Weekend Reading – Dividends matter, or not; FIRE is saving your brains out, TurboTax discounts and more!
Hey folks!
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.
Thanks to a number of new readers who emailed me over the last few months, I put up this post – how and why to consider ditching your expensive mutual funds. I can appreciate the financial industry marketing machines make it difficult at times to navigate the fund products that might be better for you – so hopefully this post helped. Based on the article feedback so far, it seems to have really resonated with some of you. Great to know!
I also continued my series about living off dividends with other bloggers – following updates from The Dividend Guy and another one from Dividend Earner – who is now earning close to $20,000 per year!,
I shared this update below from Dividend Growth Investor (a successful U.S. blogger). Clearly there is a major set of themes emerging with all of us. Dividend Growth Investor highlighted these in his update to me:
“I believe that time in the market beats timing the market.
I also believe that keeping investing costs as low as possible is super important – this includes keeping commissions-free (we are spoiled in the U.S.), avoiding costly advisors, and keeping your taxes as low as possible as well.
The other main factor that is harder to quantify is the motivation – I get it from seeing my dividend income rise over time. I’ve found that dividends are more stable than share prices, and it’s easier to predict your forward dividend income.”
My upcoming February 2019 Dividend Income Update
I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my next dividend income update post – so stay tuned for that!
Enjoy these articles and see you here next week!
Mark
This article on Seeking Alpha wondered if you had to place your financial future in the hands of (just) 10 companies – what would they be? Tough call. The world could change so much in the future, but, if I had to make a choice I would probably include a collection of some stocks I own today, things people can’t live without: money/housing/bank stocks; energy/water stocks; healthcare stocks to name a few sectors. You?
A number of changes occurred recently to the S&P/TSX 60 Index and our S&P/TSX Composite Index:
If you really, really want to achieve FIRE – Independent Financial Advisor Darryl Brown has some stark realities to share in this short video – Rob Carrick suggests “…be prepared to save your brains out!!”
Credit Card Genius identified some travel bucket list items to consider and how get there, faster, by owning the right credit cards to accelerate your travel rewards. Bali sounds very nice from this list, given the long, cold Ottawa winter we had!
Rob Carrick suggests RRSPs (as a retirement savings vehicle) are not for everyone. I would agree.
I love dividends but Ben Felix, Portfolio Manager at PWL Capital here in Ottawa reminds us in the bigger picture they DO NOT matter. It’s true. But they matter to me. Check out his excellent video here:
Save, Invest, Prosper!
Thanks to my passion for personal finance and investing, some great companies want to offer deals. As always, never an obligation…
Make sure you look at the top of my Deals page to take advantage of any new promo codes since you can get hundreds if not thousands in cash back when you invest!
Happy investing and see you in the comments section!
Mark
My name is Mark Seed - the founder, editor and owner of My Own Advisor. As my own DIY financial advisor, I'm looking to start semi-retirement soon, sooner than most. Find out how, what I did, and what you can learn to tailor your own financial independence path. Join the newsletter read by thousands each day, always FREE.
I like to think of the various programs as tools. They all have uses and some are better at some things than others. RDSP, RESP, TFSA, RRSP, they all have uses. The TFSA is the “crescent wrench” in the tool box, fits a lot of stuff, works in metric or english and fairly simple to use so everyone should have it.
I like your analogy 🙂
Yes, good analogy.
Ahhh, the old knuckle skinner…..
Too late….already bought my Turbo Tax….will use it sometime in the next month or so.
Ben Felix. Yep, but for a retired person dividends work pretty well for a reasonably smooth stream of income. I don’t expect to outperform the market and maybe won’t even match it for that part of portfolio.
FIRE, no since I’m retired, but never had interest in that kind of approach. Tired or reading about it!
RRSP, not for everyone is right. It depends….. Low earner, expected low income senior etc= no.
TFSA “perfect retirement account”..NO, unfortunately nothing is yet. If it was it would have a higher limit equal to RRSP, and would have RRSP equal benefits for a high income earner with lower future retirement income, and would not be available to creditors like RRSP isn’t, but IMHO would be income tested re: govt benefits like OAS, GIS (I can feel the beatings already!!). They’re also easy to access which for a plenty of people means they’re not staying invested consistently for the long term (retirement) with them. Not good. Having said all that for the majority of people that do have good savings discipline they may be ideal! I personally see benefits of all 3 – RRSP, TFSA, unregistered as part of an overall plan.
Agree, I maxed RRSP, TFSA, also RESP each year. I have taxable investment account too.
I was actually shocked the other day when I found so many people plan to retire on government’s benefits.
Maybe I should spend more save less. But it’s quite difficult to change a habit.
Sounds like a good habit to have, and I’m sure you’re not depriving yourself a lot now to do it.
Yes,a lot of people rely on those benefits in retirement.
I too see the benefits of using a combination of TFSA first + RRSP second (when income is high) + non-reg. (when TFSA and RRSP is maxed out).
I’m in the latter position now – although after I file my taxes I might have another $7k in RRSP contribution room for the 2019 tax year. We’ll see!
FIRE, yes, interesting to me but very boring/ho-hum to other readers I know so I’ll watch how often I post that stuff 🙂
All the best,
Mark