Hub Blogs

Hub Blogs contains fresh contributions written by Financial Independence Hub staff or contributors that have not appeared elsewhere first, or have been modified or customized for the Hub by the original blogger. In contrast, Top Blogs shows links to the best external financial blogs around the world.

You think accumulating wealth was hard? Try this.

Posted By Financial Independence Hub | June 29, 2015

By Doug Dahmer, Emeritus Retirement Income Specialists

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

How you deploy your accumulated assets to fund the second half of your life is much harder than how you built them up in your accumulation years.

Read this again if you need to, but be sure you get this point.

First build an asset pool under the spell of “Dollar Cost Averaging over the long-term” — the favorite aphorism of the investment management salesperson. For the 30-odd years of your prime saving and accumulation years this mantra encourages you to keep giving money to them, disguises bad performance and promises you future success. Given enough time, however, let’s hope you have more than when you started.

That’s the easy part.

The hard part: making it last a lifetime

Weekly Wrap: Eternal Truths # 5 & 6, Home Buyer’s Regret, Debt

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | June 27, 2015

That’s six Eternal Truths down, one to go.

Today, Saturday, the Financial Post ran instalment number 6 in my 7-part series on The Eternal Truths of Personal Finance: Don’t turn down free money from your boss (employer).

On Wednesday instalment number 5 ran at the FP and on the Hub: Be an Owner, Not a Loaner (although they used a different headline).

The seventh and final instalment likely runs next Wednesday.

Home Buyer’s Regret

Boomer & Echo ran a piece this week riffing off Globe & Mail personal finance columnist Rob Carrick’s Facebook page, with readers stating how big a priority it is for them to reduce debt. It’s certainly always been one for me and I continue to declare that “the foundation of financial independence is a paid-for home.” But clearly, young people these days face different circumstances: home prices are sky-high, especially in Vancouver and Toronto, but balancing that are historically low interest rates that seem destined to stay low for as long as the eye can see. (“seem” being the operative word.) Continue Reading…

Templeton Growth manager overweight Europe, has zero Canadian exposure

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | June 26, 2015

James Harper photo_2015 — James Harper, Templeton Growth Fund

I’ve always enjoyed interviewing the managers of the Templeton Growth Fund (TGF), one of the most famous global mutual funds in the world and the basis for the famous “Mountain Chart” (shown below.)

TGF also happens to be one of a handful of mutual funds our family still owns, along with numerous ETFs and individual stocks, so when Franklin Templeton brings in its fund managers for its annual media lunch in June or July, I’m always happy to take advantage of the access.

On Wednesday, I taped an interview with the new portfolio manager of Templeton Growth, British-born James Harper, normally based in Nassua and a veteran of 22 years in the business, the last eight with Franklin Templeton. He took over the fund on April 21st of this year. Like his predecessors, Lisa Myers and George Morgan, Harper has a refreshing take on the valuations of stocks around the world.

Fund underweight U.S. stocks: “becoming fully valued” Continue Reading…

The parable of the twins (RRSP vs TFSA)

Posted By Robb Engen | June 24, 2015

By Robb Engen, Boomer & Echo

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

There’s a popular story told by banks and financial authors to encourage people to start saving for retirement at an early age. It’s called the Parable of the Twins and it goes something like this:

One twin puts aside $3,000 every year into his tax-free savings account starting at age 22, and stops at 32 – never adding another penny to the account. His sister starts saving $3,000 annually at age 32, and continues until 62. Who has the larger nest egg?

You know how this story goes by now. Assuming an annual return of eight per cent, the twin brother wins hands-down. He ends up with $437,320 in his TFSA, compared to his sister’s $339,850, even though he contributed $60,000 less than his sister.

It’s a ubiquitous tale, but one that resonated with me at a young age. I was drawn to the awesome power of compounding – how money grows exponentially over time. Continue Reading…

Financial planners and eldercare professionals targeting aging Boomers

Posted By Jonathan Chevreau | June 24, 2015

Here’s my latest MoneySense blog, which it titled Is your advisor retirement ready? It came out of a conference I attended in Niagara Falls last week: the National Elder Planning Issues Conference. I had delivered the keynote address on why Longevity changes everything — a theme you’ll often see in the Hub’s Longevity & Aging section — but also sat in on a couple of sessions on which this blog is based. As you’ll see it’s also quite relevant to our Decumulation & Downsizing section.

For archival and one-stop shopping purposes, here’s the blog below, with a few photos and subheadings added: Continue Reading…