Man, where the heck did 2015 go? #timewarp
Overall, a great year in the My Own Advisor household. We have health, we have family, we have friends and we remain gainfully employed. It sounds so simple when I put it that way but my wife and I are quite blessed and fortunate.
In 2015, we travelled and we renovated. We took a nice two-week vacation to Scotland this summer and we renovated our ensuite bath. More travel and less renovations planned for 2016 (we hope).
Got any big plans for 2016 folks? Share them with me in a comment below.
Looking back at 2015 on the site, there was more readership and more traffic – which was great.
In brief:
- Almost 184,000 users spent time on this site at one point
- There were almost 550,000 pageviews
- 56% of my traffic was from new readers – thanks for visiting, come back soon and share this site with others!
Overall, another fun year running My Own Advisor. Thanks for following my journey to financial freedom and I look forward to sharing more insights, perspectives, research and success stories in 2016.
Before we turn the page on 2015, I thought I would share some of my favourite articles from the last year as part of this “best of” post.
I hope you enjoy the articles below. Let me know what you’d like to see more of in the coming year, I’m always interested in hearing from readers and what they might be looking for.
Happy New Year! See you in 2016!
In January I wrote about great investment ideas for your TFSA. I will likely have another post on this subject in a few weeks (so come back for that).
In February I determined there are worse problems to have in retirement than this!
In March I answered a reader question about how I rebalance my portfolio.
In April I shared five Canadian stocks for greedy investors.
In May this is how I used Twitter to get some customer service.
In June I told you dividend investing works, period.
In August I shared some perspectives on what to do when the stock markets were starting to blow up.
In November I said these people are fools with tools.
In December Larry MacDonald was kind to profile me in The Globe and Mail again and I offered my take on making debt tax-deductible.
Just exploring your site for the first time. I will be commenting on some of your older posts 🙂
Good reading so far.
Thanks Peter and please do. Looking forward to your comments!
Happy New Year Mark!! Here’s to another great year of blogging!
Thanks and all the best to you in 2016 🙂
2015 was definitely a year to count dividends not share price.
One thing that we have started to do is accept that we don’t need to maximise income, a simple 3 to 4% return is more than enough for our needs. So lots of our higher risk dividend paying holdings have been replaced by boring medium term bonds that we can hold until maturity if need be.
I do like your comment from February about RSP tax being a welcome problem. The realization that we should start withdrawing now rather than waiting as long as possible has helped us plan.
May the coming year be more up than down.
I think every year is a year to count dividends!
To your point though Richard, we are hoping for real returns of 3-4% going forward. This means we will “live off dividends and distributions” for the most part and let capital gains take care of inflation. We are fortunate to have pensions at work so they are a “big bond” and we don’t own bonds in our portfolio accordingly.
Yes, a tax problem is an excellent problem to have in retirement, all things considered! Best wishes to you in 2016.
Happy New Year Mark, I wish you all the best in 2016! Great job in growing your site!
My plans for 2016: a brand new website, and a brand new way for helping people to invest easily and successfully….2016 will be an exciting year!
Thanks Kanwal. All the best for 2016 to you and family! I look forward to your new site and branding.
Some headlines from the Financial Post:
– Canada’s ‘vomitous’ year for stocks: Investors find precious few places to hide in toxic year
– The TSX has fallen 11% YTD, the worst performance of 24 developed markets, accept for Singapore and Greece.
– North American stocks slide on last day of trading in 2015: ‘The most poetic way you could end the year’
– ETF investors have spent $24 billion trying – and failing – to call a bottom in oil
– Global stocks fall with commodity currencies as 2015 ends with $37 oil
– Gold’s three year losing streak shows no signs of ending
– If the bond market is no longer a market for savers, what is it?
– If this single man doesn’t start saving aggressively, he will wind up poor in retirement
– Why portfolio diversification is overrated or ‘protection against ignorance’
Much rather read your posts and glad I’m not worried about market prices. We just monitor our growing income which is up 11% in 2015.
Those are some scary headlines, but I suppose, “stay the course, stay invested and don’t read financial news” doesn’t sell many papers 🙂
Happy New Year and best wishes to you and family in 2016.
Mark
Wow…those are some amazing numbers for new readers and pageviews. Congrats on another great year, Mark.
Some fantastic articles and Im not surprised that readers like me keep coming back for some food-for-thought. Keep em coming.
Happy New Year
R2R
Thanks R2R. I appreciate the support. Continued success with your site and investing 🙂
Mark