Here’s my latest Financial Post blog, which puts a Canadian spin on the announcement late last week that after 36 years, the influential investment newsletter ranking service is shutting down. Click on this headline: ‘A loss for all investors’: The Hulbert Financial Digest says goodbye.
As the blog notes, there aren’t too many Canadian investment newsletters but two of the majors had one or two newsletters that often did well in the Digest.
View of San Miguel from top of the Rosewood Hotel (Photo J. Chevreau)
Last week, my wife Ruth and I enjoyed a week’s vacation in San Miguel de Allende, which is located in central (and landlocked) Mexico. We’d been to Mexico several times over the years but never this particular community, which is not handy to a major airport.
It was also our first trip to Latin America in about five years, since we had been taking our February breaks in Florida in more recent years.
Ironically, San Miguel was prominently featured in the old magazine I published around the year 2000: The Wealthy Boomer. At the time, I remember being impressed by the fact the cost of living for semi-retired American and Canadian baby boomers was roughly half what it was in our home countries. This theme was also applied to various Asia locations in a Hub blog last year featuring the book Planet Boomer. See also my post, titled 5 Asian locations where retirement is more affordable than North America.
Trading high taxes for crime?
Back during the days of the tax-and-spend Jean Chretien Liberals, I found the Mexican expatriate fantasy quite compelling, so much so that I listened to Spanish instructional tapes on my long commutes to the National Post’s bunker then located in Don Mills. But the fantasy of becoming a tax exile/early retiree faded once the Conservative Party achieved power and seemed to offer at least the hope of more reasonable levels of taxation (the Tax-free Savings Account being a major positive example.)
Meanwhile, the unremitting press over drug-cartel-related crime in Mexico reached a crescendo in the last few years so we stopped visiting for a spell. Continue Reading…
It notes that while it’s been a tough time to be a saver the last decade, the new phenomenon of negative interest rates combined with the resurgence of the price of gold so far in 2016 is causing savers to look again to gold as a savings vehicle capable of preserving purchasing power.
As the blog says, BitGold customers’ are credited with real physical gold, which is stored at any of seven Brinks locations in major global financial centers. Customers can also choose to take physical delivery. Through this gold-based global network, you can purchase or sell gold at a 1% transaction cost in each direction. Early customers are mining companies that let employees be paid wholly or in part in BitGold, or permit shareholders to receive dividends in BitGold. Continue Reading…
Like most fans of the British period piece Downton Abbey, I feel somewhat bereft that the series has now finally concluded, after six seasons.
Mostly, however, because the season finale last night tied up so many loose threads that it was obvious there was enough material for a seventh season, and possibly much more.
It’s one thing to go out on a high note, which it did — so many plot lines and subplot lines were wrapped up with nice little bows — but quite another to end a show long before it’s time. The finale had a lot more short scenes and fast edits simply in order to accommodate the compression of the abundant material that evidently was at hand.
Jon Chevreau: Most robo advisers in North America seem to use a model of charging a fee based on assets. As one of Canada’s original robo-adviser services, NestWealth.com uses a quite different model, based on subscriptions, correct? One, I might add, that you say is also unique in all of North America?
Randy Cass: Nest Wealth’s members pay a flat monthly price for access to a customized portfolio and a dedicated portfolio manager. Our subscription model doesn’t incentivize or commission sales people based on how much of a product they sell. We’re enabling Canadians to sidestep high fees and outdated banking practices that take a percentage of everything they invest throughout their lives.
Nest Wealth’s subscriber community understands that our subscription service fundamentally challenges the model banks, and even newer robo-advisors, have used to charge investors. Not only are we able to deliver a proven investment service capable of saving Canadians up to half of their potential wealth, but we’re continuously improving that service by listening and adapting to our members’ needs. This is a transformational advantage of the subscription model, and it’s one important reason why we see so many industries adopting it as a revenue model.
JC: Is this unique, both in Canada and the US and rest of world?
RC: Nest Wealth is the first and only subscription-based investing service that handles everything from end to end. Investors of all ages can subscribe to our service for $20 a month — less than the cost of a gym membership. And their subscription is capped at $80 no matter how much their assets grow overtime. We want to help Canadians do the math and recognize that our low, flat subscription payment can leave them with 100 per cent more savings than a traditional fee structure that charges based on assets.
The good news is we’re witnessing a clear shift in how Canadians want to pay for and access financial services. A new report by business consultancy EY says that the adoption of fintech services among Canadians will triple over the next 12 months. The report also shows that although consumers trust technology, they still lack awareness of its benefits. We are passionately committed to helping consumers understand and seek out a better way to build wealth. Broader awareness and education will lead to more informed choices about how families plan for their future. There’s quite a bit at stake here.
JC: Where did you get the idea in the first place?
RC: The ‘Aha’ moment came when I was watching Netflix with my youngest son and I recognized that the principles of subscription services like Netflix, Spotify, Salesforce and Zipcar were much more in line with how investors needed to be treated than the status quo.
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Here’s my latest Financial Post blog, which puts a Canadian spin on the announcement late last week that after 36 years, the influential investment newsletter ranking service is shutting down. Click on this headline: ‘A loss for all investors’: The Hulbert Financial Digest says goodbye.
