With each passing year I’ve been spending more time in the U.S. during Canada’s winter.  When I was young I embraced winter, but not so much now.  I guess I’m becoming a snowbird.  Over the years I’ve paid a lot in currency exchange fees, but I’ve finally done something to cut these fees. Until recently, I just used a Canadian credit card to pay amounts charged in U.S. dollars.  This has felt painless, because the credit card company automatically applies an exchange rate so I can pay my bill in Canadian dollars. Hidden in the exchange rate my credit card company uses is an extra 2.5% fee.  Most people, myself included, don’t know the exact fair exchange rate between Canadian and U.S. dollars at any given moment, so it’s easy to forget about this extra fee.  However, almost all Canadian credit cards charge this extra 2.5%. So, when I recently spent a little over US$6000 to rent a nice place and was charged nearly CDN$8000 on my credit card, roughly CDN$200 ...

Over the past decade or so, I’ve read many articles about Tesla that confused me.  It took me a while to figure out that a lot of the nonsense originated from oil “boosters” and supporters of competing car companies.  But, even after filtering out these “stories,” I still found some articles confusing.  I realize now that many writers discuss Tesla the stock instead of Tesla the technology company.  I’ve never cared about Tesla stock, but I’m fascinated by Tesla the technology company.  They were incredibly ambitious, and failure was all but certain.  Yet they succeeded.   Tesla remains dedicated to excellent engineering and technology.  As a Tesla car owner, I know that their cars have some issues like any other car, but they seem committed to correcting their errors, as I can see from the frequent software updates I get.  Overall, my Model 3 has been the best car I’ve ever owned.  That said, I would buy a competing electric car if a be...

Recently, I applied for a new credit card.  Among the questions I had to answer was ‘What is your income?’  Before retirement that was an easy question; I’d just tell them my salary.  But now that I’m retired, I’m not sure how to answer it. I have no salary.  I have no workplace pension.  I’m not drawing from CPP or OAS yet.  There’s nothing I can point to that is the rough equivalent of a salary. I chose to answer the question with my previous year’s taxable income.  However, that number has little relationship to what I can afford to spend.  A big chunk of my spending comes from non-registered accounts that contain savings that have already been taxed. I do draw from my RRSPs, but this is only for lifetime tax efficiency.  Late in the year I withdraw the right amount to manage my income up to the top of a particular tax bracket.  I could just as easily have an income near zero and collect the HST rebate. So, my taxable income for the y...

Apparently, I’ve got just enough Twitter followers that I’m attracting some trolls.  It’s hard to tell if they’re human or software, but they mustn’t have much to do if they’re bothering to send snarky replies to someone like me.  The mute and block features seem to work well. Here is my take on some of the big questions that have many people seeking answers: Big Questions About Investing and Personal Finance Here are some short takes and some weekend reading: Preet Banerjee explains the hilarious story behind a couple attempting to launder billions of dollars worth of stolen Bitcoins.   Robb Engen at Boomer and Echo looks at the various options mortgage holders have right now, given all the talk of rising interest rates. Kerry Taylor interviews Erica Alini to discuss her new book Money Like You Mean It.

We spend a lot of time worrying about interest rates, stock markets, inflation, gold, and cryptocurrencies, and how they affect our investment portfolios and personal finance.  Here I explain how I think about these issues. Are interest rates going up? I don’t know.  But the answer can’t end there.  We have to make choices about our mortgages and investments, and interest rates matter.  Some will express predictions confidently, but they don’t know what will happen.   I prefer to think in terms of a range.  Let’s say that we think interest rates will average somewhere between 0% and 7% over the next decade.  This range is wide and reflects the fact that we don’t know what will happen.  Because current interest rates are still low, the range is shifted toward rate increases more than decreases.  The goal now is to balance potential downside with potential upside over this range. With mortgages, the main concern is the downside: will we be okay...

The saga of trying to get a refund out of VRBO has finally come to an end.  After more than a month and about two dozen phone calls to three companies, we got about 98% of our money back.  In the end, we disputed a charge with Mastercard before the matter was resolved, although it wasn’t clear whether Mastercard’s involvement affected the outcome. I’ve used VRBO before to rent vacation homes, and I always believed that VRBO held my money back from the homeowner until at least the second day of the rental to give me time to alert VRBO to any serious problems.  However, this time it was a property management company called Exclusive Villas Florida that charged the bulk of the rental cost to our credit card. Although we had entered into a rental agreement with VRBO, we were left to fight with a property manager to get our money back.  At one point, VRBO demonstrated their inability to control this property manager by suggesting that we dispute the charge with Mastercard...

Most of what I see about owning rental real estate is breathless cheerleading and come-ons for “real estate courses.”  It was a refreshing change to read John Champaign’s new short book Getting Started as a Small Scale Landlord .  At 67 pages, there isn’t any padding, and he provides solid information to help you determine if you’re suited to being a landlord and how to avoid the many pitfalls. As someone who isn’t suited to being a landlord, I saw warnings where other people might see opportunity.  “This book is about giving yourself a part-time job.”  I definitely don’t want a job, but others might welcome one.  Landlords must also be able to keep their cool and not back away from conflict.  I can do this, but I definitely don’t want to willingly bring conflict with unreasonable people into my life.  “If you can't say no to a crying, homeless woman, do not go into the business of landlording.” After the initial self-assessment to see if landlording i...