Search found 16228 matches

by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 21:03
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: Dying Broke - Annuity or 4% rule?
Replies: 65
Views: 6874

But he does provide something that can be plugged into Excel
My spreadsheet for that was already linked upthread. http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kbetty/ruin.xls

What I would suggest, however, is something different (although iterative). Once a year, say, estimate how much income you will need for your "nut" above what is provided by current pensions, CPP, etc. The check annuity rates to estimate how much you would need to purchase an annuity to satisfy those needs. As long as your funds are well above that level, defer purchase of an annuity. Recall that the longer you wait, the higher the rate, and therefore the less capital required.
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 20:05
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: Dying Broke - Annuity or 4% rule?
Replies: 65
Views: 6874

Milevsky has some (very complex) papers on when is the optimum time to annuitize.
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 19:03
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: housing BUST
Replies: 1957
Views: 241163

New home sales, prices tumble again in U.S.
“It looks like the floor fell out of the housing market in December,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com. He said the current slump is already on par with the deep housing downturn of the 1980s and could end up being the worst in the post Second World War period.
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 15:17
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: Preferred shares 2008 and earlier
Replies: 636
Views: 133618

You may want to look at split share preferreds
Split-shared preferreds with separate capital and dividend shares have a particular problem when prices are low: investors will buy the capital shares for leverage, and then sell them for capital gains. This can result in a very large forced retraction of the preferreds on the annual retraction date. So suddenly 1/3 (or more) of your shares get called.... :cry:
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 14:26
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

syndey2 wrote:you did indicate approximate costs, in your calculations.
Although everybody's circumstances will be different, I found the $800 estimate for house repairs and maintenance to be pretty low. I'm sure I spent half that last year in little things I didn't include in my $4.7K sprinklers+landscaping+kitchen floor subtotal (like lumber and a gate kit for building a new side gate, lumber for patching the fence, stain for the fence and gate, lumber and trellis for putting up more trelliswork, additional weatherstripping around the doors, etc.)

Come to think of it, I'm sure I don't want to do that stuff when I'm over 70!
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 14:00
Forum: Community Centre
Topic: payments while travelling.
Replies: 41
Views: 874

I take my laptop with me when traveling. In Mexico, at the internet cafe I was using, one lady had plugged her own laptop into the router, with the permission of the cafe owner, replacing one of the cafe systems. I didn't bother doing that because I wasn't doing anything that needed high security (although I did transfer my Yahoo stock quote download to a thumb drive for later reading on my laptop).

The hotel I use in Hawaii has Ethernet lines to each room; I just plug in the laptop and access secure sites (like banking or brokerage sites) when necessary.
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 09:30
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: Dying Broke - Annuity or 4% rule?
Replies: 65
Views: 6874

I notice that the link Shakes provided is for NON-registered annuities
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/my_money/rates/ provides the other rates. I'll add it to the link.
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 09:11
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: BCE (Symbol-BCE)
Replies: 1859
Views: 286286

BCE deal no slam dunk
Lawyers familiar with public policy feel the structure proposed by Teachers' may have to be altered in part because of the difficulty of complying with the slew of regulatory and ownership issues involved.
by Shakespeare
28 Jan 2008 08:56
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: REITs are real estate. Houses are real estate. REITs=Houses
Replies: 45
Views: 3956

Individual landlords put in a lot of labour and it's untaxed
Right now there's a 6" snowdrift covering my driveway - and it's 30 below.

%$#@*&&!
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 22:15
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: For BEARS only.....
Replies: 94
Views: 12697

Well, at this point the Asian markets are down a couple of percent again.
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 15:14
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: Dying Broke - Annuity or 4% rule?
Replies: 65
Views: 6874

The annuity still seems like a better deal to me, since would prefer to have the extra money earlier in retirement There's nothing that says you have to withdraw 4% continuously. I'm pulling above 5% this year and expect that to drop below 5% and then to about 4% as first CPP and then, in five years, OAS kick in. It may cost me an extra ~7% in capital up front to do it that way. Try http://www.telusplanet.net/public/kbetty/ruin.xls for an alternative calculation. Using my current withdrawal rate and no allowing for future reductions, my historical volatility of 7%, and a lower-than-historical return of 6%, I still get a probability of ruin of below 10%. W. Bernstein has pointed out that, based on history, a probability of less than 20% isn...
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 14:16
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

Builders should offer models
Builders do. But I bought a 20-year-old house because it had the features I needed and was affordable. It turned out to be a bi-level; if an outdoor ramp was added, it would have to be at the back entrance.

