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Sep 2019Are you a Real Investor or a Make-Believe One?
“’If you wish to improve’, Epictetus once said, ‘be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.’ One of the most powerful things we can do as a human being in our hyper connected, 24/7 media world is say: ‘I don’t know.’ Or more provocatively, ‘I don’t care.’ Not about everything, of course – just most things. Because most things don’t matter, and most…
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Aug 2019Advice for my daughter
“It takes tremendous strength and resolve to allow your kids to suffer the consequences of their decisions.” – Anonymous My little girl is going into grade nine! If you have children you know the very act of writing this fills me with mixed emotions. One of the many challenges of parenting is trying to teach our children financial lessons without being boring, condescending, repetitive, etc. One…
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Jul 2019How Much Is Too Much
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Rogers Reflecting on my past two blogs Money Can Buy You Happiness and The Three Levels of Wealth, I seem to have inadvertently written about and/or stumbled upon the personal utility of money. I promise this will be my last missive on the theme … at least…
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Jun 2019Money Can Buy You Happiness!
In last month’s Wealth with Wisdom I discussed “The Three Levels of Wealth” . On a related topic, and contrary to popular opinion, I would suggest that money can indeed buy happiness. This perspective would appear to contradict the massive body of research reflecting (like the chart below) that at about $80,000 of income further emotional “happiness gains” are hard to come by. But here’s the thing … if you think…
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May 2019The 3 Levels of Wealth
“Wealth: Any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.” — H. L. Mencken What is your definition of wealth? I’m certain I would hear 100 different answers if I asked 100 people. I read an article about the Canadian entrepreneur, Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr (acquired by Yahoo in 2005) and Slack. The…
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Apr 2019Time in the Market
“Our capital markets are simply a relocation center; they relocate the wealth from the impatient to the patient.” Warren Buffet I had a conversation with a client who shared with me that a close friend of hers bailed out of the stock market. Why? Because he simply could not stomach what turned out to be the very short term decline of the market during the last…
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Feb 2019Time to Pluck the Goose
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.” Jean-Baptiste Colbert Please find below two Stonegate tax resources which may assist you in dealing with your 2018 and 2019 tax reporting.Personal income tax organizerPersonal tax calendar As we prepare for this year’s “plucking” perhaps the article below will help minimize the…
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Nov 2018A Portfolio is Not a Plan
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing” – Oscar Wilde For this month’s “Wealth with Wisdom” I draw once again on the insights of Josh Brown. I must confess that after decades in the financial planning business I feel most of the clients whom I have had the privilege of working with did not fully appreciate…
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Oct 2018The Cost of Litigation … Try Not to Take it Personally
Did you hear about the Ontario Superior Court case where three siblings spent close to $500,000 in litigation costs over their deceased father’s painting worth $30,000? If not please read on: Estate Trustees and Costs of Litigation: Try not to take it personally? How do you make sure this sorry state of affairs never happens to your family? In a word … communication. I have been…
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Sep 2018There’s No Such Thing as Mosquito Week
“Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not” – Bill Gates What would you guess if I asked you what is the longest running cable TV event in history? Congratulations if you answered “Shark Week” which first was televised way back in 1988. Not surprisingly many of us are scared of sharks. Even I,…
