All posts by Jonathan Chevreau

Do investors need to start worrying about Russia?

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Good piece by Bloomberg today on the emerging troubles for Russia. Here is the Financial Post’s play of the story.

Like troubled Brazil, Russia is another trouble spot among the four BRIC nations. (Brazil, Russia, India, China). While most investors probably have minimal exposure to BRIC economies (either through BRIC ETFs or mutual funds, or in more diluted fashion, Emerging Markets funds), this is an example of a geo-political emerging event that bears carefully watching.

Sometimes these seemingly limited local eruptions have a way of spreading globally and ultimately impacting markets far beyond. For an example, check out this Wikipedia entry on the 1997 Asian crisis, which began in Thailand. I dare say when investors first heard about trouble with the collapsing Thai baht, they had no idea the trouble would soon spread to the rest of Asia, with possible global repercussions. To contain it, the IMF had to step in with US$40 billion.

So investors should monitor the events in Russia closely. This is a good example of why we need to pay attention to geopolitics and macroeconomics. Right now, ISIS, oil, Turkey and the Middle East is at centre stage of investor concerns but the events in Russia, including the Ukraine, call for scrutiny and caution. Here’s Business Insider’s take on Russsia’s encroachments on the Ukraine.

Songs of Innocence: I still like U2’s iTunes gambit

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U2iPhoneInteresting followup in the New York Times on the weekend to the September 9th release of U2’s album, Songs of innocence and its controversial decision to download it unasked-for on to the playlists of half a billion iTunes users. Despite the blowback, the paper reports that 100 million people have listened to at least a song or two and 30 million people had listened to the whole album.

Including me. In this blog at our sister site a few weeks ago, I argued that U2 is going to be repaid for its experiment with many more paid downloads of its back catalogue. That’s how I justified the Financial Independence angle in the blog: it was more about U2’s ultimate findependence than that of its listeners. Still, I feel richer for the listening exprience.

In fact, after I wrote the first blog on the old site, I confessed I had bought two more U2 albums each for $5.99. Since I posted that, and as I predicted of myself, I’ve purchased most of the other albums I missed. My 23-year old daughter is already berating me for playing nothing but U2: as I said earlier, when it comes to music, I’m a serial monogamist.

Right now, I like No Line on the Horizon the best of all U2’s albums. I had totally missed it when it came out in 2009, its 12th album. Remember, and as the Times points out, it was almost exactly a decade ago that Steve Jobs and U2 appeared on stage together to introduce “an odd-sounding device called the iPod and a marketplace for music called iTunes.”

 

Entrepreneur videos feature Chilton, Joyce, Laliberte

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Good piece in Monday’s Entrepreneur section in the Post by Rick Spence (@rickspence on Twitter.) Rick describes a new series of videos from the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education, which seeks to raise financial literacy. The videos are each five or six minutes, and are entitled Entrepreneurship: The Spirit of Adventure. Initial interview subjects include David Chilton (@wealthy_barber) , Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, and Tim Hortons co-founder Ron Joyce.

The new series follows one 20 years earlier, also created by CFEE president and financial literacy guru Gary Rabbior (@cfee1).

Teachers can stream the new video series here.

Millennials have savings rate of negative 2%

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The Wall Street Journal reports in Young Face a Savings Deficit that the under-35 generation (millennials) have stopped saving, so much so they have a negative savings rate: minus 2%. Moody’s Analytics says those aged 35 to 44 have a positive savings rate of 3%, while the 45-to-54 cohort have a 6% savings rate. The older you are, the higher the savings rate: it’s 13% for those 55 or over, which seems to be in the realm of being adequate enough to establish a modicum of financial independence ( as we say here at FinancialIndependenceHub.com, “while you’re still young enough to enjoy it.”)

In the linked subscriber-only piece (sorry!), the WSJ says the personal finances of millennials have become “increasingly precarious despite five years of economic growth and job creation.”

Back in 2009, the savings rate reached 5.2% for those under 35, the WSJ says, briefly surpassing the savings rate of those 35 to 44.  But today the median millennial has a net worth of US$10,400, down from US$18,200 for Generation X.

Student loans are also problematic: the median student debt for borrowers under 35 has risen to US$17,200 from US$6,100 in 1995.

