Derek Foster

Asset allocation, risk, diversification and rebalancing. Pros/cons of hiring a financial advisor. Seeking advice on your portfolio?
brucecohen
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Re: Derek Foster

Post by brucecohen »

augustabound wrote:He also fails to admit the book revenue is a part of his retirement nest egg.
IIRC he also fails to acknowledge that his wife works full-time. Basically he's a house-husband with a small business.
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Re: Derek Foster

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brucecohen wrote:
augustabound wrote:He also fails to admit the book revenue is a part of his retirement nest egg.
IIRC he also fails to acknowledge that his wife works full-time. Basically he's a house-husband with a small business.
In that BNN spot, Patricia Lovett Reid asks Derek if his wife works and his response was basically that they have five kids so yes she works.
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Re: Derek Foster

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Why do people even waste time on this character ? Seems that he panicked and bailed at the very bottom of the market.

Buy and hold investing guru sells all he has.."'I don't think we're close to bottom"

http://www.thestar.com/business/article/600754

Some guru :!:
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Re: Derek Foster

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DanH wrote:In that BNN spot, Patricia Lovett Reid asks Derek if his wife works and his response was basically that they have five kids so yes she works.
Sounds like he dodged the question. Is his wife gainfully employed outside the home for money, or not? Seems like the kind of thing that would be trivial to find out independently, why wouldn't he just give a straight answer, rather than creating yet another opportunity to be portrayed as a double-talking hypocritical lying phony?
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Re: Derek Foster

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kombat wrote:
DanH wrote:In that BNN spot, Patricia Lovett Reid asks Derek if his wife works and his response was basically that they have five kids so yes she works.
Sounds like he dodged the question. Is his wife gainfully employed outside the home for money, or not? Seems like the kind of thing that would be trivial to find out independently, why wouldn't he just give a straight answer, rather than creating yet another opportunity to be portrayed as a double-talking hypocritical lying phony?
I agree: the only reason that occurs to me to introduce this ambiguity in an answer would be to avoid clear admission.

We might not like the media to allow wriggling out from under pins like this but, alas, the media doesn't work for us ...and if they didn't relent on their guests they might find their supply of guests drying up in the future.
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Re: Derek Foster

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Descartes wrote:
kombat wrote:
DanH wrote:In that BNN spot, Patricia Lovett Reid asks Derek if his wife works and his response was basically that they have five kids so yes she works.
Sounds like he dodged the question. Is his wife gainfully employed outside the home for money, or not? Seems like the kind of thing that would be trivial to find out independently, why wouldn't he just give a straight answer, rather than creating yet another opportunity to be portrayed as a double-talking hypocritical lying phony?
I agree: the only reason that occurs to me to introduce this ambiguity in an answer would be to avoid clear admission.

We might not like the media to allow wriggling out from under pins like this but, alas, the media doesn't work for us ...and if they didn't relent on their guests they might find their supply of guests drying up in the future.
If you watch he clearly says his wife doesn't work. He then clarifies his answer to acknowledge the unpaid work many women do in a home with 5 children.

I found him likeable. He admitted his mistake of selling at the bottom. He didn't promote his put selling as an income strategy, but rather a way to save on a stock he would buy anyway. The only thing I didn't like was that he kept saying he was a millionaire. :roll:

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Re: Derek Foster

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newguy wrote:The only thing I didn't like was that he kept saying he was a millionaire.
A highly diminished appellation nowadays.......sheesh, I'm a millionaire, as are numerous people on this site, it sure doesn't mean we're rich.
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Re: Derek Foster

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newguy wrote:If you watch he clearly says his wife doesn't work. He then clarifies his answer to acknowledge the unpaid work many women do in a home with 5 children.
You're right - thanks for the polite way of saying WTFV first :wink:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=WTFV
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Re: Derek Foster

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newguy wrote: If you watch he clearly says his wife doesn't work. He then clarifies his answer to acknowledge the unpaid work many women do in a home with 5 children.
newguy
Then he's not telling the truth. I have a friend who is friends with him and his wife. My friend says his wife works, or at least she was a few months ago the last time I asked. Frankly, I trust my friend to tell the truth more than I do Derek.

I don't know what she does for work. Perhaps she's a teacher, in which case Derek could claim she doesn't work because it was summer when he gave the interview?

In any case, I think Derek is slicker than oil. He's a great salesman, but little more than that. I have no idea if his on-camera persona is genuine or not, but it's great at selling books which is his true job. At one point, he admitted he was making six-figures selling his books. That doesn't sound like retirement.
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Re: Derek Foster

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bones1 wrote:Then he's not telling the truth.
Always a possibility, but there was no ambiguity.

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Re: Derek Foster

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newguy wrote: If you watch he clearly says his wife doesn't work. He then clarifies his answer to acknowledge the unpaid work many women do in a home with 5 children.
newguy
Apparently, she has been very busy just being pregnant. And if she's worked a bit between pregnancies, she might be earning a fair living on MAT leave. According to the "about the author" blurb that goes with the 2005 review of Stop Working ( Chapters Indigo ), he had 2 children in 2005. Now, he has 5.
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Re: Derek Foster

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Jo Anne wrote:Apparently, she has been very busy just being pregnant. And if she's worked a bit between pregnancies, she might be earning a fair living on MAT leave.
Excellent point. If she is a teacher, does anyone know how much time they get off for preventative leave + maternity? My gf got 2 years (health care in Qc).

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Re: Derek Foster

Post by augustabound »

IIRC, he has always said she works part time.
But it sounds like she works more than a full time job at home.
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Re: Derek Foster

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augustabound wrote:IIRC, he has always said she works part time.
But it sounds like she works more than a full time job at home.
Whatever. The question is, does she bring income to the family? I think the answer has always been "yes", unless it has changed very recently. In any case, between his wife's income and Derek's book income, the claim that he "retired at 34" is total B.S. And after that ridiculous claim, I simply can't believe anything else he has to say. He may or may not be telling the truth, but I put no weight in his claims.

