I’ve noticed an increase in the number of businesses offering discounts for paying in cash.  I’m happy to see this for two reasons.  One is that those who pay in cash (or some equivalent)  have been subsidizing credit card users who collect various perks at others’ expense.  The second is that I’m happy to have some of my purchases not contribute transaction fees to Canada’s banking oligopoly. Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Teksavvy has some advice for the CRTC aimed at improving competition among internet providers.  The most interesting one is to “Examine functional or structural separation , where large providers are split into two distinct companies. Under such an arrangement, one company owns and operates a network and sells wholesale access to it to all comers on an equitable basis. The other purchases that access on the same terms and rates as every other competitor, and then offers it to customers as retail internet service. Canada'...

After only 10 short weeks, I’ve managed to open a checking account at a U.S. bank and move some money into it.  Some of the delay was due to misunderstandings on my part about what steps I was supposed to take next, and some of it was due to weird restrictions on the type of account in Canada that can be used to transfer money out of the country.  Mostly, though, it was the fact that there are many steps and each one seems to take a few business days. I doubt that the specific details of my experience matter much.  The main takeaway is that if you’re considering opening a bank account in the U.S., consider starting the process long before you need the account to be in place. Here are my posts for the past two weeks: Bad Retirement Spending Plans My Answer to ‘Can You Help Me With My Investments?’ Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Robb Engen at Boomer and Echo describes a smart two-fund solution for investing in retirement. Tom Bradley at Steadyhand exp...

Occasionally, a friend or family member asks for help with their investments.  Whether or not I can help depends on many factors, and this article is my attempt to gather my thoughts for the common case where the person asking is dissatisfied with their bank or other seller of expensive mutual funds or segregated funds.  I’ve written this as though I’m speaking directly to someone who wants help, and I’ve added some details to an otherwise general discussion for concreteness. Assessing the situation I’ve taken a look at your portfolio.  You’ve got $600,000 invested, 60% in stocks, and 40% in bonds.  You pay $12,000 per year ($1000/month) in fees that were technically disclosed to you in some deliberately confusing documents, but you didn’t know that before I told you.  These fees are roughly half for the poor financial advice you’re getting, and half for running the poor mutual funds you own. It’s pretty easy for a financial advisor to put your savings into some...

I mentioned a month ago that I was trying out BMO InvestorLine’s high-interest savings accounts (HISAs) that are structured as mutual funds (BMT104, BMT109, and BMT114).  They pay exactly the advertised rate of 4.35%, but I couldn’t tell this from the confusing list of transactions.  Looking at the month-end balances, I was able to determine that they pay 1/365 of the annual interest each day, accumulating as simple interest over a month, and the accumulated interest is paid each month.  So, longer months pay more interest than shorter months, which is different from most other interest-bearing accounts I’ve had in my life. My most recent post is: Bad Retirement Spending Plans Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: John Robertson signed for a new Ford vehicle, and now Ford is demanding an extra $4000. Nathan Proctor says companies are using legal tricks to get us to pay extra in the form of subscriptions for products we’ve already bought.  He’s fightin...

A recent research paper by Chen and Munnell from Boston College asks the important question “ Do Retirees Want Constant, Increasing, or Decreasing Consumption? ”.  The accepted wisdom until recently was that retirees naturally want to spend less as they age.  This new research challenges this conclusion. What we all agree on is that the average retiree spends less each year (adjusted for inflation) over the course of retirement.  However, averages can hide a lot of information.  The debate is whether this decreasing spending is voluntary or not.  However, it’s important to recognize that the answer is different for each retiree.  Some don’t spend less over time, some spend less voluntarily, and some are forced to spend less as their savings dwindle. I’ve been saying for some time that not all spending reductions by retirees are voluntary and that this affects the average spending levels across all retirees.  I’ve discussed this subject with many people...

I prefer to have as few bank accounts and investment accounts as possible.  However, there are RRSPs, TFSAs, non-registered accounts, and Canadian and U.S. dollars that drive me to open ever more accounts.  The latest reason I had to open a new account seems the silliest to me.  I have a U.S. dollar chequing account as part of an InvestorLine account.  It behaves like any other BMO U.S. dollar chequing account except that I can’t do a global money transfer from it.  So, I had to open a “normal” U.S. chequing account at a BMO branch.  So, now when I want to send money to the U.S., I have to move money from InvestorLine to my new “regular” U.S. dollar chequing account, and then from there to the U.S.  When I opened this new account, the bank employee asked what name I’d like to give it.  I was tempted to say “stupid,” but I settled on “USD.” Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Jason Pereira has a strong take on the supposed financia...

I recently moved some cash into BMO InvestorLine’s high-interest savings accounts (HISAs) that are structured as mutual funds.  Their designations are BMT104, BMT109, and BMT114, and they purportedly pay 4.35% annual interest (which they can change whenever they like).  However, the way they report the monthly interest payments is so baffling that I wasn’t able to sort it out in my first 15 minutes of trying.  A further complication is the following text in the HISA description: “The Bank may pay, monthly or quarterly, compensation to your Dealer at an annual rate of up to 0.25% of the daily closing balance in the BMO HISA.”  I couldn’t find any evidence of such a charge, but I haven’t been invested for a full quarter, and I can’t yet say that such a charge isn’t buried somehow in the confusing reporting.  I have more digging to do before I can recommend these HISAs. Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Preet Banerjee explains the dangers of Robi...