Weekend Reading – Timeless personal finance books
Hi Everyone,
I hope you’ve had a great week – markets (and our portfolio) are at all-time highs – welcome to a new Weekend Reading edition about some timeless personal finance books to consider.
More about that list in a bit!
First up, some recent reading reminders:
Last weekend I shared I believe we are Coast FI/FIRE now...the need to continue saving for retirement is pretty much optional for us moving forward – although we will make more investing purchases here and there including upcoming 2025 TFSA contributions.
I’ve heard from many readers and subscribers on this subject over the last week, and I sincerely appreciate your comments!! You are very kind. 🙂
I also recently shared how I manage my Locked-In Retirement Account (LIRA) now including holdings. Some readers have asked “Mark, what exactly do you own” …so I shared that in this account:
Weekend Reading – Timeless personal finance books
Inspriation for this week’s headline came from this MoneySense article:
Certainly, lots of words in these books collectively and some of those words can be very, very helpful to investors and advisors alike – but most of the personal finance concepts are not new – they just get repurposed time and time again. Respected author and columnist Jason Zweig said this once:
“…As I think you’ll remember, I once defined my job as saying the exact same thing between 50 and 100 times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will know I’m repeating myself. It’s a lot harder than it sounds; it’s more challenging than it sounds; and it’s usually more fun than it sounds.”
Quite true.
If you want more reading, check out The Knowledge Project transcript with Jason here with thanks to Farnam Street. @farnamstreet
The ability to distill concepts and information clearly and succinctly for others, without constantly repeating the same thing all the time is both art and a gift.
In reflecting on that gift that I don’t have – running this personal finance blog that is my online diary of sorts – I use this platform for fun but it’s also very cathartic in terms of sharing my saving and investing lessons learned (I have a bunch)!
This was a big one a few years ago and my portfolio is now at all-time-highs (ATHs) thanks to those changes.
Lessons learned in diversification – reducing my Canadian home bias
More than anything, I continue run this site as a vehicle for me to share what I learn about myself and from from others – what I agree with and what doesn’t work. I try and learn as much as I can from what successful individuals have done before me…to tailor my own financial path. While that path is not and has not been perfect, I do my best to act on what I believe will work for us over time. I do my best to pay that information forward without any costs or fees on this site – it’s up to you to make your own financial decisions. Hopefully your decisions are good ones. 🙂
“…few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games than you are. The main thing I can recommend is going out of your way to identify what game you’re playing.” – The Psychology of Money.
On that note, more inspiration for this Weekend Reading edition came from listening to Preet Banerjee once again who revisited his simple and powerful top five tips from his 10-year-old book Stop Overthinking Your Money:
- Disaster-Proof Your Life (i.e., get requisite insurance for yourself or your family).
- Spend Less Than You Earn.
- Aggressively Pay Down High-Interest Debt.
- Read The Fine Print.
- Delay Consumption (i.e., avoid comparisons including trying to keep up with others).
If you are new to personal finance or investing, any of these timeless personal finance books might be worth checking out to see if any concepts apply to you.
I’ve listed other favourites on my Books page here including links and reviews to most of them.
Do you have a favourite personal finance book or set of books? Which ones have you learned from to help you / help you tailor your own financial path?
More Weekend Reading – Beyond timeless personal finance books
Great post from Ben Carlson, on the subject of a balanced portfolo and some regrets of having one. I think about this stuff often when it comes to my LIRA (see link above) along with other portfolio investments and various changes over the years. The woulda, coulda, shoulda kind-of-stuff…
In his post, Ben quoted Vanguard’s Jack Bogle – who over many investing years actually split his portfolio evenly between stocks and bonds in a 50/50 portfolio. My goodness, if Jack Bogle struggled, well, we all might now and then. He once commented:
“I spend about half of my time wondering why I have so much in stocks, and about half wondering why I have so little.” – Jack Bogle.
From Ben: “The bad news about diversification is that regret is a constant problem.”
