Weekend Reading – Costco returns, indexing and more
Welcome to my latest Weekend Reading edition – where you can find some of my favourite personal finance and investing articles from the week that was.
Here were my articles from this week:
Thanks to some reader inspiration I wrote about my journey and considerations for self-directed investing here.
Thanks for your ongoing support of this site, your reading and sharing. See you here next week!
Thanks to Jessica Brooks and CBC Life for including yours truly in this article – top money bloggers’ tips for taking control of your finances in 2017.
Related to the CBC post – here is my best budgeting rule of thumb.
Sure Dividend believes U.S. investors should not overlook Canadian dividend payers.
Saver Stephen Weyman told us Costco has a crazy (good) return policy.
This article says we should have listened to indexing guru Charles Ellis 40 years ago.
Dividend Growth Investor shares nine lessons learned from years of blogging and investing. From his list I especially liked keeping your investment costs low, sticking to your plan and staying patient. Good advice.
Mr. CBB wonders how couples should split household bills.
Larry MacDonald found a finance professor that likes to buy ETFs when times are bad. As long as these are low-cost, diversified ETFs, that seems to make sense to me.
Have a great weekend!
Mark
re: “U.S. investors should not overlook Canadian dividend payers” — Just as Canadians should not overlook foreign investment for the exact same reasons: FX, oligopolies, taxation. For instance, my US oil investment operation enjoys favourable State tax conditions as well as paying me in $US (and oil is THE oligopoly when it comes to energy).
re: “top money bloggers’ tips” — penny rich, pound poor. Skip to the last paragraph and keep reading it until it sinks in (nice one, Kyle).
re: “Charles Ellis 40 years ago” — no one listened to Bogle either, in fact he, and his revolutionary product, initially failed and were ostracized. The sector through which all money flows will do whatever it takes — legal and/or illegal — to keep their cash flow alive and well. Take a hint from this blog’s title and be your own advisor. Your superior returns will almost always be a result of lower costs, and almost never the result of higher gains.
re: “Nine Dividend Investing Lessons Learned From Nine Years of Blogging” — that’s far too expensive. Hilariously depressing that almost all of us never have outright faith on Day One in the lessons and wisdom provided by the Giants before us. We all spend far too many resources getting over ourselves first just to arrive at the same conclusions. Keep it simple, keep it cheap, keep it for a long time.
re: “a Premium Pass to all conference material – a $199 value.” — How is this figure calculated, esp. if tickets are free… Also know there is a marked difference in ‘value’ and ‘price’. Just me, once again, being a stickler for the correct usage of terminology; if you are going to speak the language, use the correct words. How surprising that the conference focus “will allow you to retire earlier”. And really…”Canada’s Top Financial Experts”…the end is nigh when a handful of amateur personal finance bloggers are now considered “world-class financial experts”. I wonder what the actual financial experts think of that. Free market be damned, and no offence by association, Mark, but I hope not a single attendee pays a dime for this “conference”.
Always good to have some strong perspectives SST…
re: “top money bloggers’ tips” — how so? You obviously didn’t like my behavioural approach – re: see how your expenses are aligned with your values. That’s OK – not everyone has to agree with that one.
Regarding Charles Ellis – I still haven’t bought into the 100% indexing thing. I prefer to be my own advisor when it comes to investing, insurance, tax issues, etc. My net worth is higher thanks to taking things into my own hands. Sure, I’ve made mistakes, but there is no way on earth if I didn’t take an interest in the process that we would be over $1 M in net worth by now.
To your point: “Keep it simple, keep it cheap, keep it for a long time.” I plan on it.
Have a good weekend – hope you get a chance to get out and enjoy the outdoors!
Mark
Thanks for the mention Mark. Keeping costs low is very important. Back when I started, I used to be proud of the fact that my commissions were super low ( or zero), but I missed out on the amount of taxes I paid on dividends and capital gains. Tax deferred accounts are your best friends in accumulating assets.
My personal favorite is to keep learning. There are a lot of resources out there, and I can learn from anyone something that could be helpful to improve my situation.
Have a nice weekend!
DGI
Well, we still have a bit of work to do to max out my wife’s accounts but we’ve certainly learned focusing (first) on your registered accounts here in Canada is much better than investing in a taxable account – seems so obvious now but you live and you learn!
Have a good weekend and thanks for the social media and blog support.
Mark
DGI: Great summary and your Nine Things You’ve Learned were great. I only suggest for someone just starting to not worry about owning 40 or more stocks initially. Start with one, two, or five, then expand you list as your funds allow. There is no magic number of companies one should own, its more a personal preference. Certainly one has more to choose from in the US than Canada.
Exactly how I started cannew – with my first DRIP with a stock transfer agent – ENB. Happy to own it for as long as I have!
Your best budgeting rule of thumb has a non working link…just so you know.
Fixed! Thanks Louf. Mark
Have a great weekend Mark – thanks for including my story about how I got $1,000 back from Costco.
Happy to do so…enjoy your weekend!
Mark