5 Ways to Be Smart When the Markets Drop
We all love market volatility – as long as it is on the upside!. Unfortunately, history has shown us that every bull market is often followed by an aggressive bear market. Sometimes the market falls hard and fast, but that doesn’t have to mean catastrophe. Being smart when times are tough can be just as […]
A Financial Plan – the Missing Piece of the Puzzle?
Doesn’t it drive you crazy when you get to the end of a jigsaw puzzle and it’s ruined because you’re missing one final piece of the puzzle? Why then are we not more disturbed when we realize that the key piece of our own life’s masterpiece is missing? The Financial Planning Standards Council conducted a […]
Making Your Mark
The work is almost done. You’ve accumulated a nest egg that will assure the retirement lifestyle you planned for. The golf course beckons, as does that year-long world cruise. You are happy – or are you? I like to focus on the positive, but we need to address a disturbing trend – traditional retirement often fosters decay and depression. The problem is simple. Human beings are goal […]
Pay Down Mortgage or Top Up TFSA?
The problem with accumulating more wealth is in deciding what to do with your excess cash. The biggest question has always been: “contribute to investments or pay off the mortgage?” Opting for both, reducing debt and increasing savings, is the ideal. As for which is better, however, really depends on the you, your goals, feelings […]
The Relationship Between Health and Wealth
“A man who has his health has a thousand dreams. The man who doesn’t have his health has but one” Author unknown Tweet As many of us know, financial stress can impact many areas of our lives. A study conducted by Fidelity in collaboration with Stanford University found that the worse financial shape we are […]
The Financial Procrastination Breakthrough
Everybody procrastinates about something You are not alone. We all think that others have it together, but the truth is that we are all financial procrastinators. From years of experience with clients, I know that reality and perception can be totally different. In varying degrees, we all have masks that hide the full truth of […]
The 6D Tax Planning Approach
I am told that the full version of our Federal Income Tax Act is more than 3,000 pages. I don’t believe it. If you’ve ever tried to look something up on the CRA website, you’ll understand that it has almost infinite dimensions! This also does not account for the various provincial tax regimes. Although we […]
Will Someone Please Teach the Kids About Money?
Over the years spent teaching financial planning courses, I could count on two common comments: I should have taken this course years ago. My children should take this course. Although we’re not currently offering our courses, we are reaching out through WealthSmarts to help people more effectively reach their goals through sound wealth management. Our […]
Dollar-Cost Averaging – the Right Thing to Do
Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) is a simple systematic approach to buying investments. DCA tempers the volatility of your investment portfolio by breaking down large investments into smaller ones over time. Instead of buying a large single investment all at once, the intended purchase is parceled into smaller pieces and spread over a period of time. […]
The Transformational and Annoying Power of “Why”?
Most of us have forgotten life’s shortest and most transformational question: “Why?” As children we’ve learned important life lessons by asking “why?” almost nonstop until we think we’re smart enough (usually when we become teenagers!). Then one day, we stop asking. Perhaps we have become so fatigued at hearing our younger siblings, children or grandchildren […]
Can failure really lead to financial success?
A necessary feature of any article posted online is the feature image. For this post, I searched using the key words “Failure and Success.” The results were disappointing as most of the images showed signposts leading to failure or to success. I doubt that most people willingly take the “Failure” off-ramp! Other images included trite […]
Financial Education in the Workplace
Financial education in the workplace is more important than you may think. The most valuable resource most companies have is their employees. If financial stress reduces productivity, doesn’t it make sense to do something about that? “According to the 2014 Financial Planning Standards Council survey, we know that worries about personal finances are at the […]
Financial literacy, the answer to your problems?
Financial problems are the leading cause of personal stress. This affects our physical and mental health, our family relationships and our productivity at work. I could complicate this, but we all intuitively know it’s true, because of our own experience. Our government has an excellent resource in response to the National Strategy for Financial Literacy […]
Shaken or Stirred?
This line has belonged to Sean Connery since first spoken in Ian Fleming’s 1962 production, “Dr. No.” Since that time, many of us have only fantasized about his travels to exotic places, living life on the edge, playing with cool toys and, because I’m a happily married man, I’ll just stop there! In the twisted […]
