Building Wealth

For the first 30 or so years of working, saving and investing, you’ll be first in the mode of getting out of the hole (paying down debt), and then building your net worth (that’s wealth accumulation.). But don’t forget, wealth accumulation isn’t the ultimate goal. Decumulation is! (a separate category here at the Hub).

How to build a sound and profitable Retirement portfolio

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By Patrick McKeough, TSINetwork.ca

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

To decide if an investment belongs in your portfolio for retirement, you need to take a close look at its attributes or features. But, just as important, you need a close look at how well the investment suits your needs. A superficial look can steer you in the wrong direction.

From time to time, for instance, investors say “Now that I’m retired, I can’t invest in stocks any more. I can’t risk a 30% to 40% drop in the value of my portfolio.” But these same investors may buy annuities without considering the fact that annuity rates are related to bond yields. Both are at historically low levels. A revival of inflation could do extraordinary damage to the purchasing power you get from the fixed returns on bonds or annuities.

Retirement planning and four key factors to consider when investing for retirement

Retirement planning is the process of setting retirement goals, estimating the income needed to meet those goals and assessing your potential sources of retirement income. These days, more investors suffer from what you might call “pre-retirement financial stress syndrome.” That’s the malady that strikes when it dawns on you that you don’t have enough money saved to be able to earn the retirement income stream you were banking on. The best way to overcome this is with sound investing.

Additionally, here are four key factors to consider for retirement saving:

  • How much you expect to save prior to retirement;
  • The return you expect on your savings;
  • How much of that return you’ll have left after taxes;
  • How much retirement income you’ll need once you’ve left the workforce.

Should you consider investment products in your portfolio for retirement?

The financial industry has created income-producing investment products to cater to investors who are wary of stock-market uncertainty. These products can provide steady income that’s higher than bond interest, or dividend yields from stocks. However, these products are almost always subject to hidden fees and risks that continually drain your capital, or leave it vulnerable to unexpected losses.

Successful investors understand that occasional market plunges are normal and unavoidable. A drop of 30% to 40% in stock prices is rare. But after the plunge ends, stocks bounce back and eventually recover. Meanwhile, if you follow our Successful Investor approach, you’ll still have dividend income. What’s more, you don’t need to (and probably won’t) sell at the low in prices.

You can maintain reserves for your cash flow needs by selling some stocks every year, during times of high and low prices.

Continue Reading…

What if I sold in May and went away?

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At the end of April we wrote a piece looking at some new research on the calendar effect and popular heuristic known as Sell in May and go away.

While there is some evidence that this particular anomaly does exist and has persisted over certain periods of time, there is not really a good theoretical foundation for why it happens.  Mining historical data often yields patterns but assuming that those patterns will repeat can lead to unfortunate investor strategies and behaviours.

It’s in our nature to love short-cuts

Investors just love short-cuts. In fact not just investors love them but people in general always use heuristics to help increase the efficiency of their decision-making.  If you step outside, feel a sudden cool breeze and look up and see a dark cloud in the vicinity you respond fairly quickly and sensibly by seeking shelter or at least grabbing an umbrella as you head out the door.  This ability to create short-cuts makes our lives so much easier and sometimes even keeps us safe.   We recognize patterns that we’ve seen before, assume they’re going to happen again and act almost automatically in response: it simply makes decision-making faster and less difficult. No need to analyze things in detail, just act.

The challenge is that the same heuristics that make decision-making easier and faster or keep us safe in many aspects of our lives can also produce behavioural biases that don’t help us as investors.  We love things like the “January effect” or “Sell in May and go away” because they’re easy and have sometimes worked in the past.  But putting them into practice doesn’t always work out the way we might imagine.

But short-cuts don’t always work with investing

This year is a good case study.  What if we had sold in May and stayed out of the market through until now?  To cut to the chase, you wouldn’t be happy!  A Canadian investor would have missed out on the following returns from May 1 until now (all in Canadian dollar terms – return data from S&P Indices Canada and exchange rates from Bank of Canada as at December 7, 2017):

S&P/TSX Composite Total Return Index: +4.6%

S&P 500 Net Total Return Index (in CAD): +4.7%

S&P Global ex-US Broad Market Net Total Return Index (in CAD): +4.8%

Continue Reading…

10 financial lessons to share with friends

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The personal finance community can be a bit of an echo chamber, reinforcing and repeating the same ideas on how to save, invest, and spend our money. This sort of tribalism can be intimidating for outsiders who are eager to learn but afraid to ask questions or know where to start, especially when it comes to more complicated topics.

The truth is not all Canadians are financially savvy. In fact, a Tangerine survey last year found that only half of Canadians consider themselves knowledgeable when it comes to personal finances.

As personal finance enthusiasts it’s our duty to move beyond this little corner of the Internet and start talking to our friends and family about money.

It’s not easy to talk in real-life about what we do with money, how much we save, how much we spend, and the foolish mistakes we make. But these are crucial conversations to help each other deal with money and the complex decisions about it that we all face.

We can start by sharing the kinds of tips and tricks that helped us build lifelong financial habits and skills. It’s what financial literacy is all about, right?