Even so, for a single person, at some point either a live-in housekeeper or moving to assisted living may be necessary.

Added: the biggest reason for not buying a condo was "no-pet" bylaws. Nobody is going to tell me I have to put my little buddies up for adoption. :evil:
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 12:15
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

I know of some retirees from my former employer that have moved from home ownership to apartment as they grew older.
Even a small house may become too much as one ages. I have eight steps from the entrance to the living room. If I'm still kicking when they become too much, I'll have to move.
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 10:47
Forum: Stocks, Bonds, ETFs, Funds, REITS and More
Topic: Any screaming buys besides financials?
Replies: 49
Views: 6978

I have added small positions in RioCan, HR, and Calloway.
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 09:46
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

we need a duplex
A small house with a finished basement can, if set up properly, be essentially an up/down duplex. [Mine is essentially that way, with the basement unused. I could rent it out, but don't need the money and don't need the hassles.]
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 09:21
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

my rent is significantly more than you paid...
I haven't checked, but I think rents have gone up significantly here in the past couple of years.

However, note that I was in a one-bedroom apartment. I'm single and have lived in one-bedroom apartments for over 30 years in total. I don't know if a married couple could tolerate something that small....
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 09:09
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

I thought for sure that having a house paid off, would be better than coughing up rent
My figures, for a small (960 sq.ft.) bi-level in middle-class suburbia in a small city:

(2007 data)
$1810-property tax
$2659-power, gas, water
$2385-underground sprinklers
$1021-landscaping
$1362-kitchen floor
=====
$9237 total

(Even if maintenance costs are lower in future years it's hard to budget less than $2.5K, giving a total cost of $7K.)

In comparison, in 2004, for a one-bedroom apartment catering to "starters and enders", I spent $6K for rent + electricity (gas and water were included).
by Shakespeare
27 Jan 2008 08:08
Forum: Property: Owning, Renting, Managing, Investing and Mortgaging
Topic: rent vs buy home
Replies: 454
Views: 59837

for the less affluent, perhaps owning a small, inexpensive house may be the way to go if one is stuck with a smaller nest egg rather than the millions some will have.
My expenses have jumped about 20% when moving from a one-bedroom apartment to a small house - which, even though small, is, when taking the basement into account, three times bigger.
by Shakespeare
26 Jan 2008 12:13
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: RRSP Content - Questions
Replies: 232
Views: 42425

You have to check the tax statements of each REIT to see the breakdown. RioCan's is here. About half the income for 2006 was fully taxed. The remainder was tax-deferred.

The tax structure will not be affected in 2011.

The tax deferral is lost in an RRSP. However, the cash flow is boosted, which may be advantageous in an RRIF or LIF/LRIF; I am putting REITs in my LIRA (which I intend to LIF) for that reason.
by Shakespeare
26 Jan 2008 06:26
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: REITs are real estate. Houses are real estate. REITs=Houses
Replies: 45
Views: 3956

You can't both be right.
Correlations aren't stable.
by Shakespeare
25 Jan 2008 17:08
Forum: Community Centre
Topic: Disks versus flash
Replies: 12
Views: 272

I just got a 2G flash for $15 at Wal Mart, to back up my four-year-old 128M flash. The new one seems significantly faster.
by Shakespeare
25 Jan 2008 17:06
Forum: Retirement, Pensions and Peace of Mind
Topic: enough to live on
Replies: 785
Views: 135713

If your nest egg was nonreg and taxed at the dividend rate
If your nest egg is nonreg and you are drawing to zero, the income blend switches from mostly dividends to mostly capital gains over the life of the portfolio.
by Shakespeare
25 Jan 2008 16:42
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: How many have a personalized financial website
Replies: 12
Views: 935

I use Yahoo ca for my current stock portfolio because it lets me download prices in .csv fomat. I then use a macro to read them into the 1-2-3 spreadsheet that contains my historical data.
by Shakespeare
25 Jan 2008 13:24
Forum: Financial Planning and Building Portfolios
Topic: Assumed growth rates for RRSP
Replies: 8
Views: 970

I voted 6-8, but would have preferred 5-7 had that been available.

FWIW, the rate of return of my LIRA has been 6.91% since it was set up in June 1989. (My non-registered account, which is much heavier in equities and is actively managed, has obtained double-digit returns.)