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.

The Ukraine war: a portfolio review

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By Duane Ledgister, vice president, CC&L

(Special to the Financial Independence Hub)

The daily escalation of the war in Ukraine is tragic, and the range of potential outcomes is unsettling. We are seeing a devastating humanitarian crisis and the human toll is immeasurable. Below we speak to some questions we have received and provide insights into how to best manage a portfolio.

Emerging market risks

Russia is one of a group of countries investors call ‘emerging markets,’ which reflects the stage of maturity and development of their economies and financial systems. Collectively, companies in emerging markets are an attractive source of growth for investors, despite their heightened risks. Stock markets in the developed world have comparatively low return expectations resulting from developed markets’ lower economic growth and higher valuations. At CC&L, our emerging markets strategy had a 2% weight to Russian stocks coming into the crisis. When considering this in the context of clients’ overall portfolios, this equates to less than one-tenth of one percent. Client portfolios have no exposure to companies in Ukraine.

What impact has the war had on portfolios?

While direct exposure to Russian and Ukrainian assets may be minimal, portfolios have not been immune to the volatility of the recent weeks caused by the war. Russia and Ukraine are important countries in the supply of commodities. Russia supplied approximately 12% of world oil and about 38% of Europe’s natural gas until the start of the war. Additionally, Russia and Ukraine — known as the breadbasket of Europe — provided roughly 25% of the world’s grain. Since the war began, commodity prices, particularly oil and gas, have shot up, acting like a tax on the global economy. This will put downward pressure on economic growth in many regions.

Context is key

It is important to understand the global economic landscape that was in place before the onset of aggression. The world was experiencing inflation levels not seen in decades, exacerbated by commodity underinvestment and global supply disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic growth was riding high, boosted by the massive fiscal stimulus to offset COVID-19-related demand weakness. Continue Reading…

12 questions to ask when buying a Used Car

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What is one question to ask when buying a used car?

To help you buy a used car, we asked business leaders and sales professionals this question for their best insights. From “What Are Your Used Car Financing Options?” to “How Many Previous Owners?”, there are several questions you should ask to get the best deal out of buying a used car.


Here are 12 questions to ask when buying a used car: 

  • What Are Your Used Car Financing Options?
  • Do the Heat and Air Conditioning Work?
  • Can I See the Carfax?
  • What is this Used Vehicle’s Service History?
  • Will the Car Need a Fluid Change Soon?
  • Clean Or Salvage Title? Don’t Buy Someone Else’s Lemon
  • Can I Inspect and Test Drive the Car?
  • Can it Drive Coast-to-Coast Tomorrow?
  • What’s the Mileage?
  • How Are the Safety Features?
  • Why Are You Selling the Car?
  • How Many Previous Owners?

What are your Used Car Financing Options?

The focus with vehicle and equipment financing is almost always on new, but used car buyers also have many options. You should never be afraid to ask about used car financing options. Your dealer wants to make the sale, and will do whatever they can to get it. Ask them to explain your options, and what they think is best for you and your situation. This would help to build a relationship with your dealer, especially if you go a month or two in advance of making the actual purchase. While getting financing options from your dealer is great, it’s even better to find a lender or lending institution in advance to get financing options with them first to have an amount that you can negotiate for as good a deal as possible. — Carey Wilbur, Charter Capital

Do the Heat and Air Conditioning Work?

One mistake people make is to check the temperature control based on the season in which they’re buying the car. If buying the car in the summer, they’ll check the air conditioning or they’ll check the heat if making the purchase during the winter. Make sure to ask about, and check, both. Otherwise, when the seasons change in a few months you may be surprised and disappointed. — Logan Mallory, Motivosity

Can I see the Carfax?

As nice as it would be to take people at their word that the vehicle you’re looking at hasn’t been in an accident and has been regularly serviced, you really can’t trust anyone today. Especially in a redhot used car market like we’ve been seeing. So one of the first things you need to ask is: can I see the Carfax? The Carfax is a simple vehicle history report that will show when the car has been serviced, if it’s been smogged, and most importantly, if it’s been involved in any accidents. And this isn’t an unreasonable ask. Carfax reports are cheap to obtain and almost a standard report in the used car world today. I personally wouldn’t buy any used car without confirmation that it’s got a clean title and history report. — John Ross, Test Prep Insight

What is this Used Vehicle’s Service History?

Always ask for the service history of a used car. To best understand how the vehicle may function or disfunction after purchase, you need to collect a copy of the car’s service history detailing its breakdowns, issues, and part history.

