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).

Weekly wrap: Eternal Money Truths; millionaire bloggers; perils of early retirement

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Young business woman is saving money for the company

On Wednesday, the Financial Post ran the first of seven articles by me that we’re calling The 7 Eternal Truths of Personal Finance: Eternal Truth #1: Live Within Your Means.

The second instalment ran today (Saturday): Eternal Truth # 2: Pay Yourself First.

Some of the background and rationale for the series ran earlier this week here at the Hub. I believe the series will run online and in the paper once or twice a week over the summer. Each episode is accompanied by a one-minute video.

Note that this is being housed under the Post’s “Young Money” category, which makes sense because the need to live within your means is especially apt for millennials and younger folk.

Meanwhile, on a related topic, the Globe & Mail Friday ran on update on a national strategy for financial literacy unveiled this week, titled Count Me In, Canada. The piece is titled To Bridge the Knowledge Gap, Financial LIeracy is a Two-Way Street.

Watch out, Economist warns

The cover story on the latest issue of The Economist, out mid Thursday, warns readers to Watch Out: The World is Not Ready for the Next Recession. But its briefing on the American economy in the same issue is more upbeat: Better Than It Looks.

Millionaire bloggers

Continue Reading…

The 7 eternal truths of personal finance

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The print edition of today’s Financial Post (June 10, page FP9) is running the first of a series of seven articles by me entitled “The Seven Eternal Truths of Personal Finance.”

Eternal Truth No. 1 is Live below Your Means.

The online link is here.

Note there is also a short video accompanying the online article, and a growing number of comments below the piece.

Here is a preamble I wrote for it:

Series Rationale: One of the most experienced personal finance writers in North America is the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig. As he wrote here after writing his 250th Intelligent Investor column, he confessed that there are only a handful of personal finance stories out there:

“I was once asked, at a journalism conference, how I defined my job. I said: My job is to write the exact same thing between 50 and 100 times a year in such a way that neither my editors nor my readers will ever think I am repeating myself. That’s because good advice rarely changes, while markets change constantly.”

In this seven-part series, I look back on my two decades plus of writing about money to distill it all down to these “seven eternal truths.”

As far as I know, the second instalment will run a week from now.

Retirement Reflections Entering our 25th year of Financial Independence

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Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

By Billy and Akaisha Kaderli

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

In January we began our 25th year of Financial Independence. Few people can say they have 24 years of self-funded retirement by age of 62, and have a higher net worth after spending and inflation than when they started. This is something of which we are quite proud.

As we have aged one thing we have learned is that the long term is getting shorter every day. Life is to be enjoyed now, not someday – the older we get, the more we appreciate that view. Life is continuously full of opportunities and we want to take them.

Opportunities abound

retirement_reflections7For example, last year we were approached by a startup company that sponsored us for several months in Saigon, Vietnam. Continue Reading…

Weekly Wrap: We ARE saving enough for retirement; CPP & Social Security Redux, frugal millionaires

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Malcolm Hamilton at MoneySense’s fall Retiring Rich event

Retired actuary and retirement guru Malcolm Hamilton this week released a C.D. Howe paper entitled Do Canadians Save Too Little? The Hub’s initial take ran Thursday here: It’s an exaggeration to say we are saving too little for retirement.

Hamilton also wrote a summary of the paper in the FP Comment section of the Financial Post on Thursday, bearing the title False pension assumptions on Canadian savings.

We at the Hub have always said frugality is the key to saving and ultimately building wealth. But according to the most-emailed New York Times article this week, it’s tough for millionaires to dump the frugal habits that got them there: Millionaires who are frugal when they don’t have to be.  Shades of the book, The Millionaire Next Door!

More (much more!) on Voluntary CPP Continue Reading…

C.D. Howe’s Malcolm Hamilton — it’s an exaggeration to say we are saving too little for Retirement

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Malcolm Hamilton (YouTube.com)

By Jonathan Chevreau

Financial Independence Hub

Don’t believe various reports that Canadians are saving too little for retirement, says C.D. Howe senior fellow Malcolm Hamilton in a report issued Thursday. You can get the full 30-page report on PDF by clicking here.

As is typical of Hamilton, now a retired actuary, the report is insightful and entertaining. While there are exceptions, generally speaking, “Canadians are reasonably well prepared for retirement,” he writes.

Right under the report’s Headline (Do Canadians Save Too Little?) the answer is delivered in small Italic type on the title page: “Reports of undersaving by Canadians for retirement are exaggerated. They rely on faulty assumptions, questionable numbers and ignore the diversity of individual retirement goals.”

Among the various reports cited, one is the Ontario Government’s backgrounders that served as its rationale for launching its own Ontario Retirement Pension Plan, more on which below. Continue Reading…