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by yielder
27 May 2009 07:28
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: Should Management review its decision to hand-off FWF
Replies: 62
Views: 7002

It seems that my post upset more than a few people and for that I apologize. I certainly did not intend it to upset anyone. I retract it in its entirety and wish you all the best of luck with whatever direction this effort takes.
by yielder
25 May 2009 11:34
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: finiki, the Canadian financial wiki
Replies: 124
Views: 32937

kcowan wrote:I am thinking about a section on retirement living. There is a section on expat and returning from the US. I am thinking about permanent snowbirding: 6 months a year in the US or Mexico, exporting a car, health coverage. Perhaps even permanent relocation issues (if I can get my buddy from Mazatlan to contribute). Travelling with animals.

Since these represent lower cost living alternatives after retirement, they can play a big role in financial plannning for some people.
Shakespeare,

How do I add this to the main page between Investment Management and Retirement Planning? I don't want to screw anything up by hacking.
by yielder
25 May 2009 09:45
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: finiki, the Canadian financial wiki
Replies: 124
Views: 32937

DenisD wrote:
Shakespeare wrote:How about something on frugal living and money-saving tricks?
For those who are retired, or nearly retired, and have to live frugally by necessity and not choice, finiki should have some information on low income government benefits - GIS, Alberta Seniors Benefit, etc. And some tips on maximizing these benefits. Possibly expanding on this post.
Great idea. Edit at will.
by yielder
24 May 2009 18:38
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: finiki, the Canadian financial wiki
Replies: 124
Views: 32937

Shakespeare wrote:How about something on frugal living and money-saving tricks?
Started

Perhaps others can chip in with frugal living and money-saving tricks????
by yielder
24 May 2009 17:07
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: finiki, the Canadian financial wiki
Replies: 124
Views: 32937

Shakespeare wrote:Tax minimization, for one.
Now I'm lost more than I was before. :lol:
Pickles wrote:Yielder, I'm not sure I agree totally with you about focusing strictly on topics that have a Canadian spin.
There was some discussion in the early days of finiki that it made no sense to do what Wikipedia had already done. We thought that it made sense to make the content relevant to Canadians since we could do a better job than Wikipedia.

We go so far as to say that finiki is an encyclopedia of financial subjects written from a Canadian perspective.
Plus, if it appears on finiki, the reader can assume the info is accurate in the Canadian context
Nope.
by yielder
24 May 2009 15:02
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: finiki, the Canadian financial wiki
Replies: 124
Views: 32937

Shakespeare wrote:How about something on frugal living and money-saving tricks?
How to put a Canadian spin on universal topics?????????
by yielder
24 May 2009 09:57
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: finiki, the Canadian financial wiki
Replies: 124
Views: 32937

What would you like to see included in finiki?

Many of you have said that you don't feel qualified to add to/edit finiki content. Some have expressed concerns about learning wikispeak.

I suspect though that many of you have subjects that you'd like to know more about.

So fire away and we'll see what we can do.

Remember that finiki has a Canadian orientation and is not Wikipedia. Search Wikipedia first before you make a suggestion. If it's covered there, it's highly unlikely we'd cover it in finiki unless it had a Canadian aspect. As an example, Wikipedia covers preferred shares but finiki covers preferred shares in a Canadian context.
by yielder
23 May 2009 11:53
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: Should Management review its decision to hand-off FWF
Replies: 62
Views: 7002

Norbert Schlenker wrote:Honestly, Mike, I don't think it's going to happen given the people who have been appointed or elected Regents
I agree but as long as Article IIa can be trumped by Article IXb, the possibility exists because Regents change and a fat offer is a fat offer. If you really want to insure that the site can never be commercialized or sold to the highest bidder, eliminate Article IXb. It is contrary to the original and still driving concept of this place.
I pledge on my personal honour that I will do everything possible to accommodate your request


I knew that without your saying so but I do appreciate your saying it. Thank you.
by yielder
23 May 2009 08:37
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: Should Management review its decision to hand-off FWF
Replies: 62
Views: 7002

ghariton wrote:
AltaRed wrote:Commercialization of the existing FWF is simply not an option.
...and is not being discussed.

George
Yep but I'll bet it would be if someone with more money than brains made an offer. Article IXb would trump IIa.

All that I'm doing is establishing, early on, a claim to intellectual property. I don't expect to have to exercise that claim but you never know............

