Weekend Reading
Welcome to my latest Weekend Reading edition – we made it – the weekend is here!!
Here are my two articles from the past week:
These are the hidden gems of the (sometimes polarizing…) Aeroplan program.
Our financial goals for 2017 are slowly coming along – and we shared those updates with you here.
Enjoy the rest of these articles and more FREE stuff to enter, to learn from…see you here next week.
Mark
Mark Cuban says saving alone won’t make you rich. Maybe not surprisingly from the article: too many Americans believe “real estate” is the best way to become a millionaire. I suspect Canadians might answer the same. Thoughts?
This report cites mortgage rule changes are slowing cooling the housing market. Overall, that’s good for our housing dilemma.
How To Save Money reminded us PC Financial is no more but there are alternatives. For the time being, I’m going to see how Simplii with CIBC turns out. I bet there will be some incentives to remain a customer this fall. If not, I will vote with my wallet and you should consider the same.
Canadian Financial Summit
The brains and energy behind Young and Thrifty have just launched the Canadian Financial Summit – a 100% FREE summit with 25+ Canadian personal finance and investing experts who will share what they think about, their saving tips, investing insights and much more – from the comfort of your home!
You don’t even have to get out of your pyjamas to check it out! I’m thrilled to join speakers such as Rob Carrick, Preet Banerjee, Ellen Roseman, Andrew Hallam, Evelyn Jacks, and more. You can see the full speaker list here.
When you attend the summit you’ll learn about:
- Saving more on everyday items
- Better, smarter, easier ways to invest
- Protecting yourself from corporate chicanery
- Understanding the housing market and learning what’s actually important to know and do,
- Earning hundreds more every week with brilliant side hustles…and more…and more.
Once again, the event is FREE to attend however if you can’t make the scheduled session date/time, you will be given the option to purchase a special any-time, anywhere, Premium All Access Pass that will allow you stream the entire conference whenever fits you best.
I encourage you to sign-up now, so you’re also automatically entered to win one of the free Premium All Access Passes they will giving away when the event goes LIVE on September 13th. Good luck!
P.S. Where else are you going to find all these financial experts in one place?! Check it out…
Other fun and interesting stuff…
Dividend Earner shared his top stocks.
Ken Kivenko, a Canadian advocate for transparent and better investing for consumers, highlighted a crappy money market fund to me. His comments to me:
“If you held this 0.76% MER money market fund (A series) on a deferred sales charge basis, with your discount brokerage, you would have received no advice AND paid a trailer commission for 10-years. It has been subject to early redemption charges and earned a compound 10-year rate of return of 0.80%. This is saving for retirement? Investors have poured $830 million into this fund. If you had invested $1000 in this fund 10 years ago, you would have made 80 bucks. If you held this fund in a non- registered account, you would have made even less. Why on earth does this product even exist?” Fair question.
Congratulations to the winners of my latest giveaway – The Ten Roads to Riches. I look forward to sending you the book. To everyone, stay tuned for more FREE stuff from my site in the coming months.
Are you going back-to-school using credit this year? Here are some tips to avoid that.
Those money market funds are tough. With interest rates so low, even a low MER fund still eats away a large part of the overall return. It seems crazy that there would be close to a billion dollars in that fund though.
Crazy. The thing is…there are hundreds of mutual funds like that. Buyer always beware.
re: “Where else are you going to find all these financial experts in one place?!”
Ummm…on the internets? Library? “Expert” label aside, when the panel includes a convicted financial criminal…I’ll pass on this marketing scheme.
re: “a crappy money market fund…Why on earth does this product even exist?”
For the exact same reason EVERY product exists — profit. People seem to forget that every product the financial sector creates is in pursuit of profit — MM funds, credit cards, stocks, loyalty programmes, bonds, Bre-X, online “expert” seminars, et al. The products are designed to create profit for the issuing entity, if it does that then it is not a “crappy” product, regardless of the outcome for the consumer.
Walk into every WalMart — it’s chock-full of crappy products which keep selling, and selling, and selling…Walk into almost any post-secondary institutions — it’s chock-full of crappy products which keep selling, and selling, and selling…Walk into almost any Canadian real estate market — chock-full of crappy products which keep selling, and selling, and selling… You get the idea. It exists because people still want to buy it and it fulfills their perceived needs and beliefs; same reason why people speed and smoke and eat fast food and vote Trump. Bottom line: blame the game not the player.
re: “mortgage rule changes are slowing cooling the housing market.”
