finiki, the Canadian financial wiki

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yielder
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Post by yielder »

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.
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Shakespeare
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Post by Shakespeare »

Copy two adjacent lines in the table coding.

Code: Select all

|-
| style="border-bottom: 1px solid MediumBlue" |'''[[Retirement Planning]]:'''<br /> [[Annuities]] ∙ [[Pension Plans]] ∙ [[Preparing to Retire]] ∙ [[Tax Deferred and Tax Free Savings Plans]] 
Insert the copies. Rename as necessary.
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kcowan
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Post by kcowan »

Arby wrote:
kcowan wrote: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).
Transition Financial Advisors has a very good website on snowbirding in the USA here. The menu items at the top of the page provide information on various topics of interest. The same company also has another website on permanent relocation to the USA here. For Finiki, you could link to information on these websites.
I went to these sites keenly thinking that we just saved a bunch of work in finiki but quickly discovered that these are commercial ventures who hint at the problem and then ask you to open your wallet.

How about a link to this one that does not violate the non-commercial nature of FWF?
For the fun of it...Keith
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Post by parvus »

Well, looks like there's a good summer's worth of gardening topics here: some pruning, some weeding, some grafting, some planting.

I have a little bit of gardening leave, as it turns out. So keep up the suggestions, but please contribute some seedlings to get us started. 8)
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen — a wit
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DenisD
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Post by DenisD »

yielder wrote:Great idea. Edit at will.
Maybe later on in the summer, if someone else doesn't do it first.
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Post by aerosmith »

Hi,

I have just started reading the pages in finiki and am learning a lot of stuff about investing. Thank you all for contributing and providing the information. One thing I would like to see is a link that would show all the topics expanded to the lowest level. Right now there is no such feature. So, if I want to preview all the categories under one main topic I cannot do this. Other thing that I have to comment is on the topic itself. Some contributors assume the readers to know certain terminology. For those I would request them to include a reference to a definition or please define the term at the end of the topic. In that case we readers need not have to search elsewhere for the definition.

Once again thank you very much for providing the finiki site.
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Post by Shakespeare »

One thing to remember is that a wiki isn't necessarily organized like a book and may, in fact, be hyperdimensional in organization due to multiple page links and overlapping categories. Nevertheless, on the main page, there is an all pages link which shows all pages and a categories link which shows all categories. These pages are automatically generated. There is also a manually-updated category tree that hasn't been updated recently; I'll try to update it in the next few days. The Google search buttons are also useful.

The glossary link at the bottom of the main page contains definitions and terminology.
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kcowan
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Post by kcowan »

The other thing to consider is that this is a work in progress and will always be somewhat messy because of that. Plus the authors don't know what people don't know. Maybe we need a novice volunteer (aerosmith?) to create links for words they don't understand.
For the fun of it...Keith
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Post by aerosmith »

now that is a big responsibility and will now force me to read more pages in finiki :-). I have no problem becoming a volunteer. But please don't expect too many changes from me. I will definitely make the pages better but cannot promise too much. Thank you for the offer.
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Post by aerosmith »

one more comment. The author of the pages provide direct links to web pages that are about three-four layers deep to the root. This is a problem and these pages tend to change/move quite frequently causing the link to be broken. Imagine this happening for about 100 finiki pages. All of a sudden we have a site with a lot of broke links (unless someone manually updates the links frequently). Instead I would suggest a search keyword which results in returning quite good results in a decent search engine. For example in the page to the icici bank there is a link to savings account rate. Instead of directly linking to the web page how about replacing with something like a search key word "icici savings account canada" the underlying link being "http://www.google.com/search?q=icici+sa ... unt+canada".
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Post by kcowan »

I think that is a reasonable tradeoff. It means an extra click all the time, instead of a direct click, and then a search and then another click when the external link inevitably breaks eventually.

Another possibility is to provide both links all the time. Try your luck direct then oops, backspace and click the indrect link?

e.g. Here are the ICICI rates(google).
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Post by aerosmith »

or more clearly e.g. Here are the ICICI rates (search using google).
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Post by kcowan »

aerosmith wrote:or more clearly e.g. Here are the ICICI rates (search using google).
I have often been accused of being a man of few words! :oops:
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Post by Shakespeare »

I have often been accused of being a man of few words!

