Investing

Do you ever wish you had more money? Could you use more money? More money for:

• Vacations
• Education
• Better health
• A home
• A car
• Helping others

At the end of the day more money will buy you time, more free time to do the things you love.

Unfortunately if you’re relying on your single income to provide you with more money, you’ve noticed that it’s just not enough. Your day job provides you with barely enough money to cover your expenses with very little to no money left over.

You need t…

There are three issues that I have with index funds, and that’s why I don’t invest in them. 

But first let’s make sure you know what an index fund is.

What is an index fund?
An index fund is a mutual fund that pools money from lots of investors like yourself, and then invests that money on your behalf into stocks. A typical mutual fund has a fund manager who decides which stocks to buy and sell. However an index fund has no live fund manager, the fund manager is a computer that buys stocks fro…

Are you afraid to start investing on your own? You are not alone, most people are afraid to begin investing. In their fear they turn around and hand over their hard earned money to financial advisors and mutual fund sales people. The average person could spend over $321,000 in mutual fund fees over their lifetime by letting someone else invest for them. It’s easy to let someone else invest for you because if things go sour you have someone to blame. Forget about blame and keep the $321,000 for y…

Today, at the age of 44, for the first time in my life I put on a pair of downhill skis and went skiing.

I fell, crashed, and feared numerous injuries as I sped down the hill at increasing speeds. Yet all around me 10 year olds and teenagers decades younger than me had no fear and comfortably glided past me. Some of them had probably been skiing since they were 5 years old. Just think about it a 10 year old skier already had 5 years of experience compared to my 25 minutes of experience, and tha…

Yes, you should invest by yourself, it's the one thing in life that should not be outsourced to anyone. Here are 17 reasons why you need to invest by yourself:

1. No one cares more about your money than you do.
2. The majority of mutual funds under perform the stock market.
3. It really isn't that hard to learn about dividend investing and implement it successfully.
4. Stock brokers and mutual fund salespeople earn commissions which means they make money even if you don't make money. Stock brokers mak…

I’ve always said over diversification is bad for your financial health, and taking more risk does not equal higher returns. I know this goes against conventional wisdom, but it’s still true. The Globe and Mail recently printed a great article (view PDF) on diversification and risk which agrees with what we (value investors) have been saying all along.

You can read the complete article here, but I’d like to share some of the highlights with you. George Athanassakos is a professor of finance and …

Here are the 12 Rules of Simply Investing, the same rules I have used over the last 18+ years to invest successfully.

These rules are designed to minimize your risk and maximize your gains for the long-term. These rules make investing easy and simple to implement.

Without further delay, here are the rules:

1. Do you understand the product or service offered by the company?

2. Will people still be using this product or service in 20 years?

3. Does the company have a low-cost durable (lasting…

A Term Deposit also referred to as a GIC (Guaranteed Investment Certificate) currently pays about 1% annually in interest. 1% return on your investment doesn’t even cover the cost of inflation. Let’s take a look at an example in which you could earn six times as much.

Here is a list of sample annual interest rates available today:

Term Deposit (1 year): 1.095%
Term Deposit (2 year): 1.194%
Term Deposit (3 year): 1.293%
Term Deposit (4 year): 1.490%
Term Deposit (5 year): 1.786%
Checking Accoun…

In the long run is it better to create your own income mutual fund, or just buy the most popular ones being sold by the banks and mutual fund companies?

To answer this question, I refer to Tom Connolly from DividendGrowth.ca.

Tom Connolly recently wrote a post about building your own portfolio versus buying an income fund.

One reason Tom Connolly, myself and others run our own portfolios is because we can perform much better versus the "store-bought" funds:

1. We can invest in specific super…

The markets were down today by almost 4%. So far the S&P 500 stock index has fallen by about 9% for the month and 8% for the year. The media is abuzz about a market crash or correction! As an investor what do you do?