Weekend Reading – More income, lessons from the financial crisis, biggest and best weed stocks and more
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.
Amongst some chores, lots of work at the day-job and other evening stuff like a round of golf on Thursday evening I managed to sneak in these posts on my site:
Here is our latest dividend income update – now 56% of the way towards one of our early retirement goals.
I have another book to giveaway next week so stay tuned to find out what book and how many copies you can win. Enjoy your weekend and see you on the site!
Mark
Rob Carrick (no link here – because it was subscribers only) wrote an article this week highlighting Canadian investors are too obsessed with U.S. stocks. “The MSCI World Index divides up the world as follows: 62 per cent in the United States, 35 per cent in markets outside North America and 3 per cent Canada. Global investing purists might be happy with a 3 per cent Canada weighting, but most investors in this country will want a lot more than that. One thought is one-third evenly split between Canada, the U.S. and international stocks in the equity side of your portfolio. American true believers could take that up to 40 per cent, with another 30 per cent in Canadian and international.” While maybe partially true, this is the same week the U.S. market was up almost 600 points.
Another Robb, Engen, wrote about Vanguard versus Horizon’s one-fund investing solutions. I summarized my take on Vanguard here.
Retireby40 wrote about how much money do you need to feel wealthy? For us, I’ve been clear what our goals are: beyond $0 debt, those goals are here.
How To Save Money wrote about how to get free samples in Canada.
Here are 5 lessons from the financial crisis that began 10 years ago. This was the biggest lesson for me to date: “What struck me most about the crisis, however, was how fertile a setting it was for making serious investment mistakes. Weak markets are wonderful for long-term investors because stocks are on sale, but in the heat of the moment it’s extremely hard to do the right thing.”
Million Dollar Journey highlighted the biggest weed stocks in Canada.
My favourite tweet of the week:
Happy Investing!
Mark
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 agree that’s a good approach for “wealthy” Cannew.
Like Lloyd this blog has had an influence on my approach in retirement as well. Possibly not to the same degree, but increasing my focus on income generation with growth to provide a base for our overall cash flow. Although I have a total return mentality since I want to utilize at least a good deal of capital too.
Great to hear. 🙂 I think a nice blend of income and growth is ideal for us in the coming decades.
“How Much Money Do You Need To Feel Wealthy?”
All ones working life people always refer to how much Income they make. But when it comes to investing or retirement questions, it changes to How Big the Pile. What changes? Regardless how big the pile, one still only spends so much money and we each have different spending needs. Some might live off $30k others $100k so why not double that amount and say you’ll feel wealthy.
re: How Big the Pile. What changes?
What changes is you controlling the income vs who controls the Big Pile. Ever notice how all these ‘wealth’ et al surveys are done by banks and investment companies? “You won’t be wealthy with $1 million, you’re going to need $5 million! Better leave your Big Pile with us…” Cha ching. They aren’t going to focus on how small a pile you actually require for a desired income, they are going to push the biggest pile they possibly can (yes, that’s a metaphor) for their own wealth.
Good point cannew. People’s perspective changes for some reason. I admit mine did and relatively recently. While working, I never looked at the potential income my RRSPs were generating or could generate in the future. It was all about how much was there and I always looked at the payments it would get me once it was RRIFed. I never considered that the investments themselves would generate the required income on dividends/interest and never even did such a calculation until I started reading some of the contributors on MOA. I lucked out in that while I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, it turned out to close enough to a correct path.
Glad to hear that Lloyd. The other factor ignored by most everyone is that if your happy with the income generated than you can almost ignore the price changes.
Folks like MDJ inspired me 🙂
https://www.milliondollarjourney.com/financial-freedom-update-q3-sept-2018-43450-in-dividend-income.htm
Probably one of the most successful personal finance blogs in Canada helps too!
re: favourite tweet of the week
Of course. Not only bubbles, but the entire public market. Daily gyrations are a function of perception, opinion, belief, and any number of non-quantifiable human irrationalities. If those didn’t exist there would be only P/Es of 1 instead of 100 (yeah, I’m looking at you Nextflix and Amazon!).
re: lessons from the financial crisis
A Capitalist crisis will create i) more wealth for the wealthy and ii) more poor.
re: Rob Carrick — Global investing purists might be happy with a 3 per cent Canada weighting, but most investors in this country will want a lot more than that.
As I claimed in the last Weekend Reading, a portfolio may only require 6 Canadian stocks. Haven’t really seen any long-term data which demonstrates holding far more than the top 6 Canadian stocks is beneficial (by at least an equal factor).
re: how much money do you need to feel wealthy?
Another kind of useless survey. The article claims “wealth isn’t all about money” then goes on to list the “non-money” wealth factors, “two of the top three answers weren’t related to money”: 28% — living stress free; 18% — being able to afford all wants. Wtf? BOTH of those are DIRECTLY influenced to money-wealth! In other words, at least half of ‘feeling wealthy’ is dependant on how much money you have. How many poor people are living stress-free and are able to afford ALL WANTS? LOL!
USB wealth study = $5 million to “feel” wealthy. This is largely in part due to how the millionaire population is constructed. ~85% of all millionaires have less than $5 million. It’s the same mindset that makes non-millionaires think they would be wealthy if they had $1 million, the “poor” millionaires think if they only had $5 million — lifting them out of that bottom demographic — then they would truly be wealthy. As well, it’s very difficult to stay in that millionaire club, esp in that tenuous bottom bracket — most will become non-millionaires.
Mo money, mo problems.
Enjoy Fall.
Fall is definitely here!
“In other words, at least half of ‘feeling wealthy’ is dependant on how much money you have. How many poor people are living stress-free and are able to afford ALL WANTS? LOL!”
You got it. I feel for clickbait!
We’re not millionaires yet (with assets invested) but I suspect if/when we get there – that will be a huge accomplishment for us. I will tell you how I feel when I get there but I suspect it might not be very different at all 🙂
That weather affect you Mark?
perhaps mark has lost his hydro? i hope that’s all.
Sorry, I did, just for a day 🙂
I lost my power for ~ 12 hours. Not bad considering what happened to many in the west end of Ottawa. Terrible.
No kidding. A pretty severe event. Good to read that seems all you had to suffer.
Lost our power here too yesterday for about 6.5 hours, of course in a different weather system. Did some reading, then out for a hike and out for a motorcycle to kill/enjoy the time!
Good to hear Mark. The images I’ve seen of the damages are eye opening. I feel for the folks that are dealing with this.
For sure Lloyd. There are many families just west of Ottawa that have lost everything. My heart and thoughts go out to them too. As well as some donations – the least I could do.
For sure. It could have happened anywhere here given the Environment Canada alarms we got on Friday – basically telling everyone in the area it was imminent.