on working from home after I quit my full-time job in December 2019. At first, I worked from a laptop at the dining room table. It wasn’t ideal, especially when our kids were sent home for online school. We later carved out a section of the kids’ playroom and…
Read MoreStop Checking Your Portfolio
We’re nearly halfway through 2022 and the year has not been kind to investors, to say the least. Global stock markets are suffering their worst prolonged losses in recent memory. The S&P 500 is down about 18.5%, international stocks are down about 17%, and emerging market stocks are down about 15%. Domestic stocks have fared…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Breaking Up With Your Advisor Edition
I recently coached a client through the process of transferring her existing RRSP, TFSA, and non-registered investment accounts away from high fee managed mutual funds and over to a self-directed investing platform. The goal was to reduce investment fees from an average of 2% on her balanced portfolio down to 0.25% with a balanced asset…
Read MoreTime To Check In On Your Financial Plan
I quit my full-time job in December 2019, three months before a global pandemic shut down the world. I watched my investments fall by 34% in the sharpest and most rapid market decline in history. I cancelled two European vacations. While I did get a three-month head start on the whole work-from-home thing, my routine…
Read MoreUsing Annuities To Create Your Own Personal Pension In Retirement
*Sponsored by RBC Insurance* The reason why retirement planning can be so difficult is because the one variable we need to know – how long we have to live – is impossible to predict. Sure, we have mortality tables and family history to help guide us, but statistically speaking, half the population will outlive their…
Read MoreWeekend Reading: Update From Italy Edition
Buongiorno! We’ve spent two glorious weeks in Italy, arriving first in Rome before moving on to Florence and Venice. Three very different, yet equally amazing cities! I loved the history of Rome. We toured the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and the Vatican, ran through Circus Maximus and along the Tiber, tossed a coin into Trevi…
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