Weekend Reading – Fat executive bonuses, deals, purpose and value of #money and more
Welcome to my latest Weekend Reading edition…I hope you had a good week.
Here are my articles from the week that was:
I shared how you can become a self-made millionaire through these seven habits.
This is one reader’s perspective: how you can tell if someone is actually an early retiree (or simply bullshitting you.)
I’m off to the last regular season game for the Ottawa REDBLACKS tonight against Hamilton. As always, it should be a fun game. I’m hoping for a win of course to keep our playoff hopes (for first place) alive.
Enjoy the weekend!
Mark
Sears Canada is not providing severances to some 16,000 employees but will hand out fat executive retention bonuses instead.
New mortgage rules are coming into effect. Soon, lenders will be required to “stress test” all uninsured mortgage loans – those where the buyer makes a down payment of at least 20 per cent of the home’s purchase price – at the greater of the Bank of Canada’s five-year posted rate or 200 basis points (two percentage points) higher than the negotiated contract rate. I think this is a good move.
Who doesn’t love getting a deal?
A reminder about my Deals page where you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars over years with better saving and investing solutions. It’s your money – get more out of it!
Newbie investor? Millennial investor?
Here is a link to some FREE saving and investing resources for newbie investors.
Here is your game plan for retirement.
You can get rich slowly following this advice here.
Learn from a Millionaire Teacher here.
Other articles
Get Rich Slowly wrote about the purpose and value of money.
Here is an article discussing investing for your kids – now.
Millennials and young professionals in Toronto appear to need help from greedy landlords. The average rent for a one-bedroom condo in the GTA jumped in cost year-over-year, now going for almost $1,900 per month.
Interesting new financial product here – a robot, AI-powered ETF. So far, so good. This ETF with ticker AIEQ was beating its benchmark the S&P 500 year to date.
A list of reasons why dividends are the most stable form of investor return. The author argues assessing current valuation is the least stable form of returns. While business growth is a better predictor than valuation mind you, dividends are the most stable form. From the article “dividend payments offer:
- Downside protection when the overall stock market is falling
- The ability to quantify future returns with ease using the dividend yield
- A method to profit from owning stocks without reducing or eliminating your ownership stake.”
I found this older graph about net worth targets interesting from MoneySense. You can check out the older, entire article about the Canadian wealth test here. What are your immediate thoughts when you see this?
Boomer and Echo wrote about overdressing your portfolio. It was good to see them write there is no perfect portfolio despite claims from some investors they exist.
Young & Thrifty reviewed Simplii – the replacement for PC Financial. Here is the Coles Notes version of the perks (which remains pretty good):
- No-fee online banking; no-fee banking without any balance minimum
- Continued (free) access to CIBC ATMs for any banking needs
- A promise of higher and competitive rates on savings accounts and mortgages.
Krystal Yee changed her mind about pet insurance.
Stay tuned for new posts next week including one about robo-advisors demystified.
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.
re: greedy landlords
Not really. Real estate analysis has shown that homeowners — not landlords — are mostly responsible for pushing up rental costs via imputed rent. Blame yourself (or Sean Cooper) for being greedy.
re: the average rent for a one-bedroom condo in the GTA…now going for almost $1,900 per month.
In Vancouver it’s $2,100/month. But remember, you can only spend 25% of your net income on housing if you want to become wealthy, which means you gotta be making ~$150,000 in gross bacon every year…which means you’ll probably end up wealthy anyway. Life is awesome if you are in that top 2% of Canadian earners! For everyone else, there’s MasterCard.
re: Sears Canada…will hand out fat executive retention bonuses
After all the shenanigans we witnessed post-2008 meltdown (or at any time in history), this type of corporate behaviour should come as no shock.
re: AI-powered ETF
And Japanese banks are already using AI to trade the markets; not high-speed algorithms, but true AI. The dystopian jumpsuit is nigh.
re: the purpose and value of money.
Thank goodness yet another person, even at the spry age of 48, realizes this. However, I’ll go further in saying it’s about fulfillment. You can have all the purpose in life but if you never get to realize that purpose…
Happy pumpkin hunting!
Any homeowner has had a role to play in pushing up rent, agreed, including landlords. None more so than the folks in the GTA and Vancouver Greater Area.
I wasn’t surprised at Sears either. Par for the course for white collar crime to some extent. 🙁
re: Purpose and Value of Money. Think Maslow. You only “need” so much. A few hundred words distilled into a few right there! Micro-blogging genius!!
I missed the purpose and value of money. Good read and I concur.
My mom is Sears retiree. 30+ years worked. Have been discussing some decisions with mom/dad.
Maslow’s hiearchy, yeah…recall…early university business, psych etc.
No doubt those Sears conversations might be interesting! I hope she is doing OK with that pension and any changes coming.
Thanks. The biggest thing was on her insurance lost but there was a reasonable offering available elsewhere and this is additional anyhow on top of fed plan my dad has. No worries at all.
My folks are in very good shape- financially and health wise. Very blessed indeed.
That’s very good news then!
Darn REDBLACKS! What kind of name is that? Oskee Wee Wee. LOL!
Thanks for the great blogs this week Mark and for the intelligent comments from your readers.
Welcome!
Cannew and Mark, you’re good men for doing that.
How about those RedBlacks Mark?!
AI ETF’s…probably will be a ton of them soon.
Dividends and especially steady growers…no argument here. I like.
Toronto RE & rentals. Let the market sort itself out. Govt intervention never works out well. Landlords are no more greedy than owners of houses trying to sell and maximize their gain. There are bad landlords. However, my experience and association in the industry is there are more bad tenants, and the laws in this province favour tenants. YMMV
Re graph – no surprise on that difference.
Hey….Just saw a sea going large beaver swim by. Not common! Where is he headed???
No perfect portfolio = correct.
Everyone have a great day!
There are many bad landlords for sure but there are more bad tenants. I’ve seen a few places absolutely destroyed because of negligent tenants. Sad.
Investing for Kids now:
Since our grand daughter took over her DRIP she’s received two quarterly dividends. However, she has contributed $100 per month. Even with only two quarterly dividends her income has risen 8.5%. Our grand son has the same DRIP (they both had the same amount invested in BNS) and his income has only increased 4.7%. That’s the advantage of DRIP’s and dollar cost averaging.
Nice to hear. We gifted some shares to our nieces and nephews in years’ past. I hope their parents will teach them about this power over time. If not, I am happy to help if they want me too!