By 2 Cents on July 27th, 2011 | Category: Investing |  If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t embrace trouble; that’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes
When I wrote about Why This Is No Market for Couch Potatoes, it sounded like I was saying that there’s elevated risk in both the stock and bond markets at this moment in history. I was. That begs the question then: Where can we invest? If not stocks or bonds, where? Gold? Real estate?
An astute reader posed that exact question and I said I would address it in a future article. So here we go. I [...]
Read on and enjoy … Portfolio Options for a Risky Market
By 2 Cents on June 14th, 2011 | Category: Life Balance |  He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
~Clarence Budington Kelland
If you’ve been following the story of our recent life changes, you know that we just bought a home about two and a half hours from where we live now in order to take advantage of a new opportunity even though it meant taking out a much larger home loan. When I last updated you, we still needed to sell our current home. We put the house on the market a couple of days after that post and sold it 5 days later.
Since this is a time of year when a lot of folks are looking to buy and/or sell a home, I thought some of you might be interested in how and why we sold our home so quickly. [...]
Read on and enjoy … How We Sold Our House in 5 Days
By 2 Cents on January 7th, 2011 | Category: Planning |  Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
~ Hal Borland
Update: This article was included in the Carnival of Financial Planning #170 posted at The Skilled Investor.
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. We’ve been doing that this week, and we finish off today by zooming in on some more specific themes that will continue to evolve in 2011. Many of these themes will serve as hinges for the markets and the economy: a swing in one direction is bullish, while a move [...]
Read on and enjoy … 2011: What to Watch
By 2 Cents on August 16th, 2010 | Category: Retirement | The following is a guest post by Frank Wiginton CFP, FMA, CIM, FCSI.
I want to start off by saying that I am not advocating anything that could get you put away! What I am recommending is that you speak with your parents about saving them thousands in taxes throughout retirement. Those who are in retirement may be paying too much in taxes on money they will never use!
The big question most people in retirement have is “Will I run out of money?” There is a great calculator on the home page of my website at www.frankwiginton.ca that will tell you whether you will run out of money, and if not, how much you will still have left as an estate. It will also tell you approximately what your lifetime tax bill will be. You will likely be surprised by the numbers – many are!
So [...]
Read on and enjoy … Get Your Inheritance Early – And Other Ways Your Parents Can Save Thousands in Taxes in Retirement
By 2 Cents on July 28th, 2010 | Category: Investing | No man acquires property without acquiring a little arithmetic also.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Update: This article appeared in the Carnival of Financial Planning #153 at The Skilled Investor.
We continue our look at the prospects for various asset classes in the current market environment today with a survey of the commodities and real estate landscape. Both of these are usually considered hard assets. As Dennis Gartman always says, “if you drop them on your foot, they hurt”.
Generally speaking, hard assets like commodities and real estate tend to appreciate during inflationary times and depreciate during deflationary climates. So your view on whether to allocate money to these two may hinge on your position in the inflation vs. deflation debate. I tend to be in the camp that says we are currently in a deflationary environment, and likely will be for some [...]
Read on and enjoy … Commodities and Real Estate: Pros and Cons
By 2 Cents on February 4th, 2010 | Category: Economics | The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.
~ Cicero, 55 B.C.
DANGER: Submerged Obstacles
It’s hard to believe the above quote is from 55 B.C.. It seems like it could just as easily apply to the last couple of years, or even today. In my 2010 What Ifs post I identified debt (sovereign, consumer, and corporate) as my biggest economic concern. Where do we stand just one month into this young year?
Well, debt has indeed become a common theme, and not just in the financial pages where you would expect to find it. It’s gradually turning up more in [...]
Read on and enjoy … 10 Reasons to Be Cautious Right Now
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