loonieinvestor.ca

Double down on your mortgage - it&amp;amp;amp;amp;#039;s cheaper than you think

Richard — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:16:11 +0000

Everyone knows that carrying a mortage for 20-30 years will result in a lot of interest payments, and paying more will accelerate the process. But how much more should you pay? What will be the impact?

I recently saw a graphic showing the exact interest and principal payments over the life a mortgage and noticed that in the first years the interest can account for shockingly high amounts of the payment - sometimes over 90%! Naturally I started to wonder if there’s a better way - if you’re barely paying any principal, it should be easy to double it. Read on to see the results…

(more…)

Credit cards: for or against?

Richard — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:04:05 +0000

Although there are many principles of finance that are well-known, one thing that’s debated to this day is whether credit cards are better than cash (see here, here, and here). If you carry a large balance you pay a lot of interest for things you might not even use anymore, but if you pay it off every month you benefit from detailed records of your spending, a free 30-day loan (depending on the card), and reward points that can add up to a vacation (not that you want to spend more to get reward points, like so many commercials hint at). So if you’re careful about it, is it better to use credit cards or cash?

Aside from specific situations like online orders where you can only use a credit card, some of the reasons given that cash is better are:

(more…)

Budget for success

Richard — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:55:20 +0000

I was reading a real estate blog from Silicon Valley recently (including fun statistics such as one area where the average price of a single family home was close to $2M!) when it brought up an interesting point. There are many writers out there who advocate controlling your expenses and setting aside substantial amounts of money for the future, which requires a budget to work smoothly. However, they all acknowledge that even when you want to save for the future, you should allow yourself some spending money to have fun now (without taking it to extremes).

There’s no question that if you’re saving up to enjoy life later, you’ll probably find it difficult to live with the absolute minimum for 5, 10, 20, or 30 years; having room in your budget for entertainment and going out eases the pressure. There’s deeper implications to this though. You should look at every aspect of your budget in the same way, whether it’s going out to a restaurant regularly or setting aside money that you can use to buy a bigger house or renovate the one where you live now.

(more…)

Great post from World of Wealth

Richard — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 18:29:12 +0000

The popular topics of personal finance are familiar to most of you - budgets, investments, credit cards, mortgages, and so on. But that’s only half the story. In addition to doing the right thing with the money you have now, you should also plan how to increase your income to make your goals easier to reach (and if you already have your expenses under control you can apply the extra money directly to your long-term plans).

I’ve been following Meg’s World of Wealth blog for a bit now - it’s an interesting look at how you can make a detailed plan for your future and get there one step at a time. The latest post is about how she intends to take advantage of a new job by taking the initiative to be noticed as someone who contributes to the company. This isn’t a new idea - what kind of person would tell you not to take the initiative and to be completely unnoticed at work? - but Meg takes it a step further and lays out her detailed 9-point plan to go beyond her duties and make connections based on the culture of her workplace instead of leaving the specific steps up to your imagination. Everyone who has a job should find something of interest in the post.

Index funds update

Richard — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:32:08 +0000

I recently found an interesting line of funds: the TD e-Series funds. They have two important things that I’ve been hoping to see in Canada. The e-Series has index funds (Canadian and US) with expense ratios of around 0.33% - a rate that’s very competitive with the low-expense (around 0.18%) S&P 500 ETFS you can get from the US since you don’t pay commissions to invest in a fund directly, and much lower than the 1% you get with other Canadian providers. Another great thing they do is allow you to buy a fund with no minimum investment when you agree to make monthly contributions of at least $25 per fund. This is a great way for beginning investors to get into a passive fund without having to save up for it or make large monthly payments.

(more…)

Are you too young to start saving?

Richard — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 23:39:27 +0000

A recent column at TheStreet.com says young people, especially recent graduates, should “invest” in fun rather than saving up money. The author (Cliff Mason) knows that this goes against what virtually everyone else believes, calling other personal finance writers “condescending professionals who haven’t been in dire economic straits for decades, and probably weren’t even when they were young”. While he does have a point that your first job might not contribute a lot to your lifetime savings, is it right to blow off high interest savings accounts, index funds, and retirement plans completely?

Cliff must be aware that nearly everyone who talks about saving money and budgeting mentions leaving some money to spend on whatever will be fun right now, without worrying about making the best decisions for each dollar. So he isn’t just arguing against allocating every dollar you get to fixed expenses or savings, he doesn’t think you should be saving at all if you aren’t making big contributions. Is that the right approach?

(more…)

When your investments make you nervous

Richard — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 22:34:31 +0000

I recently read a post at AllFinancialMatters in reponse to comments on another blog about the recent stock market drop. The post responds to the statement “the instant an investment makes you nervous, you should pull back into something safer” by saying:

Wrong!

If an investment makes you nervous it’s because you:

Don’t understand how the market works

Don’t have a solid asset allocation plan

or, most importantly…

You don’t have your emotions in check

Unfortunately, Trent’s philosophy caters to one’s emotions and has nothing to do with being conservative.

While I agree with the conclusion of the post (if you’re investing passively you shouldn’t even notice the drop), I think that part doesn’t apply to everyone.

(more…)

Index funds

Richard — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:50:00 +0000

Some advice that’s frequently repeated on financial sites is to invest in index funds instead of actively managed mutual funds. Even professional fund managers fail to outperform the market frequently, and picking one of the top 10% can be harder than it sounds. By buying in to an index fund you can follow the market in general, which tends to go up over time. The S&P 500 index is usually cited as the best choice, and the number of funds based on it is growing.

That’s all nice and well, but what does it mean here in Canada? There’s 3 options available to everyone:

Buy US index funds as ETFs
Invest in a Canadian dollar S&P 500 index fund
Invest in a Canadian index fund

(more…)

Announcing The Loonie Investor

Richard — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:11:17 +0000

This is my new site with information about Canadian finance. There are many excellent financial sites out there already, but a large majority of them are intended for American readers. Whether they talk about IRAs or just companies that don’t do business in Canada, it can get annoying to read about all these great ideas and not be able to apply them without doing more research.

On this site I’ll compile information about companies that are willing to work with you, the Canadian reader. I’ll start by listing online banks (direct savings accounts), online discount stockbrokers, and information about mutual funds available in Canada and where to invest in them. With informative listings and comments from readers, I hope this can become a valuable guide to investing your money in Canada.

loonieinvestor.ca

Double down on your mortgage - it&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#039;s cheaper than you think

Credit cards: for or against?

Budget for success

Great post from World of Wealth

Index funds update

Are you too young to start saving?

When your investments make you nervous

Index funds

Announcing The Loonie Investor

Double down on your mortgage - it&amp;amp;amp;#039;s cheaper than you think