A bit late we might be but probably not late enough for our ‘Happy New Year’ greeting to be completely out of place. Yes?
We’ve been having a few technical difficulties with the site this past week and are extremely glad that the problem has now been solved.
Since the inception of Investing Thesis, you might have noticed our grammatical use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ and the reasoning behind this stemmed from a need to pay homage to all the people that help run this site. While I am responsible for the content on this site, I do rely on the help of people much smarter than myself to solve technical problems when the site malfunctions, for design work and other such stuff. However, going forward, I’ve decided to drop the use of ‘we’ and continue our discourse using ‘I’. I think it makes for a more personal (or as personal as we can get) means for communications. Don’t you?
I will continue to be profoundly grateful to those who help me out when I can’t help myself, it just won’t be through via syntax on this site.
Canadian Personal Finance & Investing Carnival
Moving on, what should have been the final Carnival of 2010, is now the first Carnival of 2011.
So, welcome to the twelfth edition of the Canadian Personal Finance & Investing Carnival.
If you’ve never encountered a Carnival or would simply to know more about ours, allow me to summarize the impetus behind this series:
Every 15 days or so the Canadian Personal Finance & Investing Carnival highlights some of Canada’s most interesting and informative blogger-written articles within the broad spectrum of personal finance, investing, wealth and portfolio management.
I come across a plethora of articles during the course of my interweb travels that inform my way of life and experience and the Canadian Personal Finance & Investing Carnival is my vehicle to show off these transformative literary pieces.
The next few lines are directed to all you Canadian Personal Finance & Investing bloggers out there. While we have your attention, we would like to take this moment to invite submissions for the thirteenth edition of the Canadian Personal Finance & Investing Carnival slated for publishing on January 15th, 2011. So if you’re a Canadian blogger specializing in personal finance and or investing, make sure you submit your best articles for inclusion and while you’re at it, perhaps spread the word about the Canadian Personal Finance & Investing Carnival.
Enjoy.
Beating The Index presents Canadian REITS: Yours to Discover, saying, “You can still find attractive yields in REITs, here’s what you need to start your due diligence process if you wish to add this sector to your portfolio.”
MoneyNing presents What Do You Splurge On? Where Do You Save?, saying, “Time to confess! What do you spend your money on and where do you save?”
Canadian Finance Blog presents Mint.com Canadian Review, saying, “Mint.com officially launched in Canada. Mint is definitely worth using, especially if you enjoying having a “hands off” approach to your finances.”
Canajun Finances presents Santa Loved His Points, saying, “Using the points you have built up over the year to help pay for Christmas is a great frugal idea.”
First Rental Property presents How to Find Tenants That Pay You on Time, saying, “Veteran real estate investors face big problems. One of the biggest problems that they encounter is non payment of rent. If you have been investing in real estate for long enough, dealing with tenants that don’t pay is something that you would become very familiar with.”
Balance Junkie presents 2011: What to Watch, saying, “Objectively, there’s nothing magical about the beginning of a New Year. Midnight on January 1st is just another minute. But it does serve as a reminder to us that time marches on and that it’s a good idea to look at where we’ve been and where we might be going.”
Sustainable Personal Finance presents My Journey to the Best Canadian Rewards Credit Card, saying, “When people think of credit cards the often think of convenient to use but also a potential burden due to high interest rates if you don’t pay your bill on time. Sometimes people will think of point reward systems where you can redeem your points for goods at a store or redeem air miles to take a trip. But what if I told you there is a reward credit card that sends you MONEY (in form of a cheque) which you can use on whatever your heart des$ires? Enter the MBNA Smart Cash Platinum Mastercard. To date we have received $250 $300CASH BACK from MBNA! **edit: As luck would have it we got another $50 cheque today!!**”
Boomer and Echo presents Why I Cancelled My Gym Membership, saying, “One of my biggest pet peeves was that to get a new gym membership you typically had to pay a sign-up fee (around $100). This seemed ridiculous to me considering we would be paying a monthly fee to work out there.”
Canadian Couch Potato presents Unveiling the 2011 Models, saying, “The new year is a time for change.After hearing lots of feedback from investors, looking more deeply into the specific funds, and seeing the launch of new products, I decided that the Model Portfolios page needed some updating. I’ve revised some of the portfolios and added a few entirely new ones. I’ve also removed a couple that seemed redundant in this new light.”
Canadian Capitalist presents Currency-Hedged Funds Underperformed in 2010, saying, “The promise of currency-hedging is especially alluring in the case of US stocks because investors would like the good (quality US companies in dynamic sectors not available in the Canadian market) without the bad (everyone “knows” the US dollar is going down the toilet). Investors mistakenly believe that they can have the good and avoid the bad by investing in currency-hedged funds by paying a smidgen more in expenses and fees.”
Invest It Wisely presents Becoming a Renaissance Man: Early Retirement Extreme, saying, “Do you dread going into work in the mornings? Do you wish that you didn’t have to spend the best hours of your day in a cubicle, doing work that doesn’t interest you? I recently had the pleasure of reading “Early Retirement Extreme“, a philosophical and practical guide to financial independence written by Jacob Lund Fisker, who also writes at earlyretirementextreme.com. By following the practical advice in this book, you can restructure your life and get out of the rat race at an age you never would have thought possible.”