The last thing you want post-purchase is breaking down on your drive home. Many different car manufacturers are notorious for having issues specific to their brand or in particular models they carry.

Check the service history to ensure the car you buy doesn’t have defects common to that model prior to purchase. You don’t want to buy a used car to find out it has serious electrical problems, or whatever else. — Zach Goldstein, Public Rec

Will the Car need a Fluid Change soon?

How close is the car to 50k, 75k, or 100k miles? Many cars require fluid changes at these key milestones, and your used car is close, this can often add a few hundred dollars to your purchase price even if the car isn’t in need of any repairs. It’s important to factor in all additional expenses when purchasing a used car–and upcoming, expected maintenance fees should be included in your assessment of the car’s total cost. — Rob Bartlett, WTFast

Clean or Salvage Title? Don’t buy someone else’s Lemon

Ensure the used vehicle has a clean title. Having a rebuilt or salvage title impacts the value and sales price, as well as additional steps potentially needed in some states such as regular vehicle inspections.

Insurance companies may also have different guidelines to cover salvage titles, so it’s important to understand the vehicle’s history and title status before finalizing the sale. While there are benefits to purchasing a used vehicle, looking into the title status can help you avoid costly or surprise expenses later. — Russell Lieberman, Altan Insights

Can I Inspect and Test Drive the Car?

One great question that everyone should ask when buying a used car from any dealership or person is, “can I inspect and test drive the car?” You can usually tell how, “used”, a car is from first glance of the exterior and interior. However, some used cars will look almost brand new and won’t have a scratch, dent, electrical, or cosmetic issue but the seller may be lying about, or is unaware of, an issue with the car that may get worse in the near future. You should always be cautious and ask the seller if you can properly inspect it and drive it around a bit first to see if there are any problems with the engine, steering, brakes, and other important, and expensive, aspects of the vehicle before you even consider buying it. — Bill Lyons, Griffin Funding Continue Reading…

How to avoid NFT scams and fraud 

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By Akanksha Malik

Special to the Findependence Hub

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stepped into the limelight in 2021. As more people began putting their money into them, NFTs became part of our everyday vocabulary. NFT investments gained worldwide popularity to reach a market value of over US$40 billion. But like most financial assets, this new cryptographic asset also presents lucrative opportunities for scammers.

In this article, we’ll dive into the five most common NFT scams and how you can avoid NFT fraud.

1. Phishing scams

You need to sign up for a digital wallet to transact on the Ethereum blockchain. The most popular Ethereum wallet for NFT collectors is MetaMask, which was recently targeted in a phishing scam. The NFT scam involves fake advertisements asking users for their wallet keys or their security seed phrases. These fake pop-ups operate on social channels such as Telegram, Discord, and other forums redirecting users to a landing page that looks like MetaMask or other popular websites. A successful phishing attempt can wipe out all the cryptocurrency in your digital wallet.

How to avoid

  • Write your seed phrase down on paper. Don’t store a photo of it on your phone, and never give it to anyone. 
  • Always visit the verified website directly for all your crypto transactions – not through links, pop-ups, or emails.
  • Never enter information into the MetaMask pop-up or any other pop-ups.

2. Pump and Dump NFT scams

Pump-and-dump schemes arise when a group of people buys a bunch of NFTs or currency to drive their demand up artificially. After successfully raising its worth, these experienced scammers cash out by selling their NFTs to the highest bidder.

How to avoid

  • Monitor, track or follow the project on Twitter and join its Discord channel to see if it has a good number of engaged collectors and investors.
  • Review the wallet records and transaction history of the desired NFT. If there are several transactions around one date, it can be a red flag.

 3. Catfishing 

Since NFTs are virtual investments, their marketing happens on social media, making them vulnerable to catfishing. Moreover, popular NFT communities hire social media influencers and celebrities to promote NFTs; this makes it difficult to tell the real NFTs from the fake ones.

How to avoid Continue Reading…

What’s the real deal with Mutual Funds?

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By Anita Bruinsma, CFA

Special to the Findependence Hub

Mutual funds stir up heated debates all across the internet. Fund companies sing their praises while others say they are taking you to the cleaners. It can be confusing – are they good or bad? What’s the real deal with mutual funds?

A game-changer for investors

Mutual funds democratized the stock market, making investing accessible to more people, and this was a very good thing. Before the popularization of mutual funds in the 1950s, it was more difficult to get your money invested in the stock market: you needed a stock broker to buy stocks for you and you needed a fair amount of money. 