Code: Select all

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Post by aerosmith »

I feel like a page for "Smith Manoeuvre" should be included. I have just stumbled across this move and reading a thread in FWF.
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Re: finiki: The Financial Webring Wiki

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Now that finiki, the Financial Webring Wiki has a more prominent place on the forum pages, you should know some more about changes that have been occurring behind the scenes.

Since finiki tracks Wikipedia (it's the same underlying software), it's important that we keep pace. We just updated finiki with a few new features that significantly improve the usability.

From the end-user perspective, Vector is now the default skin. A skin defines a look and feel for the MediaWiki interface, see Help:Skins - MediaWiki for more info. If you are using Vector, the search box in the upper right corner has changed. The size of the search box is smaller, but more importantly, now contains a real-time lookup. Just type in the first few letters of the article you are searching for and suggestions will be shown below. The sections in the left navigation bar are now collapsible/expandable.

For editors, or those who'd like to become editors, a significant improvement in the Wiki Editor has taken place, making it much easier to use. Before now, wiki editors used a toolbar that had small hard-to-read icons. Combined with the wikitext format, users tended to shy away from editing. Here's the new toolbar:Image

The toolbar will not only take care of the wikitext, it will pop-up a dialog box and help you with URLs or create tables.

For those who have thought about being a wiki editor but were afraid of the wiki's complexity, please reconsider. All contributions are welcome.
Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki New editors wanted and welcomed, please help collaborate and improve the wiki.

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Shakespeare
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by Shakespeare »

Last edited by Peculiar_Investor on 07 Feb 2014 07:04, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: replace old domain name with www.financialwisdomforum.org to reflect new domain name effective 19-Jan-2014
Sic transit gloria mundi. Tuesday is usually worse. - Robert A. Heinlein, Starman Jones
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by adrian2 »

Shakespeare wrote:http://www.financialwisdomforum.org/for ... 08#p450608

Investing on margin. Adrian2?
Kind of busy, right now, for starting a new topic from scratch. Much more likely to contribute to an existing (stub, if necessary) entry.
Last edited by Peculiar_Investor on 07 Feb 2014 07:04, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: replace old domain name with www.financialwisdomforum.org to reflect new domain name effective 19-Jan-2014
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Shakespeare
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by Shakespeare »

Sic transit gloria mundi. Tuesday is usually worse. - Robert A. Heinlein, Starman Jones
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by adrian2 »

Added some more to it.
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Shakespeare
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by Shakespeare »

Thank you. I don't use margin so can't fill in many of the details.
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by LadyGeek »

I don't use margin, either. To emphasize the risk, I moved a statement to the top of the page and made it a warning. I'm being bold here, feel free to undo or modify what I did.

The technique is to get the reader's attention that this could be harmful, and they should ask for help. Finiki is focused on new investors - they don't know what margin means (which is why they are reading this). It's important to provide guidance.

Consider doing something similar for hedge funds and leverage.

Ask in the forum and let them help you write the page. Offer to enter the info. It's how I created the Bogleheads wiki page for Leverage, see the "What is Leverage?" reference. (Wiki article link: Margin)
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by adrian2 »

Thanks, Lady Geek (BTW, my university degree is also in Electronics and Telecommunications, from the other U of T). The finiki article is taking shape.
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by LadyGeek »

You're welcome. I'm not familiar with Canadian investing, so I'm very hesitant to make changes - especially for an "authoritative" source.

Feel free to scan through the Bogleheads wiki and "borrow" anything that could be useful.

As stated previously, my approach is to read the material from a "new investor" perspective. Anything beyond "basic" stocks / bonds is flagged as an "advanced" investing topic (as I see appropriate). I'll put a notice at the top of the page that this is an "advanced" topic and new investors should get advice in the forum. There's a LOT to learn; the idea is to guide new investors on what's important and to help them recognize when they can get in trouble.

Asset allocation - very important to learn. Margin, not important (save for later, might not need it). Structured products - Stay away! (don't even think about it)
Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki To some, the glass is half full. To others, the glass is half empty. To an engineer, it's twice the size it needs to be.
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Re: What would you like to see included in finiki?

Post by Shakespeare »

Last edited by Peculiar_Investor on 07 Feb 2014 07:04, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: replace old domain name with www.financialwisdomforum.org to reflect new domain name effective 19-Jan-2014
Sic transit gloria mundi. Tuesday is usually worse. - Robert A. Heinlein, Starman Jones
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