| If you are an Ontario resident and recently received your hydro bill, you may find that you are paying much more for electricity these days. First, staring July 1st, 2010, the Harmonized Sales Tax added an extra 8 percent to your electricity bill. Previously, the Ontario Energy Board hiked electricity charges from 5.8¢/kWh to 6.5¢/kWh for the lower tier (600 kWh per month in the summer and 1,000 kWh in the winter) and from 6.7¢/kWh to 7.5¢/kWh for the higher tier. Rates for Time-Of-Use billing increased from 4.4¢/kWh to 5.3¢/kWh for off-p |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-08 23:49:13
| Back in June 2005, TIME magazine put what in hindsight turned out to be a massive housing bubble on its cover, cleverly calling it “Home $weet Home”. Inside, the main story titled America’s House Party raved about how disk jockeys, hair dressers and Taco Bell cashiers were making fortunes flipping houses:
You shouldn’t get the impression that you can make six figures in real estate by snapping your fingers. Just ask Max Kaiser. It once took him a whole hour. The South Florida real estate investor bought a Miami-area two- |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-07 20:58:54
| Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett’s sidekick in Berkshire Hathaway and an investment legend in his own right. In this video, he shares his insights into Berkshire’s share price, Wall Street and picking stocks:
The always dependable Canadian Banks and Insurance Blog shares analyst reactions to the Q3 2010 earnings from the Big 5 banks: Royal Bank, Scotia Bank , Bank of Montreal and CIBC.
James Daw once again draws attention to the plight of Nortel employees drawing long-term disability benefits. How often should this tragedy repeat |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-02 20:15:35
| In the past 90 days, stock markets have advanced a little and the Sleepy Mini Portfolio now shows a modest gain over book value. The Sleepy Mini Portfolio was started with an initial investment of $1,000 in August 2007 and I add $1,000 to the portfolio every 90 days. Here’s how the portfolio components were valued as of August 31, 2010:
TDB909 – Canadian Bonds – $2,484 (20.3%)
TDB900 – Canadian Equities – $2,432 (19.9%)
TDB902 – US Equities – $3,524 (28.8%)
TDB911 – International Equities – $3,810 (31.1%)
Total – $12,249 |
- Last Modified: 2010-09-01 21:07:22
| [One often runs across articles in the popular press that purports to show how much ahead one can get in the retirement game by starting to save 10 years early. While establishing a savings habit early and allowing time to do its compounding magic are worthwhile goals, these articles overstate their case by ignoring the time value of money. It is true that investment returns compound over time but at the same time inflation is forever eating away its value. When you account for investment returns but don't subtract the effects of inflation, you |
- Last Modified: 2010-08-31 23:28:58
| The Elements of Investing (read my review here) by Burton Malkiel and Charles Ellis managed to boil down investing to its elements in a short book that could be read in a few hours. You can download it for free here.
The Elements of Investing hacks away at all the overtrading and over thinking so predominant in the hyperactive thought patterns of the average investor. Malkiel and Ellis offer investors a set of simple but powerful thoughts on how to challenge Mr. Market at his own game, and win by not losing. All the need-to-know rules and inv |
- Last Modified: 2010-08-30 17:00:37
| A recent research paper out of Germany provides ammunition to those who question the value of investment advice. The paper titled “Financial Advisors: A Case of Babysitters?” analyzed two sets of data: 32,751 randomly selected internet brokerage accounts over a 66 month period and 10,434 randomly selected clients of a bank covering a 34-month period. A portion of clients both at the internet broker and the bank optionally worked with an advisor. The researchers analyzed the performance records of independent advisors from the first |
- Last Modified: 2010-08-30 10:26:42
| Just a quick reminder that you can read my posts in your favourite reader or delivered by e-mail.
Money Smarts Blog featured a guest post that offered six reasons why Canadians should own oil stocks.
Canadian Financial Stuff shared the best back-to-school advice his dad gave him, which is sure to come in handy for students heading off to University.
Thicken My Wallet isn’t convinced that the debate over the value of financial advice will disappear if advisors move to some other fee model.
Canadian Couch Potato offered a detailed explana |
- Last Modified: 2010-08-26 21:34:30
| If you hire a nanny or elder care provider, you become an employer and the CRA will require you to withhold employee share of CPP contributions, EI premiums and income tax deductions and remit the deductions every month. You are also required to keep records of regular hours, overtime hours and vacation hours. You could hire a payroll bureau to keep track of the paperwork for you but they don’t come cheap.
SmallPayroll.ca offers a web-based software that takes care of calculating, tracking and generating payroll reports. Sean, the enginee |
- Last Modified: 2010-08-25 21:09:10
| In response to yesterday’s post, Reader Kevin asked me to share the Excel spreadsheet that I use for tracking adjusted cost base (ACB) and capital gains. Since I mostly make buy transactions and rarely do a sell transaction these days, my set up is rather simple. I simply input the date, type of transaction (buy, sell or ROC), no. of shares, price / share and commission and compute the ACB and share balance. Each stock goes into a separate sheet and US stocks have an additional column for the exchange rate.
If you haven’t calculated |
- Last Modified: 2010-08-24 22:59:15
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