The desired effect was “the quality of credit is improving in the high-ratio mortgage market”. However, price levels in the over-heated markets are either at previous or setting new record levels — “the average size of a new mortgage in Vancouver was $517,415 in the first quarter of this year, down [6.5%] from $553,719 a year earlier.” Two things, as mentioned, price levels in Van are at record highs — again, and it doesn’t state what % of “the average” is made up of high-ratio mortgages. The HR mortgage holders will most likely get into trouble somewhere along the line, regardless of what rules are in place; it’s the ‘razor’s edge’ mortgage holders — those $80,000/yr vs. $500,000 mortgage middle-class households — who are most vulnerable. After almost 70 years, it’s probably time to give up the residential real estate marketing sham (no, everyone does not have to be “homeowner”!). From the Mark Cuban article: “adjusting for inflation, housing offered returns around 1.3 percent per year from 1900 to 2011, while stocks performed more than four times better.” Including booms and busts for both markets…a house is a terrible “investment” (negative returns if you adjust for taxation, maintenance, et al.).
re: Mark Cuban says saving alone won’t make you rich.
Love this guy and his work ethic. He’s correct, currently, saving alone won’t make you rich. However, I’ve shown that current retirees (age 70+) could have comfortably saved enough cash for an equally comfortable retirement. Those days are gone. With low returns across the board, risk has to enter the equation.
(Interesting how (my random) main video was anti-credit card. Although, it is much easier to pay cash for everything when you have an abundance of cash (e.g. Cuban, Leno), than when you are, say, a marginalized single-parent (credit can close short-term gaps, but creates a hoard of much worse long-term problems). I suspect the article/vid was directed at those middle-class+ readers who create most of the credit card transactions as well as most of the debt balances. So yeah, don’t take my advice, take the same advice from a billionaire.)
Finally, the abundance of non-eclipse articles reveals your Eastern biases. Guessing your 2024 ‘Weekend Reading’ will make up for it. 😉
Interesting point on Mark Cuban. In an interview with How I built that, he says hard work made him a millionaire but the tech bubble made him a billionaire.
Terrifying article on the Canadian housing bubble. I’ve been saying for a whilein the next year or so Canada will tip into a deep recession as the housing bust takes hold.
https://betterdwelling.com/city/toronto/marc-cohodes-short-canadian-real-estate/#_
Speaking of experts Divided Ninja saved me much heart arche when he emailed me warning agosnts buy Penngrowth, was suduced by the yeild!!!!
“Terrifying article on the Canadian housing bubble.” I suspect prices will come down. I would think they absolutely have to! We’ll see…
Good to hear from you.
re: “a crappy money market fund…Why on earth does this product even exist?” Yes, greedy profits for sure. It should always be buyer beware.
Bad products and services will always exist. It’s up to the consumer to figure out if any given product or service is right for them. Including this blog 🙂
I can certainly tell you from experience I believe renting over the last 10 years, here in Ottawa, we would be ahead of where we are financially if we did that. Homeowner is not so much a sham but rather, filled with emotional decisions. If it always came down to math, it would be a no-brainer for probably 75% of the population.
Cuban – he’s done many-a-thing right financially. Who’s to argue with him?
As for the eclipse, I was stuck in a building on a keyboard all day. An amazingly cool event if I could have been a part of it 🙂
Cheers,
Mark
re: “Yes, greedy profits for sure.”
Careful here. We should address who the actual “greedy” party is — is it the corporation or is it the stockholder? Because we all know greedy corporations do a lot of things just to keep the greedy stockholder happy. Perhaps ask yourself if those holding CIX stock also own CI Investment products?
re: “Bad products and services will always exist. It’s up to the consumer to figure out if any given product or service is right for them.”
It’s not always the best products and services which survive and thrive. This phenomena occurs for many reasons in all walks of life, from electronics to restaurants to entertainment to politics. Perhaps this particular MM fund used to be amazing for the consumer, but head office figured out a way to roll it in with a lower performing fund, fudge the numbers, charge more, and make more profit.
re: “Homeowner[ship] is not so much a sham but rather, filled with emotional decisions.”
For those unaware of the history of owning residential real estate (vs renting) in North America…it was fully predicated upon a marketing scheme (aka “filled with emotional decisions”) of a single real estate developer, and nothing more (if you don’t count the government’s role). Once that train left the station, there was no stopping it. Plenty of details as to how ‘ownership’ was not a necessity (supply-demand) and definitely never in the best interest of the public.
I’m greedy…I run a blog 🙂 Kidding, sure, it would be nice to make big bucks but I don’t run this site for that reason…some income and growing income are fine. To answer your question – both parties are greedy. There needs to be incentives on both sides for businesses to run after all 🙂
Home ownership ain’t cheap. Everyone needs a decent roof over their head – but you don’t need to “own” a home to do so. The lending companies might say something different however!!!