All posts by Financial Independence Hub

5 financial fitness tips to help becoming #RetireReady

Posted By |

By Jenny Diplock

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

As any personal trainer will tell you, a new fitness routine starts with a personalized plan and a target goal. And to improve performance, you need to train: especially in the off-season. Taking a similar approach to your retirement contribution goals can help you feel confident you’re #RetireReady.

In fact, according to a recent survey from TD, 79 per cent of working Canadians agree that reviewing their retirement contribution goals outside of RSP season is a good idea.

But even with these good intentions, the data shows just 40 per cent of working Canadians contribute regularly to their registered Retirement Savings Plans (RSPs) through pre-authorized contributions, 20 per cent don’t contribute to retirement savings at all, and nearly a third of working Canadians feel stressed out during the February RSP season.

When it comes to saving for retirement, contributing to your RSP once a year is like running a marathon without the right training. Because you’re not in the habit of saving, trying to come up with one large contribution amount just before the annual RSP deadline can be harder than contributing smaller and more manageable amounts throughout the year, potentially putting additional pressure on the rest of your finances.

To help improve your retirement readiness year-round: Continue Reading…

How to make money online for your business marketing

Posted By |

By Kristen Pearson

(Sponsored Content) 

When you think of something like business marketing, it’s important to consider that it’s not just limited to making people attracted to certain aspects of your business. Given the scope and kinds of business marketing you can pull off, you are actually more than capable of utilizing your business appeal and tap into your potential audience to make means to earn more money for your business outside your products and services. When you read the article below, consider trying to apply these methods to your overall business strategy, and you might find out some new way of creating passive income for your various needs.

It’s important to understand, however, that while there are a lot of ways you can make passive income — in both through your personal endeavors and through marketing itself — you shouldn’t forget to maintain these income streams’ performance. In fact, some of these passive income ideas can actually boost your marketing efforts as well, making it quite the stone that hits the proverbial two birds. This can be very helpful if you’re stuck in a bind and want to use your resources efficiently, as the methods can not just get you potential sales and boost your marketing, but even earn you additional income.

Tips on making money online

With the above in mind, it may be important to consider as early as now that business marketing does hold a lot of potential to attract people to your business. However, did you know you can make passive income out of it? That’s right, try to review the journalreview.org passive income methods below and see if you can actually apply this to your business:

Make your blog suitable for outreach 

Blogger outreach is one of the most relied-upon methods of gaining traction with your audience, though it can be challenging using this to earn passive income as blogging is really more of an investment. When you make a blog, don’t just focus on your rankings and your keywords, but rather to write content relevant enough for your audience across a long period of time. This not only encourages other bloggers to source you, but you can build yourself a reputation of publishing relevant content in your blog. Give it time, and other blogs will want to guest post in your blog – and that’s when you can start charging them on piggybacking on your rankings. And if this is a competitor or someone in a niche, you’re likely going to get samples and other benefits to review as well.

Maximize content releases by making them on sale

Blogging is free: most of the time, anyway. However, if you want to provide more technical and more precise knowledge to your audiences, you always have an option to make them exclusive content. Provide your more relevant information through ebooks and other releases that your fans will want to buy from you, all the while proving to them you provide relevant content through your blog. You’d be surprised how well ebooks and other exclusive content can sale if you get them out there enough.

Encourage fans and audiences to take up an online course

If you know you and the members of your team are experienced enough in your field, you can actually offer a course to help others jumpstart a career in your niche. You can gather your meeting data and your notes in order to create lectures subscribers and loyal customers can avail for a certain fee. This not only puts you in a position to spread learning, but being able to actually teach what you know puts you in a position of relevance. What better way to establish authority than to do things that make you appear like one? Continue Reading…

This is Easy Street for Canadian investors

Posted By |

By Dale Roberts

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Investing is simple. We are all familiar with the KISS acronym. Simplicity is the key to successful investing. I have been reading and studying investing and investment strategies for decades and came to the conclusion that for the most part “nobody knows nothing.”

Great. All that research and tens of thousands of hours of study and I came back to the fact that I don’t need to know much at all. What a complete waste of time? No not at all. The thousands of hours of study showed me why I, we, don’t need to know much. We do not need to be experts when it comes to investing. As I like to write: It ain’t rocket surgery. Here’s how you find Easy Street.

What is an investment portfolio? In its basic form we can think of a portfolio as having two components: great companies for greater growth potential and bonds to manage the risk. Those bonds work like shock absorbers on the portfolio to reduce the risk or volatility. The more bonds in the portfolio, the lower the risk level of the portfolio.

A typical portfolio will hold great blue-chip companies (stocks) such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett’s company), Coca-Cola and on and on. On the Canadian side we’ll hold Tim Hortons, the big Canadian banks, the telco companies such as Bell, Rogers and Telus, plus railroad companies such as CN and CP Rail and major energy players such as Suncor and Enbridge and on and on.

The rich are business owners

We know that the richest people on earth are usually business owners. We’re going to join them. We’re going to own a piece of those businesses. When enough of those companies do well, you do well. And certainly not every business is going to do well: that’s why you own a bunch of ’em. And that’s why you’ll own great companies in Canada, US and around the globe. And we don’t have to know how to analyze those companies, we can simply go and buy the ‘entire’ stock market. Here’s What is Index Investing and why it’s simply a superior form of investing. It’s so easy we call it Couch Potato Investing.

