Monthly Archives: January 2015

What do you seek in online financial content? A good night’s sleep, a rude awakening, challenging content?

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 20, 2015

Bruce Redstone Photography-4466-3 — Andrew Teasdale (photo: Bruce Redstone)

By Andrew Teasdale, CFA

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

What do people look for in online financial content, especially a site dedicated to Findependence? Are they looking for technical information on pensions, investments, private equity, complex products, opinion pieces, confirmation of their own decisions or their advisors/advisers, reassurance in times of financial crisis, or something else?

Personally I find basic technical information, beyond a point, boring. You can find basic information anywhere: just type in the key words into your browser and bam! Likewise, there are now books galore on every facet of personal finance, so much so that I fear we have long ago overloaded on dry rudimentary comment. Continue Reading…

How to find cheaper air flights

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 19, 2015

An interesting gambit for scoring cheaper airline flights was revealed in this week’s Economist. The short item titled Phantom Fights exposes two methods of exploiting anomalies in the air ticketing system in the U.S. market.

The first is to use a web site called Skiplagged that hunts for so-called “hidden-city tickets.”

The second is a ruse called “fuel-dumping” by which traveller add extra flights to their itineraries that they don’t actually intend to take.

Both gambits have been relatively little-known, according to the article, were it not for the unintended consequence of a lawsuit against Skiplagged’s 22 year old founder. As the newspaper notes, “there are few better ways to draw attention to something than trying to have information about it taken down from the Internet.”

“Robo Advisers” — Rise of the machines

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 19, 2015

By Doug Dahmer, Emeritus Retirement Income Specialists

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

I know Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and I love the Terminator movies (I’ll be back!).

From all this I know three things: Robots are very smart. Robots always start off to help you. Robots have a tendency to turn on you.

One of the newest crazes and buzzwords in personal finance is: “Robo-Adviser.” If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers to investment management by algorithm in the absence of human input.

With a “Robo” you are asked to complete an on-line risk assessment questionnaire. Your responses determines the prescribed portfolio of ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) with a built-in asset allocation best suited to your needs. Once a year the portfolio is rebalanced to this prescribed asset allocation recipe.

Dynamics change as shift from Saving to Spending

7 things you may not know about TFSAs

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 17, 2015

From the latest issue of MoneySense comes this list of 7 things you don’t know about Tax Free Savings Accounts. Note to any American readers: Canada’s TFSA is similar to Roth IRAs.

Here are senior writer Julie Cazzin’s seven facts. Click through above link for more complete explanation.

1.) Whatever amount you withdraw from a TFSA is added to your contribution room in the following calendar year.

2.) Interest, dividends and capital gains in your TFSA are not considered income, even when you withdraw the money. Continue Reading…

Why Boomer & Echo’s Robb Engen dumped stocks to be 100% an indexer

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | January 15, 2015

By Robb Engen, Boomer & Echo

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

For a while now I’ve dithered over when to sell my portfolio of dividend stocks and implement my two-fund ETF solution. The tanking stock market didn’t help – particularly with oil and gas stocks plummeting and a few of my holdings underwater. Behaviourally, I badly wanted to wait until oil prices recovered so I didn’t have to sell those stocks at a loss.

But last Thursday I finally took the plunge and sold 24 dividend stocks, worth roughly $100,000, and immediately replaced them with two ETFs from Vanguard. I’m not going to lie; it was hard to sell my babies: