Here’s my latest MoneySense column, titled Is Investing an Art or a Science? It may serve as a primer about DFA index mutual funds, which was last addressed at the Hub in March by financial planner Paul Philip in this interview with Peter Grandich.
For convenience and one-stop shopping purposes, you can also find the piece below, with a photo and subheads added: Continue Reading…
The third of the seven-part series on the Eternal Truths of Personal Finance is in the Wednesday Financial Post today, as well as online under the headline The No. 3 eternal truth of personal finance: Pay off Your Debt First.
Part 1 ran last Wednesday and Part 2 on Saturday. You can find links both in the Hub’s weekly wrap on Saturday.
As I noted this morning on Twitter, it’s ironic that Christie Blatchford’s piece on Mike Duffy today revealed that the beleaguered former broadcaster was unable to live within his means, despite drawing a not-inconsiderable salary of $120,000 a year: Audit shows Mike Duffy was unable to live within his means.
Not for nothing did we kick off the Eternal Truths series with Live within your means!
On Wednesday, the Financial Post ran the first of seven articles by me that we’re calling The 7 Eternal Truths of Personal Finance: Eternal Truth #1: Live Within Your Means.
The second instalment ran today (Saturday): Eternal Truth # 2: Pay Yourself First.
Some of the background and rationale for the series ran earlier this week here at the Hub. I believe the series will run online and in the paper once or twice a week over the summer. Each episode is accompanied by a one-minute video.
Note that this is being housed under the Post’s “Young Money” category, which makes sense because the need to live within your means is especially apt for millennials and younger folk.
Meanwhile, on a related topic, the Globe & Mail Friday ran on update on a national strategy for financial literacy unveiled this week, titled Count Me In, Canada. The piece is titled To Bridge the Knowledge Gap, Financial LIeracy is a Two-Way Street.
Watch out, Economist warns
The cover story on the latest issue of The Economist, out mid Thursday, warns readers to Watch Out: The World is Not Ready for the Next Recession. But its briefing on the American economy in the same issue is more upbeat: Better Than It Looks.
Millionaire bloggers
The front-cover blurb on this 2008 NYT bestseller by Dan Buettner is “A must-read if you want to stay young!” Based on that, you’d wonder why every person on the planet hasn’t bought or read The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer, since who doesn’t want to stay young?
The next best thing is to live to a ripe old age and in vibrant health right up until the end. Buettner travelled five “Blue Zones” around the world to study locations that have statistical proof of the extended longevity of many of its residents. They include Sardinia (Italy), Okinawa (Japan), Loma Linda (California), Nikoya (Costa Rica) and Ikaria (Greece.)
In the United States, there is only one centenarian (someone 100 years old or more) per 5,000 people. In the Sardinian “Blue Zone” they found seven centenarians in a single village of 2,500 people.
Fortunately, these Blue Zones often share common lifestyles that North Americans can emulate. Buettner — who originally visited the Blue Zones courtesy of National Geographic magazine — concludes with a chapter he titles Your Personal Blue Zone, providing nine major ways affluent and stressed out North Americans can emulate the lessons learned by the centenarians in the Blue Zones.
Create a pro-longevity environment in your own home: your personal Blue Zone
Here’s my latest blog for MoneySense, titled Longevity & Your Money. Naturally, we’ll house this here in the Hub’s Longevity & Aging section.
I’ve been researching this topic since last summer, when I met Mark Venning and his blog on longevity at ChangeRangers.com. He has since contributed some blogs to the Hub.
All this has culminated in a keynote address I’ll be giving next Monday in Niagara Falls, for the National Elder Planning Issues Conference in Niagara Falls, entitled Longevity Changes Everything.
Researching the topic was a bit daunting: I counted more than 5,500 titles at Amazon.com containing the word Longevity. We’ve reviewed some of them in the past in the Reviews section of the Hub and will run more in the coming weeks, usually on Fridays.
The bottom-line conclusion I make in the blog, and which MoneySense focused on in the dek (the line below the headline) is that you might want to add ten years in your mind as to how long you live. So if you’ve been mentally figuring on 85, make it 95, and if you’re 90, make it 100, then see how that affects your financial planning projections and the date you think you’d like to retire or achieve “Findependence.” Continue Reading…
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