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.

5 Ways to maximize your returns next Tax Season

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By Caroline Battista, H&R Block

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

It’s probably not the first time you’ve heard the saying ‘a little preparation goes a long way’. And that is especially true when it comes to filing your taxes – I can attest to that after years of counselling clients and ensuring they get what’s theirs each tax season.

Below are five ways to help you ease the burden with some simple end-of-year preparation tax tips that will help you maximize your returns and get ready for the upcoming tax season.

1.) Keep a calendar with key dates

Because timing is everything, keep a calendar with key tax filing dates. The deadline for filing your 2016 personal tax return is May 1, 2017 and June 15, 2017 for the self-employed. You can begin preparing your return once your T4s and other slips arrive. Also, try to keep up with important dates that can increase your chances of receiving a larger refund. For example, by scheduling health-related treatments before the end of the year you can maximize your medical expense deduction. Continue Reading…

Boomer & Echo’s Review of Victory Lap Retirement (+ a giveaway)

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There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests postponing retirement – even by just one year – can lead to a longer, healthier life. The reality is that we’re living longer and saving less. Something has to give. But another year or two spent pushing paper in a cubicle is probably not the holy retirement grail we’ve been searching for.

Related: Growing older in America – The Health and Retirement Study

Indeed, if you’re healthy and can afford to stop working, the idea is to find something else you’re passionate about and do that instead – whether it’s switching to a new career in an unrelated field, writing a book, starting a blog, or simply volunteering at your favourite charity. Call it your work-optional years.

Victory Lap Retirement

Authors Mike Drak and Jonathan Chevreau call it your Victory Lap Retirement. The authors argue that the idea of retirement has to change in the sense that going from 100 percent work mode to 100 percent leisure mode is boring and fraught with risk.

The fact is we might be retired, in the traditional sense, for thirty or forty years – as long, or maybe longer, than we spent during our working lives. That’s too long to spend in an armchair watching Seinfeld reruns.

How do we find purpose and meaning in this third stage of life? More importantly, for some, how do we finance it?

 In Victory Lap Retirement, Drak and Chevreau describe a post-employment lifestyle designed with a unique blend of work and play that allows you to live life to the fullest, on your terms, while you’re young enough to enjoy it.
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Continue Reading…

Happy New Year! Time to add $5,500 to TFSAs

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Welcome to 2017. We’ll keep this one brief but a reminder that on the money front, there’s already a positive action you can take, either online now or whenever your financial institution opens its doors this week: make the 2017 contribution to your TFSA, or Tax-free Savings Account. That’s $5,500 per individual, amounting to $11,000 for couples.

Remember, if you don’t have the ready cash you can make transfers-in-kind if you have securities in non-registered investment accounts. (Some tax may have to be paid if this triggers capital gains).

Speaking of taxes, Jamie Golombek has a good column in this weekend’s Financial Post on current tax brackets and other tax data: click on Here are the New Numbers you need to get a jumpstart on your 2017 taxes.

How investing can help you achieve Financial Independence

While today’s blog is necessarily brief, a reminder that Saturday’s guest blog provides a timely summary of how investments performed in 2016, and an overview of how successful investing is a key ingredient  to achieve Financial Independence (aka Findependence). Click on the second link to get to our sister site’s republishing of the Boomer & Echo review of the new book, Victory Lap Retirement.

Simplifying Investing for Financial Independence

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By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

As 2016 comes to a close, we thought we would look back financially to where we started this adventure, from January of 1991. The chart below shows the ascent of the S&P 500 Index over our 26 years of retirement.

On our retirement date of January 14, 1991, the S&P 500 index closed at 312.49. It has recently closed at 2262, making roughly an 8% annual gain plus a couple per cent counting dividends. Hard to imagine, right? With all of the market ups and downs, global turmoil, governments coming and going, businesses expanding and failing, and still producing roughly a 10% annual return.

But is this really a one-off period and not the norm? Continue Reading…

Shifting Trends: from Low Volatility to quality Dividend Growth

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By Christopher Gannatti, WisdomTree Associate Director of Research

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

Over the period of about the last three years, the annualized returns of the S&P 500 Index have been nearly 12%. That is a strong number, and it shouldn’t be surprising that U.S. stocks are more expensive now than they were then.

Let’s discuss what has been driving these returns and analyze various factor strategies to shed light on their potential to continue this trend in returns going forward.

Multiple Expansion, Earnings Growth or Dividend Yield: what’s most Important?

By itself, an index’s trailing total return may not say much about its future return potential. Fortunately, we can model different drivers behind performance by deconstructing the three separate components of total return:

• Average Dividend Yield

Continue Reading…