The idea behind a mutual fund is simple: collect money from a group of people and hire professional money managers to invest this pool of money into dozens of stocks, generating a return for the investors. It’s the pooling of money that is so powerful: it allows a fund to be diversified, giving investors exposure to a myriad of stocks instead of just a few.

As an individual investor, you’d need a lot of money to get that kind of diversification. And whereas a broker would charge a large commission for every trade, a mutual fund has economies of scale, making the costs lower overall. Plus, as a mutual fund investor you don’t need to know one single thing about the stock market. What a win for the masses!

The downside

So why do mutual funds get a bad rap sometimes? It’s mainly because sales practices around mutual funds have a muddied history. Investment advisors who are making recommendations to their clients about what to invest in might be influenced by sales commissions, possibly encouraging them to put their clients’ money into funds that pay them the most commission. Worse, these commissions (and other perks that used to be permitted) were not always properly disclosed to clients. Regulations have improved in this area, but sales commissions can still influence an advisor’s choice of funds. Continue Reading…

A Canadian perspective on Health Care Overseas

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By Akaisha Kaderli

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Q and A with Jim McLeod and Retire Early Lifestyle

Billy and I are Americans. For most of our adult lives we have been self-employed, paying for our own health insurance out-of-pocket. We retired at age 38, and while initially we paid for a US-based Health Insurance policy, we eventually went naked of any health insurance coverage. Wandering the globe, we took advantage of Medical Tourism in foreign countries and again, paid out-of-pocket for services. This approach served us very well. However, we understand that choosing the manner in which one wants to pay for and receive health services is a personal matter.

In our experience, it seemed that Canadians generally were reluctant to stay away from Canada longer than six months because they would lose their access to their home country’s health care system. We did not know the full story of why many Canadians preferred not to become permanent residents of another country due to this healthcare issue. So, we asked Canadian Jim McLeod if he would answer a few questions for us to clarify! Below is our interview with Jim McLeod. He and his wife are permanent residents of Mexico, and now receive all their healthcare from there. It is our hope with this interview, to shed light on some options for Canadians who might not want to maintain two homes, be snowbirds in Mexico, or who could envision living in Mexico with its better weather and pricing.

Jim and Kathy in Mexico

Retire Early Lifestyle (REL): In the beginning, did you choose to do a part-time stint in Mexico before fully jumping in? You know, like to test the waters?

Jim McLeod (JM): Yes. Because of the following stipulations for our Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) and the possibility of getting a maximum of 180 days on a Mexican Tourist Card, we decided to do the “snowbird” thing initially: 6 months in Ontario during the warmer months, and 6 months in Mexico during the colder months. You cannot be out of Ontario for more than 212 days (a little over 6 months) in *any* 12 month period (ex. Jan – Dec, Feb – Jan, Mar – Feb, etc.) During this time, we used World Nomads for trip insurance to cover us while in Mexico. For us, this wasn’t too bad. However, according to other couples we’ve spoken with, after a certain age, depending on your health, this can become quite expensive.

Leaving the safety net behind

REL: When you retired early and left your home country of Canada, was leaving the guaranteed health care system that your country provides a large hurdle to your plans? How did you factor that cost in?

JM: After doing the snowbird thing twice, we had enough data from tracking all our spending, as per Billy and Akaisha’s The Adventurer’s Guide to Early Retirement, that we knew we would save approximately $10,000 CAD a year by moving full time to Mexico.  And we knew we would lose our OHIP coverage. As such, we budget $2000 CAD a year for out-of-pocket medical expenses. But we also knew that, at that time, we qualified for the Mexican Seguro Popular insurance coverage. Note: Seguro Popular has since been replaced with a new health Care system, el Instituto Nacional de Salud para el Bienestar (INSABI), which has the following requirements: Be a person located inside Mexico, Not be part of the social security system (IMSS or ISSSTE), Present one of the following: Mexican Voter ID card, CURP or birth certificate. As an expat, in order to obtain a CURP, you must be a Temporal or Permanent resident of Mexico.

REL: Initially, did you go home to Canada to get certain health care items taken care of and then go back to Mexico to live?

JM: No, we have not gone back to Ontario for any health care. Having said that, there is one medication that Kathy needs, that she is allergic to here in Mexico, so she gets a prescription filled in Ontario whenever we return and we pay for it out-of-pocket.

REL: What sort of medical treatments have you received here in Mexico? Continue Reading…