The Financial Post has just run my blog on an appeal to the Liberal administration by Catherine Swift of Working Canadians to keep annual contribution limits for Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) at the $10,000 level they reached this summer.

As you’ll see by clicking through on the FP link below, the argument is based on the retirement-readiness disparity of the public and private sectors, a situation David Chilton alluded to in the Hub’s Monday report on his weekend speech to financial bloggers: Chilton to bloggers — Public-sector retirements in far better shape than private sector’s.

Click here for full FP blog: Cutting TFSA limit unfair when our tax dollars pay for gold-plated public pensions, citizens group charges.

The full press release can be found here.

In a telephone interview conducted after the above blog was posted, Swift — who works closely with Pension Ponzi author Bill Tufts — said the situation is “terrible” with billions of dollars of taxpayer money expended every year to prop up gold-plated public-sector pension plans. By the way, I highly recommend the book highlighted above in red: it clearly lays out the disparity that Swift, Chilton and I are complaining about.

Data doesn’t show TFSAs are a tool only for the rich

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A theatrical presentation that winds up this weekend is a perfect example of one of this website’s major themes: Encore Acts.

At Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, a troop of seven aspiring actors formerly or still employed on Bay Street is performing a one-and-a-half hour play called The Other Side of the Cubicle. They call themselves The Bay Street Performers.

I attended the premiere on Wednesday night: the play runs between October 21st and this Sunday October 25th. Opening night was sold out but tickets are still available for Friday and some of the other engagements. All production proceeds of this charitable production go to Vibe Arts for Children and Youth.

The playwright is Kent Lam, who spent six months writing the play, even while holding down his Bay Street job. One of the actors — playing the part of Malcolm — is a personal friend of mine, David Bacque, pictured on the far right of the above photo.

Now it can be revealed …  Continue Reading…

The fourth in our regular series of videos from FWB TV is now up at their site and at Findependence.TV.

The topic is that perennial one beloved of believers in passively managed index funds or ETFs: the proportion of actively managed funds that beat the market and do so consistently.

But as the preamble below the 3.5-minute video points out:

The funds you tend to you see advertised or mentioned in the media are generally active ones too and yet independent and peer reviewed research has consistency shown that very few actively managed funds are able to be low cost passive ones with any degree of persistence.

The interview is with Professor Keith Cuthbertson of the Cass Business School. He says research shows 70% of these funds are “closet” index trackers; in 20% of cases “your grandmother could do better” and that even the 5% of truly skilled managers are “harder to find than the Higg’s Boson.”

Attempting to pick such funds amounts to a gamble, he says, although it seems plenty of investors like to gamble.

The Financial Post provides my take on Monday night’s Liberal landslide, as it pertains to Financial Independence in this blog that just was published online: So long $10,000 TFSA, and other personal finance fallout from the federal election.

The gist is that we’ll likely lose the $10,000 annual contribution TFSA limits that were only hiked earlier this year but as aging boomers move into semi-retirement or full retirement, it’s likely they’ll fall into the middle tax bracket where the Liberals’ 1.5 percentage point cut should provide several hundreds of dollars of annual tax savings. There are also significant implications for an expanded Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and I expect that Ontario will now no longer see a need for the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan or ORPP.

Plenty of other links via my Twitter feed (@JonChevreau), which can also be viewed under the new “Social” tab at the top left of the blue menu bar above.

Update:

A good package of the tax policies is in Wednesday’s FP that go into more depth about some of the points raised in the above blog. Be sure to read Jamie Golombek’s The Liberals’ Taxing Policies: What they mean to you and when.

See also Garry Marr’s Think of 2015 as a bonus year for your TFSA and Fred Vettese’s  Time to expand CPP, ditch ORPP. (paper only last I checked)

The Wednesday Post also contains a longer version of the blog linked at the top of this blog: How the Liberal Victory is a major setback for Canada’s Wealthy.

The Wealthy Barber, aka David Chilton, didn’t disappoint financial bloggers when he gave the keynote address Saturday to the Canadian Personal Finance Conference 2015.

In his own circle in his native Kitchener, Chilton says that when friends in their mid 50s and up compare their financial readiness for retirement, there is a great divide between those in the public sector and those in the private sector.

I dare say most of us could report the same thing: teachers and government workers may well already be retired by their mid 50s to early 60s while the rest of us: not so much. People who have good pension income also tend to be better savers, Chilton said, and there are many couples in which both spouses enjoy public-sector Defined Benefit pension plans. Late-life divorce and job loss are common but again, this is somewhat less common in the public sector.

Speaking financially across the general population, there are “still too many people in trouble.”  In the real world, “People suck at investing … People don’t know what mutual funds are, let alone MERs,” Chilton said, telling financial bloggers it’s up to them to educate their readers.

PF Bloggers are “freaks”

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