By Graham Chevreau
Special to the Financial Independence Hub
Rocco Galati Versus the Bank of Canada
“I have a firm basis to believe that the Government has requested or ordered the mainstream media NOT to cover this case,” said Consitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati after winning his latest battle in the Federal Court of Appeal on January 26, 2015. He went on to say: “This case is on solid legal and constitutional grounds. It should win, but not all meritorious cases win in our judicial system.”
By Patricia Gass,
Special to the Financial Independence Hub
As we return to reality from our 3-week vacation “high,” I’m hoping to make the happy feelings last as long as possible.
After all, that’s what a great vacation is all about!
So, better late than never, I’m diving in to review the state of our spending for 2014. Scary task (especially given our recent travels) but someone’s got to do it.
Yes, we really did have a “spending plan” last year and will do so again religiously this year. How else do you think one achieves financial independence? Do you know that few people realize what they’ve spent in their first year (or even few years) of retirement?
Beware overspending in the early days
Nothing can derail a happy retirement more quickly than overspending in the early days. While looking ahead is certainly important (tough to fix what you’ve already spent!), you can really learn a lot by sizing up what happened each year. To supplement my “quick and dirty” monthly reviews, an annual review will give me a better perspective of our overall, longer term habits. Continue Reading…
Launched last week, the Hub’s Weekly Wrap aims to be a weekend read with brief commentary and links to some of the more interesting items touching on Financial Independence that appeared in North American cyberspace in the past week or two.
We aim to split these roughly half from American blogs and online media and half from Canadian. (That roughly corresponds to current traffic levels at the Hub.)
We’ll begin with this piece from Next Avenue: Unemployed, 55 and Faking Normal. This blog about the common fear of becoming a bag lady (financially speaking) was widely tweeted, including by a few women I suspect were in similar circumstances. No doubt about it, a combination of divorce and job loss can add up to a tough go, especially if you’re still not old enough to qualify for Social Security or the Canadian triad of CPP/OAS/GIS.
Fast-casual dining
Moving on to the more fortunate comes this piece from the Washington Post, mentioned on the Motley Fool’s Market Foolery podcast on Tuesday. The Chipotle effect: Why America is obsessed with fast casual food is an analysis of the trend to “Fast Casual” dining and the stocks of the major players capitalizing on this change (Chipotle and Panera to name two.) This is a threat to the old-time fast food joints like McDonald’s: ironically, McDonald’s incubated Chipotle in its early days.
4 reasons to pay your credit card bill early Continue Reading…
Wes Moss, an American author, financial planner and radio host, has just published a blog entitled 5 tips to avoid a costly retirement.
Previously on the Hub, we have reviewed his book You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think. We’ve also focused some blogs on his “1,000 buck-a-month rule” for estimating how much you need to retire.
Go to Moss’s current blog linked above and you’ll see that the second half was contributed by me. You may also recognize the Canadian and U.S. editions of Findependence Day there as well.
Below are my working notes for my interaction with Wes. Keep in mind this content was aimed at U.S. readers. Continue Reading…
By Jonathan Chevreau
If you’re intrigued by the kind of content we publish on the Hub, you should be fascinated by The Big Shift, a book published originally in 2011 by Marc Freedman.
The subtitle tells it all: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. Freedman is a “social entrepreneur” who founded a firm called Civic Ventures (now Encore.org), and previously published (in 2007) a book called Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. We’ll review that in the next few weeks.
Both books have crystallized my thinking of what this site is all about, so much so that we have renamed the fifth of our six major blog categories Encore Acts, (from the previous IBusiness Ownership). As we noted in Saturday’s new weekly wrap, an Encore Act may or may not include entrepreneurship but there are many Encore Acts that may not involve launching a new business.
The Longevity Bonus: centenarians galore? Continue Reading…
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