Around the Blogosphere

I’m going to let you in on an investing secret that has eluded millions of Canadians for years. A secret that will save you literally thousands of dollars a year in fees and deliver stronger investment performance. A secret that does not require you to transform into a superstar stock picker or professional asset allocator.…

The dividends-versus-total-return debate has (mercifully) cooled. Most investors now accept there’s nothing magical about dividends – it’s just cash carved out of total return. The real “magic” is reinvesting, i.e., putting the slice back into the cake so it keeps baking. And yes, ex-dividend, a stock’s price typically drops by roughly the dividend amount –…

Like a lot of money nerds, I’ve always loved a detailed budget. There’s comfort in seeing where every dollar goes, especially when life throws its usual mix of irregular income and surprise expenses. Still, I was curious: what would happen if I ditched the details and looked at our finances the way author Ramit Sethi…

Exactly three months ago my Weekend Reading update was all about staying the course amidst a big stock market sell-off. I got into it with a bearish reader in the comment section who labelled my advice too naive as Trump set fire to long-standing alliances and global trade. Well, well, well, how the turntables… Zooming…

Some of my clients are surprised to learn that I don’t follow specific spending rules, like the popular 4% rule, when building out retirement income projections. My problem with spending rules stems from the fact that life doesn’t just move in a straight-line, AND we don’t have one pot of money called “retirement savings”. Indeed,…

Some personal finance topics spark polite debate. Others? They ignite full-blown identity crises. In his latest video, Ben Felix dives into three of the most emotionally charged subjects in personal finance: renting vs. owning, dividend investing, and FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early). He explains why these topics go well beyond spreadsheets – they challenge our…

I went to bed after a perfectly normal Wednesday and woke up at 3am with my heart racing. I got up, went to the bathroom, and tried to get back to sleep – tossing and turning for a few hours before getting up for good around 5:30am. I felt okay(ish) and went downstairs for an…

For years I’ve wrestled with the taxing decision of whether to pay ourselves dividends or salary (or some combination of the two). For background, my wife and I co-own and operate our corporation, which includes our financial planning business, this blog, and some freelance writing work. We’ve always paid ourselves an equal amount of dividends…

Global stocks fell sharply on Thursday and Friday after US President Donald Trump’s so-called Liberation Day tariffs went into effect. Whether the President is being deliberately obtuse about the economic upheaval these tariffs will cause, or if he’s playing chess while the rest of the world is playing checkers is anyone’s guess. What investors want…

My inbox has been flooded lately with worried investors who feel anxious about the current market environment. It seems once again we find ourselves in unprecedented times.  While the future is always uncertain, the stock market is a forward-looking machine and is constantly gathering new information to assess the outlook of individual companies and the…