My Own Advisor presents What’s Your Magic Number?, saying, “According to a Scotiabank survey released today, of those Canadians who plan to retire, 69% plan to work during retirement, mostly to keep mentally and socially active.”
The Passive Income Earner presents Property Assessment: How I use it with my Net Worth, saying, “It’s the time of year when we receive our property assessment in British Columbia. Every home owner receives a mail that says what the value of their property is. Most values went up in B.C. for 2011. Not many had a decrease in value. My area had a 9% increase over the past year.”
Financial Highway presents Investment Geography: 11 Hot Spots for 2011, saying, “Last year provided investors with plenty of peaks and valleys to navigate. We’ve had sovereign debt issues in Europe and concerns about a double dip in the US. We’ve had many debates over whether China will overheat their economy or reheat ours. What will 2011 bring? No one really knows for sure, but we can still look at some of the factors that will influence the investment landscape over the coming twelve months.”
Million Dollar Journey presents Top Stock Picks for 2011 – What Are Your Picks?, saying, “As per annual tradition, Million Dollar Journey is participating in the investment blogger stock picking competition. Last year, we eeked out a 3.8% return and finished in the middle of the pack. As I was pretty aggressive in the stock picks for last year, we had some big winners and equally big losers. This year, I don’t have a lot of great ideas for stock picks as the markets are fairly lofty, but I have come up with some that may help us win this year (wishful thinking?)!”
Money Smarts Blog presents 2010 Personal Investment Portfolio Returns For My Canadian Couch Potato Portfolio, saying, “I finally got around to calculating my investment returns for 2010 and the results are decent, if unspectacular: 7.3% My portfolio is supposed to look something like Canadian Capitalist’s sleepy portfolio which returned 9.56% this year. I’ve made a few changes and this is what my desired allocation is:”
Young And Thrifty presents Youngandthrifty’s 2011 Financial Resolutions, saying, “2010 has come to an end (time flies when you get older, eh?) and I thought I would kick start 2011 with some Financial Resolutions for the new year. Seeing as I somehow managed to fulfill my 2010 Financial Resolutions, I thought I would start fresh and create some new challenges for myself for 2011.”
Give Me Back My Five Bucks presents Would I move to another city?, saying, “Someone on Formspring recently asked me if I ever considered moving to a city less expensive than Vancouver to save more money. The answer is yes and no. Yes, in that I have considered it, but no because I don’t think I’d ever go through with it at this point in my life.”
Investing Thesis presents The Investment Case For Magna International and Research In Motion by Lee Appleton of Matco Financial, saying, “Two stocks favored by Appleton, who seeks out companies that don’t present well at first glance, are Magna International (MG:TSX) and Research In Motion (RIM:TSX).”
Canadian Dream: Free at 45 presents Tracking Investing, saying, “Investing for me has always been a weird relationship. At some points I love doing it and others I don’t care about it at all. Up until recently my choice of investments were more or less irrelevant to my plan since my savings far out paced my investment returns. Let’s face it when you only have $50,000 in investments a 1% difference in your return is only $500/year which pales in comparison to saving about 50% of your family income.”
Landlord Rescue presents 5 Quick and Easy Ways To Thank Your Great Tenants, saying, “Great, good and even acceptable tenants make the rental business work. If there weren’t a 90/10 ration of good tenants to bad tenants our business wouldn’t be challenging it would be impossible.”
Moneyville presents Talk to an advisor about managing your debt, saying, “A poll released Thursday by CIBC found that paying down debt is the top priority for those ages 25 to 44. That was followed by getting the right advice on your mortgage and building savings for the future.”
Larry MacDonald presents Where to invest now?, saying, “Oh where, oh where, to invest that RRSP contribution when stock, bonds, commodities and virtually all other assets have run up in price so much? Or, for that matter, where to deploy those cash balances still sitting on the sidelines?”
Rob Carrick presents A portfolio that rewards simple, patient investing, saying, “Even with a sound approach to investing, there are times when forbearance is required. Take, for example, a simple stock-picking strategy called the two-minute portfolio. Data going back 25 years shows the two-minute portfolio has outperformed the S&P/TSX composite index by 1.6 percentage points on an average annual basis.”
Jonathan Chevreau presents Premiums rising on permanent life insurance but not for term, saying, “Life insurance premiums are starting to rise on certain types of policies, says John Nicola, chairman and CEO of Vancouver-based Nicola Wealth Management.”
Ellen Roseman presents Do prepaid Visa cards serve a useful purpose?, saying, “That’s the question I’m asking readers after writing a column about the hefty fees on these prepaid cards. The only benefit I can see is for Internet purchases, where you worry about a retailer applying unauthorized charges to your credit card. If there’s not enough value left on a prepaid card, the transaction will be declined.”
Finally, if you haven’t already subscribed to InvestingThesis.com, allow me to reiterate a few reasons to do so:
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That’s a wrap, folks! Have a smashing 2011!
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