Weekend Reading – Commission-free ETFs, ditching expensive cities, juicy dividend income and more #moneystuff

Weekend Reading – Commission-free ETFs, ditching expensive cities, juicy dividend income and more #moneystuff

Welcome to my latest Weekend Reading edition where I share some of my favourite articles from the week that was across the personal finance and investing blogosphere.

Earlier this week, I shared this new, major financial milestone in our lives. Simply awesome we’re only another year or so away from earning $2,000 per month in tax-free (thanks TFSA!) and tax-efficient dividend income…for life. 

Here is where we ended 2019 and where we might be in the coming years:

What are your plans to earn cash from your portfolio in the coming years?

Already letting your portfolio do all the work? Let me know how that is going!

Would love to hear about it like some of these very successful retirees and financially independent folks who shared their stories with me here.

I’ll be back next week with new a post and I’m working on a future retirement case study so stay tuned.

Have a great weekend and thanks once again for your readership. Approaching 4,000 dedicated subscribers on this site with more joining every day.

All the best,

Mark

Weekend Reading

Good stuff here from Savvy New Canadians on the best brokerages for commission-free ETFs in Canada.

The Fioneers wrote about lifestyle by design.

Lifestyle by design is something I’m slowly working on and something I wrote about in this post: strive for financial independence and not early retirement.

Better late than never – here is a recap of my predictions from 2019 and what actually came true:

1. Eugene Melnyk will finally partner with someone (this year) to re-build Lebreton Flats. (That was a big fat fail. What was I thinking about this egomaniac??)
2. The Tampa Bay Lightning will win The Stanley Cup. (Nope!)
3. Jon Rahm will win The Masters. (Wrong again!)
4. The TSX Composite will finish 2019 at 15,425. (TSX finished at 17,063.43 I recall.)
5. The S&P 500 will finish 2019 at 2,705. (S&P 500 finished at 3,230.78 after a 29% gain!)
6. I think gold will finish 2019 at $1,320. (Not even close! Over $1500.)
7. Oil will finish 2019 at $57.50. (Close, somewhat, just over $61.)
8. Our Canadian dollar will finish the year at $0.79. (Not bad, only a few pennies off!)
9. Assuming we can stay the course with our investments, we’ll earn > $19,000 in dividend income this calendar year in key accounts.

We did and then some!! Nailed it!

Some reminders:

Here is my ETFs page – dozens on articles here.

What are the best low-cost ETFs for your RRSP?

What are the best low-cost ETFs for your TFSA?

If and when your RRSP and TFSA are full, meaning completely out of contribution room, consider taxable investing this way here.

Henry Mah shared 45 stocks with 10 years of juicy dividend growth.

Reader question of the week (wording adapted for site):

Honestly if I think about it too much, sometimes I want to liquidate equities and pay down my rental properties for at least some future cashflow in the bad times to come. Thoughts?

Thanks for the question!

Ya, doom and gloom financial experts and reports are everywhere. That’s why you simply need to stay invested.

If I listened to all that doom and gloom years ago, I would have missed out on gains approaching 30% last year!!

My advice and thoughts?

1. Get invested in low-cost funds and/or dividend producing funds or both!
2. Stay invested in a risk tolerance and cash position that matches your long-term objectives.
3. Keep doing #1 and #2 for as long as you can. 

It can be that simple. 

Happy investing!

Mark