As I mature as an investor, I continually remind myself that the investor’s chief problem – is the person in the mirror. I continually need to mind my own investor behaviour. 🙂 I have yet to meet any investor (professionals, experts included) who feel totally secure in their behaviour. I know this sounds overly simplistic, but from Warren Buffett who is very, very good and succinct with his words:
“Investing is simple, but not easy.”
Speaking of Warren Buffet, DIY investor Dividend Growth Investor shared how Warren Buffett has adapted his investing and selling approaches over the years. The most successful investor of our time, changes his approach.
I echo DGI’s thoughts – I think about this stuff all the time especially when financial professionals claim things must be this-way or that-way for people. I respectfully disagree. At the personal-level, we live in a world of “it depends”…
“The game of investing is fascinating, because there are no hard and fast rules. The same type of logic and reasoning could work very well under one set of conditions, and fail miserably under another.”
Dividend Daddy @DividendDaddy1 voiced some DIY investor inspiration this week:
“Born to thrive, not to be a paycheck for others. Be the architect of your own prosperity.”
Source: https://x.com/DividendDaddy1/status/1826605247810228594
Over at Cashflows & Portfolios, we updated this post about expected asset class returns. In that post we also shared the rates of return and inflation assumptions we use for our own financial projection reports and why – they are conservative but very reasonable. I would be curious to know what you use for your own projections and why too! Do share!
You still have lots of time to Save, Invest, Prosper this Summer!
As always, check my Deals page – partnerships and discounts to help you make the most out of your money – some of them you can’t find anywhere else!
As always, you can also consider reaching out here for some low-cost financial projections services – anytime.
I launched this service with my DIY investor good friend (Joe, who founded Million Dollar Journey) as a service by DIY investors for DIY investors without the conflict of any advice, without costly fees (like some folks charge), while offering money-back guarantees – because, well we’d expect from others….
You can contact us there, on that site, anytime, even just to chat about personal finance and investing. We try and reply to every reader comment and email there too.
As a My Own Advisor reader, you always get a discount. Just mention my site.
Enjoy your weekend. 🙂
Mark
Just like Zack, the Motley Fool got me off listening to other people telling me what my best choices were.
Have both a LIF and RIF now and they are still generating more than the mandatory age based withdrawal rates (NOT 4%).
Don’t know when the crossover to depletion will begin but the bar goes up every year. In the mean time there is still enough left over within the two funds (minimum withdrawal rate) to keep investing so the divs also go up every year.
TFSA has so far been maxed out every year and all divs re-invested as well. Have a non-registered account that is generating some funds but those have so far been re-invested as well. This would be my go to account if I were short of dinaro at any time before I would consider withdrawals from the LIF/RIF or TFSA.
All that from reading one book. Have read others since then but MF was my original inspiration.
Take care Mark
RICARDO
Excellent, Ricardo:
“Have both a LIF and RIF now and they are still generating more than the mandatory age based withdrawal rates (NOT 4%).”
What’s the plan to spend more of the $$?
We’ll also try and max out our TFSA in the coming year, for 2025. Will have that money earmarked soon. We also reinvest all dividend paid inside that account.
Mark
I don’t “plan” to spend more money Mark. It just happens naturally so to say. Something comes up and we do it if that is what we want. However, as time marches on, we must all realize that eventually we may either have seen it all or may not be capable of seeing it all for whatever reasons, health being the main one.
Eventually the RIF/LIF will be exhausted if we are so lucky as to age gracefully in to our 90″s. Kind of hard to beat 20% withdrawal rates. Looking at the withdrawal rate chart you’ll notice that the percentages realty start to take off after 85 years of wisdom. Throw in a few market downturns and/or div cuts and your plans could be a bit more convoluted. As I gracefully age, LOL, fixed rate returns are becoming more interesting for those two reasons. You have to pick between hopefully higher div returns vs a more secure principal even though both will diminish in the RIF/LIF.
Looking to cruise some more. You have to be fairly early on that front as the “worthwhile” cruise getted sold out several months ahead.
Just got back from Iceland.
RICARDO
Very fair points, Ricardo.
