Weekend Reading – The best decisions remain in hindsight

3. Understand the costs. Yes, performance matters. Yes, structure and asset allocation matters. And those factors are ahead of costs. Don’t let any tax-tail wave the investing dog. Generally speaking, the lower the costs, the better for you the investor. No need to pay for someone else’s yacht.

From my trip to Florida in 2022. This could be a money manager’s yacht. I don’t know. Choose wisely! 🙂

How might I be investing differently with higher interest rates now here?

I’m really not. 

The only thing I’ve been doing of late (over the last year) is buying more cash alternative ETFs because I’m earning more money on my investments than just idle cash sitting in my portfolio.

Hard to argue with low-risk 4.5%+ yield!

Weekend Reading – The best decisions remain in hindsight

I wish I could predict the future…go all-in on a few stocks or ETFs or concentrated bets.

I’ve lived long enough and invested long enough to know I don’t know what I don’t know.

I have no idea what the investing future holds tomorrow, next week, next month or next year.

Yes, I make some assumptions with our investment portfolio, but I live my life from there. 

The best financial decisions only exist in hindsight. 

I feel once you understand you’re not in charge of pretty much anything, life can get a bit easier. – My Own Advisor.

More Weekend Reading…

Thanks for the emails and comments on this post, folks, very kind. 🙂

“Mark, like a few of your readers and comments on the site, we are fortunate to have two small workplace pensions in our 60s and so we remain almost 100% invested in a mix of Canadian, international and global stocks using ETFs. Your post was an excellent reminder to keep some cash or fixed-income, just in case.

A bit shocking that a Canadian CFA believes millennials “will probably need $3-$5M” to retire. 

I think baby boomers were the last generation that could retire with $1m invested.

Millennials will probably need $3-$5M.

This would require an investment of ~$1500-$2500/month if you invest in the stock market for ~30 years.

— Rajat Soni, CFA (@rajatsonifnance) September 6, 2023

I’m sure the post was made with good intentions, but financial professionals making these claims without more context let alone any projections analysis is not very helpful. 

It’s a problem that Canadians feel they need $1.7 million to retire.

Most won’t ever have that.

The good news is, some might not need that much invested for retirement. “It depends”.

Ben Carlson suggests:

“Regularly investing your money during a down market does wonders for your future returns. Obviously, it’s easy to look back at these things after the market has come roaring back. But down markets are a wonderful time to get long-term bullish.”