Best of luck georges to you and all the others who have stepped forward.
by yielder
23 May 2009 01:22
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: Should Management review its decision to hand-off FWF
Replies: 62
Views: 7002

Lest I feel Norbert's verbal gom jabbar for posting after I have departed, I'll preempt him: Am I still around? No, other than possibly editing finiki where I get an RSS feed of changes. A couple of feed items suggested that major changes were afoot here. Some quick searches on a couple of key words in the finiki RSS change feed led me to the threads in Admin. This and free to a good home quickly gave me an overview of the changes. I haven't chewed much on the proposed changes and thus have no views. Even if I did, WADR, I wouldn't share them because I'm not part of FWF anymore. Notwithstanding, I do have and will continue to have very strong views on the commercialization or monetization à la blog world of this site, either now or in the f...
by yielder
17 May 2009 09:15
Forum: Community Centre
Topic: Beer in Picton 2009
Replies: 71
Views: 2157

Re: Beer in Picton 2009

Jo Anne wrote:My preference is Saturday July 11, but I'd also go for any other Saturday in July EXCEPT the 4th (busy day at work).

Anyone up for it?
Two months???? Hmmmmm. Should be doable. Joyce and I will be there, I think.Image
by yielder
09 Apr 2009 07:50
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Is there Danger in Dividends?
Replies: 62
Views: 8808

The one thing I can say is that investing requires confidence and conviction (but arrogance is dangerous). There are many ways to skin a cat but you have to have rock solid faith in your chosen methods, particularly if the market disagrees with you. What if the market is right and you are wrong? One only need read through the GE thread for comments on its dividend. Or look at the Reitman thread for comments on its dividend. I suspect that one of the hidden traps of dividend based investing is the potential trap posed by excessively high yield combined with a long dividend paying history which covers a period of no recession. As you know, I'm a dividend based investor and I abandoned ship over a year ago. It was my view that the recession w...
by yielder
07 Apr 2009 06:59
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Is there Danger in Dividends?
Replies: 62
Views: 8808

The aristocracy is under siege. Standard & Poor’s annual list of companies that increased payouts for at least 25 years is in danger of falling below 40 for the first time since 1992 after slumping profits forced executives to conserve cash. General Electric Co., Gannett Co., Pfizer Inc., State Street Corp. and U.S. Bancorp, all in S&P’s Dividend Aristocrats Index, cut payouts this year. S&P may be forced to loosen the criteria for joining the measure, which investors use to gauge the performance of stocks with the best dividend history, according to David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at the New York-based credit rating company. The shortfall highlights the challenge faced by investors in the worst recession since 1...
by yielder
06 Apr 2009 12:40
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Turning Inflation into Wealth
Replies: 10
Views: 3140

But this is the FINANCIAL Web Ring. Exactly. If any of the following apply to you, fix them before you even think about investing: Spending more than you make [/url] We should be addressing how to rearrange our investments so that they can weather a large increase in the inflation rate. We should also be looking at options that cope with inflation if our investments (ex RBBs) cannot cope with inflation. I would expect few to look at their expenses until they are forced to. But perhaps there are other alternatives? For higher yields? Sure there are if you want the higher risk that goes with the return. Before inflation kicks in, presumably spending will have to resume. Stock prices should recover. Perhaps having short term bonds/gics and or...
by yielder
06 Apr 2009 08:58
Forum: Financial News, Policy and Economics
Topic: Turning Inflation into Wealth
Replies: 10
Views: 3140

Springbok wrote:How should those of us living off our retirement savings prepare ourselves for the inflation that surely must occur?
If your gross income is reduced whether by inflation, investment performance, gov't action (taxation of trusts), shit happening, etc., you have to look at the other component of net income: expenses. I've expressed it as cut lifestyle which probably is poor phrasing. A more palatable phrasing might be be sensible, be frugal, look for bargains, economize, substitute, do-it-yourself make-it-yourself.
by yielder
02 Apr 2009 08:13
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: Power of Dividend Growth 2009 edition
Replies: 315
Views: 19823