That’s why I was excited to partner with Tangerine for Financial Literacy Month and list my top 10 financial lessons to share with friends:

1.) Avoid credit card debt like the plague

It’s impossible to go through life without incurring at least some debt. I’ve had student loans, credit card debt, a car loan, line of credit, and finally a mortgage.

Carrying a balance on my credit card was by far the most harmful to my finances. Making the minimum monthly payment hardly puts a dent into the balance, and 19 percent interest ensures that balance will continue to grow.

Tackle it with the debt avalanche or debt snowball method, and once it’s gone commit to never again paying one cent of credit card interest.

2.) Track your spending

To free up that additional cash flow you need to understand how much money comes in and how much goes out every month. There’s no other way around it – how else will you know what you can afford to save?

Whether you use a mobile app, budgeting tool, or good old-fashioned Excel spreadsheet, the point is to track every transaction until you can glean some insight into how you spend your money. Use this information to make informed decisions on which areas of your budget you can cut, and where you’d like to direct any additional savings.

Related: Track your habits, save money

3.) Automate your savings

The key to building a life-long habit of saving is to make your contributions automatic and as painless as possible. Pick a day that coincides with your paycheque and set up an automatic transfer into your RRSP, TFSA, savings account, or RESP.

It’s called paying yourself first. Start with as little as $25 and increase it annually, or as your budget allows. This powerful strategy works because it treats your savings goals as ‘mortgage-like’ fixed expenses that come out of your account on a specific day.

4.) Save a percentage of your income

One rule of thumb suggests saving 10 percent of your take home pay for retirement. I say save a percentage – any percentage – of your income as long as you start with something and make it automatic.

One cool trick I learned was to bump up that percentage in tandem with a salary increase each year. So, for example, let’s say you earn $50,000 and saved 5 percent of that amount ($2,500). Then you get a 4 percent raise in the New Year, so now you make $52,000. Well, don’t just continue saving $2,500 – bump that up to $2,600 to stay in-line with your 5 percent savings rate. Continue Reading…

Countdown to Year-end: Is your tax planning in place?

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By Matthew Ardrey

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

With less than a month to go before the end of the year, it’s time to give some thought to how you are going to put your affairs in order to minimize your taxes next April.

Below I have provided several points that you should contemplate for your own tax situation. Some of these are methods you should consider each year and some are very specific to this year, as the Federal Government proposed some significant changes to the Income Tax Act regarding corporate tax planning.

Capital gains/losses

The end of the year is a good time to review your portfolio. If there are stocks you are holding at a loss, you are better off to realize that loss before the end of 2017. In doing so, you will be able to use those losses to offset any capital gains you may have. If you do not have any capital gains in the current year, you can carry back your capital losses up to three years or forward indefinitely.

Age 71 RRSP Over-contribution

In the year in which you turn 71, you must convert your RRSP to a RRIF by December 31. Once you are in the year you turn 72, you may no longer make personal RRSP contributions; however, spousal RRSP contributions are still permitted if you spouse is under age 72. If you have earned income in your age 71 year, you can make an RRSP contribution in December. Though you will be over-contributed for one month, as you will have new contribution room on January 1, and have a penalty tax on it, the tax savings from the deduction could far outweigh the penalty.

Charitable Donations

December 31 is the final day to make a charitable contribution and receive the tax credit for your 2017 tax filing next April. With donations, the amount you contribute and the amount you earn have an impact on the credit you will receive. The first $200 attracts credits at the lowest marginal tax rates, but those above $200 can attract credits at or near the top bracket. In Ontario, for example, the first $200 will attract a credit of 22.89%, income below $220,000 a credit of 46.41% and above $220,000 50.41%. Continue Reading…

Tips for building brand awareness online

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By Emily Jones

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Marketing your online business isn’t necessarily a cut and dry endeavor. For instance, you may have the best products on the planet but are having trouble getting them in front of the right people. Or you’ve found the right people but are unable to communicate with them clearly. Either way, you won’t be making any money.

In the marketing world, there’s no quick fix to success: there are things you should know before choosing your business growth strategies and the following brand building strategies can help you take your efforts to the next level.

The Internet is now pervasive

There’s no denying it: the Internet dominates virtually every aspect of our lives. Thus, it comes as no surprise that it has become very a popular and effective marketing medium. Take control of this monster with these two tips:

Leverage social media

Sites like Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook have the potential to boost the popularity of your brand exponentially. But to get the most out of these sites, it’s important to know which one works best for your brand. For instance:

  • Pinterest and Instagram are best for sites with a lot of pics
  • B2Bs do best on Twitter
  • Small businesses in creative industries do well on Instagram

To succeed, you must create a creative and engaging marketing campaign to help you stand apart from your competition. Do so by posting updates several times a day to make sure you are engaging with your audience on a regular basis.

Embrace influencer marketing

Influencers are well liked and trusted by their audience, making an endorsement by them very valuable. To take advantage of this, find key influencers who are already in your industry. Just make sure that their business complements (rather than competes) with your product or service.

Popular influencers are being courted by my many companies. Give yourself an advantage by researching them: this will give you an idea of what you can do capture their interest and get them to listen to your story.

You may also want to create a couple of influencer strategies. In this way, if your desired influencer decides to go another way, all is not lost. You have other options to choose from.

Offline Brand Building

Although most of your brand building marketing work will be done online, there’s still something to be said about offline marketing. Continue Reading…