And back to risk or volatility. Certainly stock markets mostly go up over time, but they do correct or go down with regularity; it’s a normal and expected part of investing. For the potential of those 9-10% annual returns from stocks we need to accept some risk. Keep in mind that stocks can go down by 50% in major stock market corrections. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea to watch their investment portfolio get cut in half. That’s why many or most investors will need some bonds in the portfolio. Bonds are fixed-income investments and are typically less risky than stocks. A bond pays you a fixed payment on a regular basis and bonds can also go up in value when stocks go down – think teeter totter.

A portfolio with a very generous amount of bonds would have only decreased by about 10%-15% in the last major market correction. For the period of 2008 to end of 2009, here’s a comparison of the US stock market (S&P 500) as Portfolio 1, and a Balanced Portfolio as Portfolio 2.

We see that the all-stock portfolio declined by 50% while the Balanced Portfolio with a 70% bond component declined by just over 15%. By the end of 2009 that conservative Balanced Portfolio is almost back in positive territory while the all-stock portfolio still has more of that hill to climb.

Percentage in Bonds a critical decision

The most important decision that will be made, or the most important question answered will be “What percentage of bonds do you need?” What is your risk tolerance level? What roller coaster do you want to ride? You get to decide. Continue Reading…

Getting the best bang for your buck with everyday purchases

Posted By |

By Sia Hasan

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

You work hard for your money, so it makes sense that you would want to stretch your dollar as far as possible. If you are like many other hard working adults, you may splurge here and there on a cup of coffee or a matinee movie. However, most of your take-home pay may go toward everyday or typical purchases. These may include food, gas, clothes and more.

It may seem challenging to stretch your dollar in these essential areas, but rest assured that there are several strategies you can employ to get the most bang for your buck. Before you make another purchase on regular or everyday items, consider how these tips can benefit you.

Choose your payment method carefully

The primary payment methods for standard purchases are cash or credit cards. Cash may be in the form of hard currency, checks or a debit card. Many people believe that paying with cash or a cash alternative is a smart option because it helps you avoid taking on expensive debt. It is true that debt can cost you money.

However, if you use credit cards responsibly, a credit card may be a better payment option. Consider that you can make all your regular purchases with a credit card, and you can pay the full balance off each month. Therefore, no interest is accrued, and there is not a cost for using the credit card. You may enjoy the benefit of bolstering your credit score with responsible use of your credit card. Keep in mind that higher credit scores may qualify you for a lower rate on a mortgage, a car loan, insurance rates and more. Therefore, this payment method can yield tremendous savings over time.

Take advantage of Credit Card Rewards

When you make purchases with credit cards regularly, you may also enjoy the additional benefit of earning rewards points. You can begin by searching for a good credit card for average credit and comparing rewards programs or opting into the rewards program on an existing account. Pay attention to the fine print as you compare programs. Some credit card rewards programs, for example, limit the points that you can earn within a specified period of time. Other programs require you to use the points within a certain period of time. These rewards may essentially give you cash back on your purchases, or the points may be redeemed for other items with financial value.

Shop around

Even when you take these steps to stretch your dollar, there may be other ways to save as well. Shopping around is easier to do than ever because of the Internet. Continue Reading…

Why we are taking Social Security at age 62

Posted By |

By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

We decided to take Social Security at age 62. We know there are as many ways to consider this decision as there are days in a year. And many experts advise against taking social security “early” so that you get a bigger check at full retirement age.

It is hard to argue against that.

We have always lived an unconventional lifestyle and the fact that so many experts agree on waiting for payment gives us pause for thought. Here is our logic.

First, the S&P 500 index has averaged over 8% per year, plus dividends, since we retired in 1991. If we take social security early and invest it, we won’t be losing the 8% per year the experts claim is the annual increase of waiting – although one is guaranteed and the other is not. Maybe the markets will trend sideways or go down or even up, no one knows.

For the last 27 years we have lived off of our investments through up and down markets, so investing the monthly check is definitely an option. More likely, we will just not spend our stash and look for opportunities in the markets as our cash positions grow. Plus we have control of the money at this point, adding to our net worth.

Next let’s look at some numbers.

11 years to break even

For easy math, say at 62 you are going to receive $1000.00 per month in benefits, but if you wait until you are 66, your payment will be $1360 ($1000 x 8% for the four years you have waited). Sounds great, right?

However, you would have missed receiving $48,000 dollars in payments from the previous 48 months. How long is it before you make that money back? Using this example it would take 133 months or a little over 11 years ($48,000 divided by $360) and that would put us at 77 years of age, just to break even. In that time frame, the Social Security we are receiving plus our investments should grow far outpacing the extra money received by waiting.

For some people deferring until their full retirement age could make sense, especially if they do not have the assets to support themselves, are poor at handling money or if they are still working. However, this is not our situation and therefore we decided to take the money and run.

It’s really a question of who you think can handle your money better; You or Uncle Sam?

Update: The illustration above shows the return of the S&P 500 Index since we took Social Security at 62.

Billy and Akaisha Kaderli are recognized retirement experts and internationally published authors on topics of finance, medical tourism and world travel. With the wealth of information they share on their award winning website RetireEarlyLifestyle.com, they have been helping people achieve their own retirement dreams since 1991. They wrote the popular books, The Adventurer’s Guide to Early Retirement and Your Retirement Dream IS Possible available on their website bookstore or on Amazon.com.
.