Hot Off the Web- August 2, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments The WSJ’s Sam Mamudi writes that “Try as investors might, so much depends on chance”; “The biggest factor in long-term returns is how the financial markets happen to perform during the 30 or so years an investor puts money away for retirement.” One dollar […]

Hot Off the Web– July 27, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Brett Arends’ lists “Ten Stock-Market myths that just won’t die”in the WSJ. Among the myths are: (2) “stocks on the average make you about 10% a year” (except that includes inflation and you had to buy at average valuations), (6) “The market is really […]

Hot Off the Web– July 19, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Ron Lieber in the NYT’s “’Daddy, are we rich?’ and other tough questions”discusses how one might approach answering (young and older) children’s questions about the family’s financial state, like ‘are we rich’, ‘how much do you make’, ‘why we don’t have a second home’ […]

Hot Off the Web– June 29, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments David Aston in MoneySense.ca’s “Retirement Home 2.0” looks a the cost and range of available public and private senior care options, from retirement homes to nursing homes depending on the level of care one needs/wants. The article includes a box on whether one might […]

Hot Off the Web– June 21, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In Bloomberg’s  “Financial abuse victimizes one in five elderly, non-profit says” Alexis Leondis reports that in the U.S. “More than 7.3 million senior citizens have been taken advantage of financially through inappropriate investments, high fees or fraud” and “Forty percent of children who have […]

Hot Off the Web– June 15, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments For an interesting read, see the article “How to think smarter about risk” in the WSJ by York U. professor Moshe Milevsky explaining human capital (the expected remaining earning potential of an individual; you can read more about it in my earlier blog Life-Cycle […]

Hot Off the Web– June 7, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the Financial Post’s “To annuitize or not to annuitize” Jonathan Chevreau suggests annuities as a mechanism to secure longevity insurance (i.e. a lifetime income source). Unfortunately, while annuities may be appropriate for very conservative investors especially if they have no interest in leaving […]

Hot Off the Web– May 31, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the Globe and Mail’s “How to avoid tax on U.S. dividend stocks”, John Heinzl answers questions relating to Canadian taxation of dividends on U.S. equities. The answer is dependent on the ‘location’ of the assets i.e. the type of account that the equity […]

Hot Off the Web– May 24, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments Jonathan Chevreau in the Financial Post’s “Investor book never out of style” reminds readers about the must read book by Charles Ellis entitled “Winning the Loser’s Game”. (If you haven’t read it (in a while) you shout definitely (re-)read it! It is a classic […]

Hot Off the Web– May 11, 2010 Personal Finance and Investments In the Globe and Mail’s “PPNs: The guarantee isn’t worth the price” Fabrice Taylor tells readers that “In the great annals of rip-offs to come tumbling off the Bay Street assembly line, few if any rank higher than principal protected notes. They sound great, […]