Indeed – those withdrawals climb up and up. It is my hope my RRIF/LIF are gone by age 90. Die broke a bit but we’ll still have our TFSAs for back-up if we live that long.
Yes, looking to cruise more.
Would you recommend a cruise to/from/around Iceland? Which cruise did you take?
Mark
Don’t hope to run out of money Mark. It’ll happen naturally in the RIF/LIF with those withdrawal rates.
As to Iceland we booked a tour where we flew to Reykjavik direct from Montreal and had a six day road tour on a mini bus. 15 of us plus driver. Very well organized except for a few snafus such as a flat tire and a stupid hotel double booking but that actually turned out OK. At any rate if you do a tour of Iceland there is a lot of driving from one place to the other. Not at all like Europe which had more population and developed cities. Iceland is still under 500K population.
The tour gave us the chance to see more “rural” Iceland.
There are some cruises with several stops in Iceland which might be interesting. You can even get one leaving from Reykjavik and going around the ports. That might be interesting. All the rest are based from mainland Europe and are a bit more of a hassle to get to.
Spectacular country but a lot of driving on “country” roads that can be one lane and dirt or rock.
Was fun. Enjoyed it.
RICARDO
I don’t think you will…you seem very financially savvy. 🙂
…yes, I’ve heard as well – Iceland = lots of driving.
I think our thinking is to do a cruise, and stop at a point in time there for a day or so and then move onto Europe.
Great to know. Will do more reseearch. 🙂
Mark
I don’t know if they were the first to mention it but it was the first book I absorbed the fact that “more than 75% of mutual funds can’t beat their index”, was the “Motley Fool Guide to Investing” circa 1999. Anytime someone recommends a mutual fund to me, I have yet to find one that beats the associated index over the long term so I’ve been an index investor for a long time. As my portfolio has matured and income is more important than growth, I’ve moved to dividend investing that is basically selecting TSX stocks that make up the index with good dividend payments. I still compare my portfolio to the index but I accept that its growth rate is sub-par because it doesn’t include Shopify and other growth stocks.
Ya, I ditched the mutual fund industry almost 15 years ago now.
https://www.myownadvisor.ca/why-i-left-the-mutual-fund-industry/
Over the last 15 years, I’ve had a slight bias to dividend stocks and then indexed ETFs for “everything else”. So far, so good.
Continued investing success to you, Zack.
Mark
For my son’s 16th birthday they each got a copy of The Wealthy Barber. Best birthday gift I could have given them. They still refer to The Barber when we talk about investing. They learned early on to pay yourself first so they do dollar cost averaging from every pay cheque they receive.
As for Coast FI once I paid off my mortgage and was debt free that’s when I believe I first reached FI. I could not coast but instead put 80% of what I had been paying my mortgage with into investing. After that everything was so much easier and less stressful. One thing about investing is everyone’s journey is different. You have to do what works and is important to you.
Great, smart, parenting gift, Don!
The Wealthy Barber was my inspiration to get my financial act together as a young man.
My wife and I are fortunate to be debt-free, own a newer car for hopefully the next 10-12 years and we have no mortgage.
The cashflow from our portfolio + other investments (e.g., pension) should be “enough” to qualify us for Coast FIRE now – we no longer need to save for retirement but we might here and there including early next year.
Otherwise, the money we make now we can and will likely spend a bit more. Might as well, can’t take it with us.
I enjoyed your comment and am very much aligned: “One thing about investing is everyone’s journey is different. You have to do what works and is important to you.”
All my best,
Mark
I read the wealthy barber in 1990 when I was 43 years old and it changed my life. I didn’t have a “pot to pee in” when I read it. I saved enough from that time on to retire when I was 60. We still have enough left to survive happily until we are in our 90’s and we didn’t have near the one million dollars everybody said we needed.
Great stuff, Gary. You have done well and if you can survive financially rather happily into your 90s that is excellent.
You are correct you don’t need $1M to retire but some folks certainly might depending on their spending plans.
How are things? Travelling a bit?
