Friday, December 4, 2015

Short Takes: Private Car Sales, Faulty Investing Assumptions, and more

Here are my posts for the past two weeks:

How Much Do You Need to Save to Retire?

The Overconfidence Gap

Value of a Public Service Pension

Here are some short takes and some weekend reading:

Ellen Roseman explains the trouble you can get into if you sell a car privately but the buyer doesn’t transfer ownership.

A Wealth of Common Sense brings us an excellent list of faulty assumptions about investing.

Dan Hallett gets riled up about income funds that trick investors with unsustainable monthly payments. It’s sad when people count on regular income that is certain to drop eventually.

Big Cajun Man got an answer from CRA about whether his son continues to be eligible for the Disability Tax Credit.

Kerry Taylor meets Sean Cooper, the millennial with a paid-off house, to find out if his critics are right about whether he received financial help from family and whether he lives an intolerably cheap life.

Preet Banerjee explains how the new Canada Child Care Benefit works. My main takeaway is that these benefits are way more generous than anything I ever got when my kids were young.

Boomer and Echo explain how they turned a blog into a profitable business. He says “bloggers shouldn’t have to apologize for advertising.” I agree with this, but I have a different objection. I don’t like it when a blog tricks me into reading what appears to be a useful article but is actually advertising. I don’t mind advertising if I can clearly see the difference between it and a real article.

My Own Advisor says that when it comes to “fools with tools,” it’s not the credit card tool that is the problem but the fool who wields it. I’d say banks, credit card companies, and retailers play a role as well when they use sophisticated methods to encourage people to live beyond their means.

The Blunt Bean Counter clarifies a complex tax issue: Capital Cost Allowance (CCA) on rental properties.

5 comments:

  1. And luckily I was well prepared for the CRA. I agree with your advertising statement from Boomer and Echo as well. Have a swell weekend.

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  2. Thanks for the mention Michael. There is more than one guilty party when it comes to abusing credit cards.
    Mark

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  3. A WoCS link which dovetails nicely with the Hallett and MOA articles:

    http://awealthofcommonsense.com/how-perception-affects-your-investing-reality/

    "...the financial industry is very smart about how they portray things in their marketing materials. They know exactly which buttons to push to sway people’s opinions and decisions, whether you know it or not."

    We could all benefit from having a financial Amazing Randi on our side.

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    1. @SST: The effect I remember is people gravitating toward easy-to-understand stories. "People love their pets. Going to the store is a pain. Pets.com is going to the moon." I'm very happy to leave this sort of nonsense behind and invest mechanically.

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  4. Interesting reads. Thank you for sharing the information on here. I especially liked that article on how to monetize a blog. Lots of things to contemplate since we are thinking of starting up one to help business..

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