It's a shame the media don't force him to be more forthcoming. I also have little faith the media will actually do their job.
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Re: Derek Foster

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If I could get the wife a job and spend my time doing what I enjoyed doing, when I wanted to do it, I think I’d be quite content. :)

Actually that’s what I do, except the wife doesn’t work. But then I’m retired. Well maybe not because I have to manage my investments so that I have income. But then it’s something I enjoy doing. Damn maybe I’m not retired after all.:?

Maybe we gotta define being retired. :wink:
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Re: Derek Foster

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deaddog wrote:...Maybe we gotta define being retired. :wink:
I like to define retirement as not spending any time each day in the expectation that such time will result in net financial gain to our assets. Thus authors/artists are gainfully employed. So are proprieters of art galleries. So are freelance writers. As are many bloggers. So are people who work at making money on ebay or craigslist.

This is distinct from not pursuing a regular income-producing endeavour such as going to work. I think many DIY investors (not passive index investors) are gainfully employed. And there is nothing wrong with that. But they are not retired except from the work-a-day world.

DIL ran a successful day care center out of her basement when her kids were young. I never considered her non-working. When they grew up, she returned to teaching.
For the fun of it...Keith
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Re: Derek Foster

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kcowan wrote:
deaddog wrote:...Maybe we gotta define being retired. :wink:
I like to define retirement as not spending any time each day in the expectation that such time will result in net financial gain to our assets. Thus authors/artists are gainfully employed. So are proprieters of art galleries. So are freelance writers. As are many bloggers. So are people who work at making money on ebay or craigslist.

This is distinct from not pursuing a regular income-producing endeavour such as going to work. I think many DIY investors (not passive index investors) are gainfully employed. And there is nothing wrong with that. But they are not retired except from the work-a-day world.
I think DIY investors are retired as long as they aren't doing it because they need the extra income, or with an expectation that they're making extra money from it (compared to passive investing or using a financial advisor). It might be just a hobby for them (or gambling!).

I think you can "work" in retirement, as long as everything you do in that "job" is for fun and not for needed income, and you can walk away from it anytime you want and return to it anytime you want. A hobby-author can be retired.

Derek is not retired, because he is dependent on his income source (and his wife's), he is writing specifically to make a profit, and he can't just walk away from it at a moment's notice (i.e., not ship any books to people that ordered them, because he wants to take a 6-month break or something). He fails the "retirement" test in every way.
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Re: Derek Foster

Post by Flights of Fancy »

meh. I seem to recall he also suggests keeping your taxable income low so you can maximize the amount you get from the Canada Child Tax Benefit, a form of social programs arbitrage, I suppose.
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Re: Derek Foster

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It's called "gaming the system". :roll:
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Re: Derek Foster

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Flights of Fancy wrote:meh. I seem to recall he also suggests keeping your taxable income low so you can maximize the amount you get from the Canada Child Tax Benefit, a form of social programs arbitrage, I suppose.
Kinda hard to do with grossed up dividend income.

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Re: Derek Foster

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From an old G&M article:

His family gets by on about $30,000 a year, drawn from several sources: dividends from a six-figure investment portfolio of blue-chip stocks and income trusts; rental income from a condominium in Ottawa; and the monthly Canada Child Tax Benefit, which is geared to low-income families with children. (His monthly CCTB cheque totals about $470 for two kids.) His wife also has a part-time job at a local ski hill.
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Re: Derek Foster

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Flights of Fancy wrote:His family gets by on about $30,000 a year, drawn from several sources: dividends from a six-figure investment portfolio of blue-chip stocks and income trusts; rental income from a condominium in Ottawa; and the monthly Canada Child Tax Benefit, which is geared to low-income families with children. (His monthly CCTB cheque totals about $470 for two kids.) His wife also has a part-time job at a local ski hill.
But at that level of income his gross up would kill him because of the ~70% marginal rate. I'm not saying he didn't do it, just that there might have been better alternatives. More of a warning to low income families that dividend income isn't as low tax as it is for singles earning around 50k.

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Re: Derek Foster

Post by Flights of Fancy »

I haven't worked it out, but presumably his dividends are only a portion of his realized income in any given year - enough to generate $470/month in CCTB for two kids.

Using a figure of $30,000 of taxable income (and today's CCTB values), a family with two kids under 18 would get about $500 monthly in CCTB and NCBS (as well as $200 in UCCB).
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Re: Derek Foster

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Flights of Fancy wrote:Using a figure of $30,000 of taxable income (and today's CCTB values), a family with two kids under 18 would get about $500 monthly in CCTB and NCBS (as well as $200 in UCCB).
But now add $100 in dvidends grossed up ~40% and a 70% marginal rate (of benefit reductions including GST + PST rebates) and you'll see he actually loses money from that dividend. Adrian showed a similar Ontario calculation somewhere. For Qc. this is true.

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Re: Derek Foster

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bones1 wrote:I think you can "work" in retirement, as long as everything you do in that "job" is for fun and not for needed income, and you can walk away from it anytime you want and return to it anytime you want. A hobby-author can be retired.

Derek is not retired, because he is dependent on his income source (and his wife's), he is writing specifically to make a profit, and he can't just walk away from it at a moment's notice (i.e., not ship any books to people that ordered them, because he wants to take a 6-month break or something). He fails the "retirement" test in every way.
That's a good point, because even he could make the twisted case that writing is his hobby, he's also a publisher, marketer and shipping clerk, all in an effort to maximize his income. If I remember well, he is self-published, and ships the books from his home office. A quick peak at his website confirms that.
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