Online “finfluencers” grow up + MORE Jul 4th
Stock news: Cogeco takes U.S. telecom hit as Electrovaya rallies Jul 18th
Stock news for investors: Retail stocks tumble despite strong earnings + MORE Jun 20th
Stock news: Canada’s big banks raise dividends after strong Q2 earnings May 30th
Stock news for investors: Rogers posts loss, Teck profit surges Jul 25th
What are reasonable long-term financial planning assumptions?
– moneysense.ca
Retirement projections are only as reasonable as the assumptions behind them. If your inflation, investment return, or life expectancy estimates are unrealistic, your financial plan may give you a false sense of security.
Studies often show that investors are overly optimistic about future rates of return. This is particularly true coming off a strong showing for stocks like we have seen over the past year.
The total return for the S&P/TSX Composite Index over the last 12 months has been 34%. The S&P 500, in Canadian dollars, has returned 24%. Over the past decade, annualized returns for these indices were 13% and 16% respectively—but financial planners are not counting on the same success going forward.
The FP Canada Standards Council and Institute of Financial Planning update their Projection Assumption Guidelines each April. These guidelines apply to Certified Financial Planners (CFPs) and Québec Planificateur financiers (Pl. Fin.). They are worth considering for Canadians who are making assumptions about their own financial futures…
How are FIRE adherents making out?
– moneysense.ca
In the increasingly specialized world of financial blogging, there’s a subgenre of so-called “FIRE” experts, who expound on the acronym FIRE. FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. Some proponents are in their 40s or 50s and practising what they preach, having either reached financial independence or are almost there. We describe some of them in this column.
My own semi-retirement project, FindependenceHub.com, often republishes FIRE-related blogs. Recently, I ran one from the MyOwnAdvisor blog by Ottawa-based Mark Seed, who announced on his site in April that he had finally retired in his early 50s, after 17 years of blogging about it. For this Retired Money column, I interviewed Seed on Google Meet to learn how he did it.
For most FIRE gurus mentioned here, the term “retirement” means no longer being a full-time salaried employee with all that entails: commuting to an office, bosses, meetings, and so on. The emphasis is on the Financial Independence aspect of FIRE more than outright Retiring Early…
