All posts by Jonathan Chevreau

Weekly Wrap: Happiness without ambition, learning from divorce, how to hire a caregiver

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | May 9, 2015

Can you be happy without ambition? That’s probably not a question many of us ask ourselves, but it was posed by Joe Udo the other day at his Retire by 40 site: Can you be happy without ambition?

I don’t know about Joe’s professed lack of ambition but in my view, achieving early Findependence by 40 and running a web site about how you did it qualifies as ambitious. And as I’ve often argued, such activities really do not constitute retirement in the sense of doing absolutely nothing all day long. Joe and the many other Early “Retirement” gurus are still working, and from what I’ve experienced the past year, are probably working pretty hard. Same with writing books and giving paid speeches. It’s still work but there is some freedom being outside the corporate gilded cage.

How to achieve “Flow” — or optimal experience

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | May 8, 2015

By Jonathan Chevreau,

Financial Independence Hub

In a book on happiness we reviewed here recently, I came across a book called Flow, billed in the subtitle as “The psychology of optimal experience.”

This book, first published as a hardcover way back in 1990, became a New York Times bestseller and has spawned several followup titles elaborating on the concept of flow and creativity. The author’s name is not easily recalled: Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, a psychology professor at California’s Drucker School of Management and also director of the Quality of Life Research Center at Drucker. (Incidentally, if you find the name unpronounceable and unmemorable, as I do, one of his books helpfully suggests the surname can be pronounced “chick-SENT-me-high.”)

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Flow and the author who coined the term.

I must say that I was a bit skeptical about the term at first: Continue Reading…

US Large Caps top Templeton asset-class chart but remember Winners Rotate

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | May 6, 2015

Here’s my latest MoneySense column, entitled Why Diversify? This chart shows you why. I used to write about this chart back at the Financial Post, and tacked the chart up on my cubicle wall. An updated version of the chart later followed me to my office at MoneySense, and the one below is now in my Editor-at-Large’s home office. Click on the above link to get to the chart, which can be further enlarged on your monitor.

The Hub’s version of the blog below also shows a second chart at the bottom about Risk. As you’ll see, it’s more predictable, living up to Franklin Templeton’s assertion that risk is more predictable than returns. I’ve always found it a useful reminder of the futility of chasing last year’s winners or attempting to predict next year’s winning asset classes. If you can’t get the charts free through your financial advisor, you can download them here.

By Jonathan Chevreau

How to get the new TFSA limit to work for you

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | May 5, 2015

By Jonathan Chevreau

Financial Independence Hub

Here’s my latest column from the print edition of MoneySense magazine, written right after the federal budget: Get the new TFSA limit to work for you.

Click on the link for details, but in a nutshell — and has been extensively reported in the media, such as this piece by Gordon Pape (subscribers only) — there’s no reason why you can’t add another $4,500 to your Tax Free Savings Account right now, in addition to $5,500 you may have contributed anytime on or after Jan. 1, 2015. (Note to American readers: the TFSA is the equivalent of Roth IRAs, providing no upfront tax deductions but which let you eventually withdraw money tax-free in Retirement or for other purposes).

That means a whopping $20,000 per couple. Now while Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau seems to think only “rich” people have that kind of money available, the fact is that many hard-working middle class people have been saving and investing for the better part of two or three decades, and built up substantial non-registered or “taxable” portfolios. Even though they may have paid income tax to acquire the capital in the first place, over those decades they have been paying annual taxes on interest, dividends and (often) capital gains generated by that capital.

As the column points out, those who have built such “open” portfolios don’t have to use new cash to put $10,000 per annum into their TFSAs. They merely have to start transferring their non-registered securities into their TFSAs. This is called a “transfer-in-kind” Continue Reading…

How to find your Encore Career

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | May 5, 2015

By Sheryl Smolkin, Retirement Redux

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

I recently interviewed Lisa Taylor, president of Challenge Factory, for savewithspp.com. Challenge Factory helps individuals make career transitions and employers dealing with an aging workforce.

Her organization draws on the talents of a wide variety of professionals as required by individual clients. But what’s really interesting is that they have a roster of over 160 people who are experts in their own jobs, who have agreed to take on Challenge Factory clients for one-day test drives.

“If you’re in one occupation, and you’re thinking that you might want to go and do something totally different, the best way to make a decision is to do a dry run,” Taylor says. “This gives our clients an opportunity to spend a day with an expert in that particular field to find out if their assumptions are really true and whether the job is really as great as they thought it would be.”

A life stage that can last 20 or 25 years

I asked Taylor what the terms second act, encore or legacy careers really mean to her. Continue Reading…