Call for Contributors

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We’ve heard from several individuals about writing for the Hub and yes, we welcome contributions. Some guest blogs will be going up in the next week or so. Since this site does not charge at this point, we aren’t yet in a position to pay contributors but we are happy to provide what exposure we can. Contributors are welcome to include links where appropriate and of course can end each piece with a short italic description of who they are and how they can be reached.

Because the Hub aims to be a North American portal on financial independence, we welcome contributions from knowledgeable good writers from both the United States and Canada. Remember that the book Findependence Day (which began this whole adventure in 2008) is available in both American and Canadian editions. So are the two new e-books.

The standard length for blogs is often said to be between 400 and 600 words but there’s also evidence that lengthier meatier pieces can get good play and pick-up. Really, it’s a balance between having enough space to be substantial, while recognizing that in this time-starved hectic world we live in, most people have the attention spans of the proverbial gnat. If you run out of steam at 350 words, so be it. And if you need 750 or 900 words to say what you want to say, then go for it.

The longer the piece, the more you need to include subheads and at least a photo or image of some sort. I will act as editor to the extent necessary.

Try to target our six major categories

What topics? Scan the second (gray)  bar on the home page to see what we’re focusing on. If you want to reach younger Gen X and Gen Y readers, then Debt & Frugality is the place to target. The category of Wealth Accumulation is very broad and can include anything from asset allocation to pensions to ETFs to robo-advisers (we just put up an item on the latter).

Further along the continuum of Financial Independence, there is the Decumulation section, which is all about drawing down on wealth instead of building it up. And the Longevity & Aging section is a key focus of the Hub because of our belief that the baby boomers and their children are going to be on this planet a very long time on average, assuming they take care of themselves. See the links in this section to the blogs of Change Rangers’ Mark Venning and Agenomics’ Lee Anne Davies.

The Business Ownership category is another important niche. We considered calling this one Boomerpreneurs because so many baby boomers are leaving corporate employment (voluntarily or otherwise) and going out on their own as consultants, freelancers, franchise owners or building entire new businesses from scratch. But of course Entrepreneurship is hardly restricted to the boomers. Most of us stayed in the corporate womb for far too long and might better have embarked on the entrepreneurial path much earlier. Those wishing to pursue “Multiple Streams of Income” (from the Internet or otherwise) may well be building businesses at younger ages, either on top of a full time job or taking the leap direct from college or some starter job that they chuck.

The category of Politics and Economics is very broad. See the initial post there to get a flavour for that. We believe the further you have travelled along the road to Findependence, the more you need to pay attention to geopolitics and macroeconomics. Those interested in this area will find plenty of scope here.

Reviews

The Reviews tab refers chiefly to book reviews, most of which should touch on financial independence in some fashion. As above though, this can include many genres of books: everything from history to biography to entrepreneurship and the Internet. Any book that addresses our main categories will be fair game. And if you’re the author of a book yourself, perhaps a self-published e-book? (we know all about that!). Drop us a line anyway and we can discuss it.

This doesn’t have to be restricted to books. If you love the latest album on iTunes or think a movie is wonderful and want to share it with the world, then give us a try. Of course, we’d be more inclined to run it if it touches in some way on Findependence: a film like The Wolf of Wall Street.

A word on the forums

Another place we’re looking for content is the discussion forums. We have five forums planned to start with and they take a demographic/ages-and-stages approach to the key steps in reaching Financial Independence. Once we have a bit of two-way to and fro between contributors, this may be the place to develop story ideas, ask questions, post links and even subtly promote your business or product, if done in a way that readers are presented with valuable content. They will be moderated but having gone through a long experience with the Wealthy Boomer forums in the past, I think we’ll be able to spot the difference between blatant sales pitches and valuable sharing!

It will be awhile before the forums reach “critical mass.”  That’s beyond our control and up to the community. In the meantime, we’re happy to provide the infrastructure.

How to reach Jonathan

First,  try jonathan@findependenceday. If I don’t respond quickly it might be that our email system is experiencing a hiccough during this transition between sites. If so, send a DM (Direct Message) to @jonchevreau at Twitter but be sure to @me as well to tell me to check the DM.  Like many Twitter users, I can’t be relied upon to monitor DMs unless I’m flagged via the @function.  Those who have my actual email are welcome to use it as well: I just don’t want to put it up on the web just yet because of all the spam it may create.