Weekend Reading – killing the Home Buyers’ Plan, top stocks for 2019, cycle of wealth and more #moneystuff
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.
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I got around to posting two articles this week:
This was our latest dividend income update – inching closer to $19,000 earned later this year within key accounts. Onwards and upwards!
Enjoy some other articles below and see you here next week. I have a post planned about millennial struggles with housing.
Mark
Other articles:
Rob Carrick has some thoughts on the Home Buyers’ Plan – kill it!
Back to Rob’s article, some interesting stats:
“RateSpy quotes CRA data for the 2015 tax year showing that 42 per cent of the 91,000 people who withdrew money from the RRSPs under the HBP did not report an RRSP repayment. This suggests the money that should have gone back into their retirement savings instead got added to their income.”
Great to see P&G increase their dividend again this year – more income to flow from the RRSP – for doing nothing:
Here are some top stock picks for 2019 – according to some pros.
Stephen Weyman highlighted a long list of tips, tricks and tools to save more money.
What I consider low-hanging-fruit and what we do:
- Keep a no-fee banking account (I can’t remember the last time I paid banking fees).
- Get rewarded for credit card spending (we use a cash back credit card from this page here = 4% cash back on gas and groceries with every purchase).
- We look for deals when travelling although we also enjoy some small luxuries when we do travel. You can read about how we save and splurge on vacation here, including renting a Cadillac for a wine tour.
In the coming months, we’ll be going down to one car which should save us about $300 per month or nearly $4,000 per year in current car maintenance, insurance and operational costs.
Ben Carlson discussed the life cycle of wealth.
Tawcan shared his March 2019 dividend income update – well done! Like Bob, we strive to be tax-efficient with our investing:
- We only keep U.S. dividend paying stocks and ETFs inside our RRSP accounts.
- We keep any Canadian REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) that pay out a mixture of interest, distributions and deliver capital gains over time inside our TFSAs and RRSPs.
- We only put Canadian dividend paying stocks that pay out eligible dividends inside my non-registered account.
Over time, I will likely try and move as much non-registered money into my TFSA as possible. I might even do that when 2020 contribution room opens up. We’ll see! You can read up on this reader question related to that and the tax considerations I shared here: should I transfer my stocks into my TFSA?
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Happy investing and see you in the comments section!
Mark
The Life Cycle of Wealth by Ben Carlson
“The recession decimated a lot of wealth and much of it hasn’t come back for many people. And young people have likely experienced a double whammy from the fact that many missed out on the huge gains in the financial markets over the past 10 years or so.
Sequence of return risk in the markets is completely out of your control. But you do control your savings rate and how much money you spend on discretionary items”.
Its articles like this that scare a lot of people and why so many jump out of the market when times go bad. The worst thing one can do. The other problem is that the entire focus is on the Market and the Price of your shares. In fact it does not seem that there is an alternative to investing other than capital appreciation. I think there is and believe it is to invest for income. If you invested for income and the market tanks, than your income would grow all the faster. When it recovers you’ll have even more income as well as capital appreciation and no sleepless nights.
I like these articles for that very reason cannew – I’ve learned to stay invested as much as possible beyond my $10k emergency fund.
No doubt such articles scare the bejeepers out of people but you really need to train your investing brain. You’ve done this via dividend growth stocks and I use them in my portfolio for largely the same reason. I’m investing for income as you know (and some growth of course as well) and we’re on pace to earn close to $19k from the non-reg. + x2 TFSAs this year. Once we reach $30k, that should be “enough”. Hopefully just 5-6 years or so away!