Many people are familiar with Sean Cooper’s story of living extremely frugally for a few years while he saved up a large down payment, bought a home, and paid off his mortgage by age 30. Cooper built on the interest in his story by writing a book called Burn Your Mortgage . I expected to like this book because I believe paying off your mortgage and any other debts is a good idea (I paid off my first mortgage by age 28). However, despite many good parts of the book, there is too much cheerleading for home ownership for me to recommend it. A common theme throughout this book is treating rising housing prices as a permanent reality. “The last thing you want is to find yourself priced out of the market.” “It’s probably wise, if you’re in the financial position to do so, to buy now while you can still afford to.” Even though this book came out in 2017, it already has a dated feel now that home prices have been dropping in Vancouver and Toronto. Another part of this theme of rising...

I’ve been a happy homeowner for many years now. I prefer owning my home to renting. But I have no illusions that this is the better choice financially. Price to rent ratios today mean I’d very likely come out far ahead if I sold my house and started renting a comparable house. But I’m not going to sell because I choose to pay the price of ownership. Unfortunately, many homeowners need to believe they will win financially, and they come up with poor analyses to justify this belief. One such example comes from Sean Cooper’s book, Burn Your Mortgage : “Let’s say you bought a home a decade ago for $250,000, with only 10% down ($25,000). You later sold it for $400,000, making $125,000 in profit (for simplicity’s sake, we’ll ignore associated costs such as mortgage interest, mortgage insurance, property taxes and closing costs). Even though your home only went up in value by 60%, that’s a 500% return on your initial investment (down payment) of $25,000. Try finding that kind of ...

Here are my posts for the past two weeks: Stock-Picking Skill Liberating Your Losers The Success Equation Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: A new C.D. Howe Institute study concludes that Canadians whose incomes vary from year to year face an unfair tax penalty and that reforms are needed. I agree. My income is highly variable, and it seems unreasonable that during good years I’m incented to delay new work until January. John Robertson gives a thoughtful and balanced discussion of whether to buy or rent a home. Robb Engen at Boomer and Echo explains why he doesn’t hold bonds in his portfolio. Big Cajun Man liked Doug Hoyes’ book enough to lift a few ideas from it.

Success in most endeavours is a combination of skill and luck. As Michael L. Mauboussin explains in his book The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing , we have a tendency to decide we were skillful when we succeed and unlucky when we fail. We make many other mistakes as well when it comes to recognizing the role of luck in our lives. Mauboussin teaches methods of measuring skill and luck. Some activities involve little or no luck, such as chess or checkers. If a chess master beats me soundly at one game of chess, he or she is likely to beat me another 10 times in a row. Other activities involve to skill at all, such as roulette and lotteries, unless you count not paying as a skill. A test of “whether an activity involves skill: ask whether you can lose on purpose.” If you can lose on purpose, there must be some skill involved. Most activities, like sports, business, and investing, combine luck and skill. It turns out that there are ...

Recently, Jonathan Chevreau wrote about a way to try to save money on taxes called “liberating your losers” from your RRSP. It’s no fun owning a losing investment, and when it’s in your RRSP, you don’t even get a capital loss for your taxes. Chevreau offers a way to reduce the sting. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. The idea is to withdraw a losing investment from your RRSP so that when it rebounds, you’ll only pay capital gains taxes on 50% of the increase. If you leave the investment in your RRSP you’d end up paying taxes on 100% of the increase when you eventually withdraw the assets from your RRSP/RRIF. According to Chevreau’s broker friend, this makes sense “when you have had bad timing in your RRSP/RRIF investment choices; when you're confident your investment will return to its previous higher value; and if you prefer to pay tax on 50 per cent of a capital gain rather than 100 per cent of income.” The first condition just means you’ve made an investment that lost mon...

When researchers talk about someone having skill at stock-picking, they are using the word “skill” differently than we’re used to. I might be impressed that a stock-picker seems very smart and knows far more than I do, but this is far from having skill in the technical sense. To illustrate what we typically mean by “skill,” let’s consider golf. Over the years, I’ve golfed with many people whose abilities impressed me. There are dozens I’ve played with who I’d say have golf skills. Worldwide, there are millions of people who I would judge to be skillful at golf if I saw them play. But what if we define “golf skill” differently? What if we decided that only those who have an expectation to earn more in prize money and endorsements than they spend on travel and equipment count as being skilled at golf? By this definition, I’ve never golfed with a skillful player. Worldwide, there are perhaps a few thousand players who have skill in this sense. Does this strict definition of g...

Here are my posts for the past two weeks: The Wealthy Renter What We Need on Credit Card Statements Straight Talk on Your Money Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Frederick Vettese makes the case for changing federal civil servants’ pensions to a target-benefit plan to save taxpayers a lot of money. The government could save even more money by eliminating employees they don’t need. Andrew Coyne does some clear thinking about taxes and the middle class. He shows that when there is a raging debate, it’s possible for both sides to be very wrong. Squawkfox explains the steps necessary to open a Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP). It’s work, but the substantial free government money available makes it worth the effort. Big Cajun Man was on his best behaviour for a podcast with Doug Hoyes. He even explained how he got his nickname (but left out the profanity).