When we first hit our financial independence number 8 years ago, one of the financial planners that I asked to look at our numbers before my wife and I quit our full-time jobs was Ed Rempel. At the time, I asked Ed if he could do his own math and analysis on our numbers, to make sure that I didn’t miscalculate something when I was doing it myself, and this way I could be certain that my wife and I could quit our jobs and live off our portfolio going forward. Well, fast forward to today, it’s been around 8 years since we quit our full-time jobs, and so I thought it would be helpful to have Ed b ..read more

Having your investments pay you large dividends or yield sounds great. It’s truly passive income where money just shows up in your account without you having to do anything, and without you having to sell off any of your investments even when markets are down. But what if you get too focused on maximizing dividends or yield in your portfolio? After all, there is no free lunch when it comes to investing. There are always tradeoffs, and it turns out that there are some pretty significant disadvantages for investors that just try to maximize their yield or dividends at all costs, and it can resul ..read more

We talk a lot about growing our net worth as Canadians, but what about actually protecting our assets from threats like fraud? So, I thought we’d get some security experts on the show to teach us some best practices when it comes to protecting ourselves and our family, especially when it comes to our finances, here in Canada. They are part of the security teams at the largest bank in Canada. They have entire teams devoted to security and invest a lot of time and money to ensure that they and their clients are following the best practices. Today, you and I are going to learn what we can do ..read more

When it comes to managing our investment portfolios, there are definitely some mistakes that are easy to make, and ones that a lot of Canadian investors tend to do.   In this episode, we have Peter McMurtry on the show who is going to take us through what the common mistakes are that Canadian investors tend to do, as well as the best practices that he's noticed from his 30+ years in the investing industry.   One of the things Peter does is portfolio reviews for his clients, so I wanted to pick his brain on the common mistakes that he sees investors make when he reviews their portfoli ..read more

With inflation slowing down here in Canada, we are starting to hear talks about the Bank of Canada no longer planning to increase our interest rates, or maybe even lowering them. This can have an impact on your investment portfolio, particularly if you hold bonds, because remember there is that inverse relationship between interest rates and bonds, where increases in the interest rate tend to lower the value of the bonds that you hold in your portfolio. On the flip side, if the Bank of Canada lowers our rates, you can expect your bonds to increase in value. Apart from your investments, the int ..read more

Today, we’re going to cover what you need to know from a tax, investing, and financial planning perspective as we head into this new year. As you know, the government makes changes every year in these areas and the implications of these changes can have a pretty substantial impact on how much you pay in taxes, your net worth, what government benefits you are eligible to get, and how much you get. These can easily affect your net worth in the thousands of dollars every single year, so it’s definitely in your and my best interest to know about these changes and get a bit of a refresher, so that ..read more

We’ve all heard of high interest savings accounts that we can open up at our bank. But is that always our one and only best option when it comes to where we keep our short term cash? What about for things like our emergency fund, or when we are saving for something expensive like a car and we want that money to be available immediately when we need it, and not be subject to the sometimes large day-to-day fluctuations that we see in the stock market? In this episode, you are going to learn what your options are, here in Canada, when it comes to that short term cash that you want to be read ..read more

In this episode, you’re going to learn: How to deal with the volatility of the stock market, once you are financially independent and are living off your investments: There are many schools of thought and structures when it comes to dealing with this challenge here in Canada. Retirement expert, Kyle Prevost takes us through his research on the top recommended and respected structures that he has uncovered for us Canadians. We also go through Kyle’s research on the optimum location for the fixed income portion of your portfolio. Traditionally the advice has been to keep fixed income like bonds ..read more

In this episode, our guest Kyle Prevost is going to take us through how much we need to retire, as Canadians, and how much can we sustainably withdraw from our portfolio to not run out of money once we retire. If you are a long-time listener of the show, then by now you would have definitely heard of the 4% rule, which helps answer these two questions. But, the 4% rule was created by Americans, for Americans, so how do all those findings and statistics apply to us Canadians?  (If you are new to the show, then don’t worry, we’ll go through what the 4% rule is, and the many caveats that exi ..read more

With the multiple interest rate hikes that we’ve been experiencing here in Canada, many Canadians have seen their monthly cashflow take a hit, whether it’s because you have a variable rate mortgage, a line of credit, or other forms of debt. So what are your options if you’re paying more than you’d like on your interest payments, or maybe you have that mortgage coming up for renewal and you’re going to have to make that multi-thousand dollar decision on how you’re going to proceed? Should you go with a fixed or variable rate mortgage when interest rates are high like they are right now? Keep in ..read more