Mark
“but most of the personal finance concepts are not new”
It is likely there are just a few issues that are relatively common themes to pretty well all of these books. Save more, spend less, invest better, etc etc.
The real test to a “plan” (and the person) is when the punch to the face arrives.
Yes, most books are save more, spend less, get some insurance, keep costs low – avoid lots of fees and/or folks that charge them. Pretty timeless stuff really.
Ha, yes, Mike Tyson quote – everyone has a plan until…
Have a great weekend,
Mark
Hey Mark
As I’ve mentioned before, I totally disagree with your statement: “I have yet to meet any investor (professionals, experts included) who feel totally secure in their behaviour”. I feel totally secure in our dividend income/growth strategy. I never have a single doubt as I am 99.9999% confident that we will never run out of money.
I also suspect that Henry Mah and a number of his followers are in the same boat.
I’m not surprised that you have doubts about your strategy but I am surprised that you think everyone has the same mindset.
Ciao
Don G
Thanks for that, Don. Appreciated!
My context for that sentence was more about totally being able to predict the future and how your investing behaviour is shaped by that; what moves you make. The context was for staying the course and not making any portfolio changes at all which even Warren doesn’t do although he preaches it. 🙂
I know you well enough that you are literally 100% confident in your investing strategy/approach. I recall your portfolio a bit and own all the same stocks, except KEY. Ha, but maybe I will own eventually. I’ve also got a few holdings you don’t? (CNR, BN, WCN, ATD, NA and a few others).
You? I think? BCE, BMO, BNS, CPX, EMA, ENB, KEY, PPL, RY, T, TD, TRP.
I didn’t mean to imply that everyone has the same mindset…actually the opposite in that many DIYers have very different portfolios, saving rates, etc. even though tolerance for risk like you and Henry are likely very, very similar.
Continued success, I like reading about your updates.
Mark
Hey Mark
Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify, my investing behaviour is already totally shaped and isn’t going to change no matter what the future is. The only moves I see making are what to buy with our extra dividend income. I just can’t imagine selling anything from here on out. It would really have to be a major event. Something like BCE cutting their dividend by 30-40% still would NOT lead to us selling any shares.
I suspect that if I worked at it, we could build a larger portfolio value but I just don’t want to think about it. All that matters is that we are not going to run out of dough (and will likely leave a large inheritance).
As an aside, if we didn’t have kids and grandkids to leave the dough to, we would look into which charity we would leave it all to (probably World Vision as it is our favourite as we have 9 foster children all around the world).
Take her easy
Don G
Excellent.
Ya, I feel the same about BCE to be honest – just keep buying even after a dividend cut.
You are living the good life: “All that matters is that we are not going to run out of dough…”
I hope to catch-up a bit to folks like you! Some CNQ special dividends later this year + potential raises from FTS, ENB and others should help too.
Amazing on the foster care…very, very impressive.
Mark
Thanks for the fine list Mark. A few of the above mentioned books I’ve read years ago.
A few favourites I didn’t see mentioned.
1. The Richest Man In Babylon by George S. Clason
2. Winning The Loser’s Game by Charles D. Ellis
3. Contrarian Investment Strategies by David Dreman
4. Buffett The Making Of An American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein
5. The Joy Of Not Working
6. How To Retire Happy, Wild, and Free – both books by Ernie J. Zelinski
7. Cashing In On The Retirement Dream: How To Retire At 35 by Paul Terhorst
8. The Future For Investors by Jeremy J. Siegel
9. The Investment Zoo by Stephen A. Jarislowsky
10. Stop Working Here’s How You Can by Derek Foster
11. The Strategic Dividend Investor by Daniel Peris
12. Your Ever Growing Income
13 Income Investing Explained
14. Salary For Life
15. Your TFSA Compounder all four books by Henry Mah
Great stuff.
I have a few of those on my Books page in fact but you’ve listed many other good ones as well!
I appreciate the thoughtful additions.
Mark
Mark,
Thank you for this recap, greatly appreciated. This is a great reading list. I have read/own most of them.
CJ
Great stuff, CJ.
Have a great weekend.
Mark