Weekend Reading – Poor bond yields, blog success, debt and more

Welcome to another Weekend Reading edition, my selections for the best in personal finance from the blogosphere.  This week, I wrote about my financials goals for 2014 and thanks to my friends at 5i Research, I shared some technical details about analyzing Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

Here are some of my favourite articles and sites visited from the week that was – enjoy friends.

Ian McGugan wrote about retirement strategies for a low (and likely prolonged) bond-yield world.  This was an interesting bucket approach I’ve seen before and I thought the visual was kinda cool.  Also interesting was where most of the assets could be held in bucket # 3 for longer-term investing:  an ETF that focuses on holding Canadian dividend-paying stocks with the ticker VDY managed by low-cost leader Vanguard Canada:

My friends at Boomer & Echo are celebrating four years of success.

Young and Thrifty encouraged you to check out their great series of podcasts, and I’m there too!

Barry Choi wrote about debt.

The folks at MoneySense provided a stress-free guide to a rich retirement.  This part was revealing:  “Couples who are looking for an average middle class lifestyle in retirement will need about $625,000 in savings if they retire at age 65.  To get there, a couple should plan to save around $8,000 each year in today’s dollars in their RRSPs for 35 years (you have to save the refunds too), assuming a 3% real rate of return.”  If we want a decent retirement, there’s a pretty darn good recipe to follow.

Jonathan Chevreau thinks the 4% rule is out-of-date.  I would agree if your focus is on withdrawing your capital at some point.

The Blunt Bean Counter had a great post as part of his #bestof summer reading, while taking a break from blogging to play some golf.  Surely he’ll get bored of playing golf by earlier fall.  I probably wouldn’t though…

Fans of this site, BrighterLife.ca shared some essential plans for your money.

Modest Money shared some tips for creating a great money-making blog.

Brian So wrote about the taxation of life insurance, something I’m learning more about.

Michael James on Money told us why marketing timing fails.

Liquid Independence is curbing his addiction to leveraged investing.

Here are some personal finance thoughts on going back to school.

Big Cajun Man wrote about the TFSA two-step.  I don’t think this is a dance.

It’s always interesting to see crowdfunding in action – this one is even more interesting for me since a friend of mine is intending to launch this novel product – a patent-pending StaySafe Lock.

Cait Flanders is on a mission to declutter her life.  I’d like to do some of that at some point.