All posts by Jonathan Chevreau

Climb into a higher tax bracket — and save money

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MoneySense.ca has just published the second instalment of my new Retired Money columns. Click on the highlighted headline for the full piece: Climb into a higher tax bracket — and save money.

Yes, the concept may seem at first blush a bit contradictory but strange things can happen when you’re in the netherworld between full-time employment and full-stop retirement.

A period of semi-retirement (or what we call Victory Lap Retirement in an upcoming book I’ve written with Mike Drak) brings with it various opportunities to pay a little more tax than necessary while you’re “basking” in a relatively low tax bracket, in order to pay a lot less tax once those large RRSPs grow into even larger RRIFs and their forced annual (and taxable) withdrawals once you reach age 71.

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Emeritus Financial Strategy’s Doug Dahmer

One of the sources for the piece is Emeritus Financial Strategies’ Doug Dahmer, a Hub contributor who has penned many blogs on this theme, most of them housed in the Decumulate & Downsize section. Doug is pictured to the right.

Check out some of his earlier Hub guest blogs:

Debt is more than a four-letter word during your drawdown years. 

Timing of CPP Benefits: Get both a bird in the hand and two in the bush. 

A Rare Breed of Financial Planner. 

You say you want a (Blockchain) Revolution?

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Alex Tapscott at Rotman School Thursday evening

My latest Financial Post article can be found by clicking the highlighted text here: Bitcoin and Blockchain could be the start of a revolution bigger than the Internet itself.

My actual words in the lead to the piece were “as big or bigger” but no matter. That’s the gist of a new book by author and technology guru Don Tapscott, and his investment banker son, Alex.

The duo launched their co-authored new book, Blockchain Revolution, to a standing room only audience at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management on Thursday evening. It was the first stop in a ten-city book tour.

9781101980132_Blockchain_final process.indd Blockchain is the Trust Code

The famous Bitcoin is based on blockchain, which meant that for the first time in history two or more parties don’t need to know or trust each other in order to transact or do business online. They don’t need powerful intermediaries because “Trust is programmed into the essence of the technology so blockchain is the trust code.” The book (shown to the right) says big banks and some governments are implementing blockchains as distributed ledgers to speed transactions, improve security and lower costs. These ledgers reside on millions of computers provided by volunteers, so there is no central database that can be hacked. Using heavy cryptography, transactions are time-stamped and validated by a community of miners who are rewarded with more bitcoins. Every time a new block is added to the chain, it must refer to a previous block to be valid: hence the term blockchain.

Real FinTech is based on Blockchain

Continue Reading…

Debuting today: my new “Retired Money” blog at MoneySense.ca

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happy businessman with passive incomeToday and every two weeks or so, MoneySense.ca will be running a new online column by me they’re calling “Retired Money.” You can find the first instalment by clicking on this highlighted headline: Ways to Pay Less Tax in Retirement.

This first piece looks at some tax credits that working folk will probably be unfamiliar with: The Age Credit for those who are 65 with relatively low incomes, and the Pension Credit.

So what do we mean by “Retired Money?” What happened to Findependence and Victory Lap? Well, those will remain a focus of this website and my forthcoming book with Mike Drak: Victory Lap Retirement. Here’s how MoneySense bills the new column:

Retired Money …. will explore smart ways to draw down income in retirement and semi-retirement. 

Here at the Hub, we usually house topics like this under the Decumulate & Downsize section. A typical guest blog will be something from Doug Dahmer, such as Debt is a Four-Letter Word during your drawdown years.

MoneySense Portfolio Event this Saturday

Going back to MoneySense, this coming Saturday morning, May 7th, MoneySense is hosting a special event. Continue Reading…

Book Review: Ernie Zelinski’s Look Ma, Life’s Easy is a primer on Success

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ZelnskicoverErnie Zelinski is a successful Edmonton-based author who has sold more than 900,000 books in 29 countries around the world. He has just published his latest book, titled Look Ma, Life’s Easy, which passes on his secrets for success, primarily to the millennial generation. .

Zelinski is best known for writing The Joy of Not Working and How to Retire Happy, Wild And Free, both of which sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

The new book takes a pseudo-fictional approach like the one famously used by David Chilton in The Wealthy Barber (or less famously, in my own Findependence Day!).

Zelinski’s subtitle is “How Ordinary People Attain Extraordinary Success and Remarkable Prosperity.” The story revolves around two characters, a young adult named Sheldon and his soon-to-be mentor Brock, described as a successful middle-aged man.

The Easy Rule of Life

Over the 200-plus pages of the book Brock imparts to Sheldon his secret of success, which he calls The Easy Rule of Life.

This is the main takeaway, which has a certain amount of paradox in it: Continue Reading…

Advisors now more likely to recommend ETFs for clients than mutual funds

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Dave Nadig

Here’s my latest MoneySense blog, which recaps the two-day  Exchange Traded Forum 2016 in Toronto this week.

You can find the full blog by clicking on this headline: Are ETFs beating out mutual funds in popularity?

Pictured to the left is Dave Nadig, ETF director for FactSet Research Systems Inc. of Norwalk, CT,  who in his keynote address said that since the financial crisis,  net mutual fund inflows were US$61 billion, compared to a whopping US$1.2 trillion for ETFs.

Hockey stick curve

Continue Reading…