All posts by Jonathan Chevreau

A longevity guru’s tips on Happiness

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Thrive

By Jonathan Chevreau

Happiness, longevity, health and money are all (as you might expect) intertwined. In his book, You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think (also reviewed here at the Hub), Wes Moss focuses on the five money secrets of the happiest retirees.

One of the books he mentions is Dan Buettner’s The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest. We will review that book, first published in 2008, in due course.

In the meantime, we’re going to look at Buettner’s followup book on happiness: Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, originally published by National Geographic in 2010.

To research the book, Buettner travelled to four of the world’s allegedly happiest countries, two of which I’ve visited myself: Denmark and Mexico, and two I haven’t: Singapore and San Luis Obisco (in California). In each locale he contacts local elders known for their wisdom about happiness and how the city or country built its infrastructure to maximize it.

He then wraps it all up by summing up what these nations have in common with a chapter entitled Lessons in Thriving.

He concludes there are six “life domains” that can be shaped to boost one’s chances for happiness. These six “thrive centers” are: Continue Reading…

Why investors and advisors should embrace Robo-Advisors

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Rick Hyde pic Mar 2015
Rick Hyde

 

By Rick Hyde, Founder & CEO, Ticoon Technology

Special to the Financial Independence Hub 

Open any financial publication these days and you’ll likely find an article about robo-advisors accompanied by an image of a robot doing something with your money – ‘The robo advisors have arrived” or “The rise of the machines” or “Invasion of the robo-advisors.”

Robo-advisors, a.k.a. automated portfolio management tools for retail investors, have most certainly arrived and they are poised to have a significant and, I would argue, largely positive impact on the investment business – both for advisors and investors.

The Meteoric Rise of Robo-Advisors

The top three US robo-advisors – Wealthfront, Betterment and Personal Capital – have each now topped the $1 billion mark for assets under management. And Continue Reading…

Canada’s still-world-beating high mutual fund fees

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robb-engen
Robb Engen, Boomer & Echo

By Robb Engen, Boomer & Echo

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

We’ve been beating this drum for years now but a a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives suggests high mutual fund fees could cause Canadians to delay their retirement by as much as 11 years or else leave them with 40 per cent less money for their retirement.

The study compares the management fees charged by mutual funds and pension plans. It finds that in 2014 annual average pension plan fees were 0.38% of assets while comparable mutual fund fees were 2.1%.

Senior Economist David Macdonald, author of the report, says Canada has the highest equity mutual fund fees in the world:

“They’re so high that in order to offset those fees the average mutual fund investor will have to work until age 72 to match what a pension plan holder made by age 65, even with identical contributions.”

Canadians hold more than $1 trillion in mutual fund investments. This chart shows the largest mutual fund providers in terms of assets under management and compares the average MER of their funds: Continue Reading…

How are robo-advisers any different from global balanced mutual funds?

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Depositphotos_6444034_xsBy Jonathan Chevreau

I’ve long been baffled about why the plain-vanilla global balanced mutual fund has not done better in the marketplace.

As I note in my monthly online ETF column at the Financial Post (link below), a global balanced fund (or Global Tactical Allocation Fund) or their ETF equivalents give you exposure to all major asset classes, geographies and industries. You probably have at least two professional managers fretting on your behalf about the underlying stocks and bonds, rebalancing the asset classes, etc.

In short, a global balanced fund should in theory be the mythical “only fund you’ll ever need.” But in practice, and as I note in the column, show me even one investor who has 100% of their portfolio in just one of these funds. Talk about a black swan!

Taking it further, for all the media coverage that robo-advisers have garnered over the past year (and I’ve written a lot about them, both here at the Hub and elsewhere: put robo adviser in the search engine to the right to retrieve them), how exactly is an ETF-based robo adviser different than a global balanced fund?

Just asking! (And if you have the answers, feel free to post comments below.) The first person who can prove to me that 100% of their investment portfolio is in a single global balanced fund will receive a free signed copy of Findependence Day. I’m pretty confident no one will take me up on this offer!

You can find the full FP piece here under the headline (hey, it starts with my name!) Jonathan Chevreau: Where are the ‘robo-like’ Global Balanced ETFs in the Canadian market?

Earlier ETF columns

Links to the two earlier instalments of this new monthly column are highlighted below: Continue Reading…

Of harness racing and asset allocation

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Harness racing. Racing horses harnessed to lightweight strollers.
Harness racing: go Horse #5!

Here’s my latest MoneySense blog, which bears the headline When dividend investing trumps a balanced portfolio.

That’s an accurate depiction of the content but here at the Hub we’re sticking with the more offbeat headline used above. Because this column really does begin with a true story about harness racing in Florida.

How can that possibly relate to asset allocation and dividend investing? Click the above link to find out, or the Hub’s version below. And yes, the happy winner depicted below clutching a winning ticket is my wife, Ruth Snowden.

She’s known in her industry by that name. When we got married more than a quarter century ago she was concerned I might take offence that she didn’t want to use my surname in business circles. My response won’t surprise those who know us: “Honey, you can call yourself whatever you want as long as you pay half the mortgage!”. Of course, the mortgage has long been paid off, consistent with the Hub’s philosophy that “the foundation of Financial Independence is a paid-for home.” Continue Reading…