Re: Yielder's Dividend Growth Reports

I suppose the data would still be relevant provided that it covered a suitably long time period, I don't think that it would. Companies change over time. The banks are a good example. Payout ratios have increased. They have moved from lending into brokerage, underwriting, mutual funds, and various other fee-based businesses. Thomson Reuters is another example having shifted from newspapers to electronic databases. For companies with strong, stable earnings growth, historical data is extremely helpful if it covers a recession. I have been increasingly concerned about using historical data because the last recession was in the early 90s and we have seen 15 years of debt fueled growth. Additionally, there has been an incredible amount of yiel...
by yielder
23 Mar 2009 06:42
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: Signal to Noise Ratio in Finance
Replies: 18
Views: 2225

scomac wrote:I'm not sure how it fits into the discussion to date,
Your comments don't specifically talk to Where Political and Religious Discussions Go Off the Rails but they are valuable nonetheless. You point to a different kind of signal-to-noise problem, an educational one, somthing that I hadn't thought about until you mentioned it. It's something to chew on. Thank you.
by yielder
21 Mar 2009 13:43
Forum: Now Hear This!
Topic: Karma - Bitching and Moaning
Replies: 267
Views: 19532

NormR wrote:Humm, I'm not sure
It's still in beta, Norm. You wanna write some code for us????? We could set up a test environment for you - Norm's Place. :lol:
by yielder
21 Mar 2009 12:11
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: There was a place to hide in the perfect storm...
Replies: 48
Views: 6113

Norbert Schlenker wrote:I can't trade mispricings, say to pick up 0.1% in yield, because I would lose multiples of that to capital gains tax.
Think of it as a positive. If taleb is on the other side of the option trade, what are the chances that Mr. Hymas is on the other side of your pref trade? :lol: At worst, you'll save the bid/ask and the roundtrip commission.
If you don't, 52 is still nearly young enough to get a reasonably good job.
Hmmm. Planting potatoes in my future? My back already hurts. :lol:
It's always good to have a basic, barterable skill. :wink:
by yielder
21 Mar 2009 07:03
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: There was a place to hide in the perfect storm...
Replies: 48
Views: 6113

I don't believe short bonds work for me. My wife and I are both 52, so we have a loooooong time horizon. Better than 80% of our portfolio is taxable so we have a strong preference for dividends. I'm not particularly good at ignoring volatility, so our asset mix is basically 50/50. To get that, I used (and still use) preferred shares but the shellacking late last year was very hard to take. Much of it has been reversed since, likely because a lot was tax loss selling, so I'm feeling more comfortable but by no means bullet proof. We continue to take these risks because the after-tax spread versus short term bonds is unbelievably high. (Yeah, yeah, I'm getting what I deserve. ;)) I would have looked at prefs if they'd been in the database. I ...
by yielder
20 Mar 2009 07:45
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: Russel Metals (Symbol-RUS)
Replies: 164
Views: 31113

yielder wrote:This one's getting a lot of attention in this dividends-are-good environment. Further to the cyclical comments upthread, look what happen during the last major recession in Canada:

Image
We're in recession so why won't this happen again????
by yielder
17 Mar 2009 18:32
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: There was a place to hide in the perfect storm...
Replies: 48
Views: 6113

BRIAN5000 wrote:
Using the human capital approach, a 50/50 portfolio is appropriate for someone around 50, say 45-55, if they were planning to retire at 65. (If someone were planning to retire earlier, it wouldn't be appropriate.)
:oops: Now you tell me. :lol: I think my planning was a little suspect.

I think I was thinking if I retired at 52 I'd need a 50/50 to have income to 85.
We did - 4 years ago.
by yielder
17 Mar 2009 08:41
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: There was a place to hide in the perfect storm...
Replies: 48
Views: 6113

Re: There was a place to hide in the perfect storm...

There's nothing wrong with your illustration. I was simply attaching some context to Norm's warning re: greater downside with more frequent data. It also highlighted the danger of looking at your portfolio too frequently. :wink: Absolutely. You probably don't even want to look at it monthly or even use monthly data to calculate performance or variability unless you plan to rebalance monthly. :lol: Am I missing something or are we talking posting past each other? Past each other. I missed the fact that you were using monthly numbers whereas I was using annual numbers. The difference though highlights the importance of looking at the right time measurement period. Using monthly stats is a bad idea unless you plan to rebalance monthly. Using ...
by yielder
17 Mar 2009 08:00
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Value vs Growth
Replies: 10
Views: 1015

Value vs Growth

Value trumps growth over the time period. Or does it? And for those predisposed to nitting or noodling, a variablity twist.

Have fun googling. :lol: