2008 June | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Jun 20, 2008 | 6 comments

Just a reminder to Feedreaders: if you can’t see pictures or videos, you can click on the title of the post at the top of your email to read the post in it’s original form on the website. From Around The Blogosphere… You always hear the advice that you should check your credit report yourself, but you’ll get it again courtesy of The Canadian Capitalist PLUS you’ll get instructions on how to do it. Now you have no excuses. The Quest For Four Pillars explains the ins and outs of the Canada Child Tax Benefit program. They even include a link to a calculator from the government that will help you determine what your benefit might be. Canadian...

An Interesting Fact About Private Equity

Posted by Preet on Jun 19, 2008 | 3 comments

I’m experimenting with a video blog entry today. The text follows below the video… Private Equity in it’s loosest definition is the ownership of companies that are, well, private. This would be as opposed to ownership in companies that are public – such as any company that is listed on your favourite stock market – which is a public exchange. Another way of putting it, is that if a company does not have shares trading on a recognized public stock exchange, it is a private company. Here is some interesting data about Private companies that you may not have known: Of the 171,606 companies in the United States with revenues above $10 million...

The Reverse Dispersion Equity Collar

Posted by Preet on Jun 18, 2008 | 0 comments

This is an advanced level topic (i.e. it may put you to sleep) The reverse dispersion equity collar is a strategy to reduce the cost of portfolio insurance through two main mechanisms: 1) Implementing an equity collar and 2) Putting option pricing theory to work in our favour through reverse dispersion. The Equity Collar First, let’s have a backgrounder on the equity collar. If someone wants to protect their portfolio from loss without selling out the portfolio (for example the investor has a large unrealized capital gain and only expects short-term market volatility), they can purchase put options. The put options gain in value if the portfolio falls and the gain...

Market Mavens

Posted by Preet on Jun 17, 2008 | 11 comments

Market Mavens Again taken from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: Market Mavens are people who truly enjoy helping others when making purchasing decisions. For example, if you were looking to buy a new car you may consult with a friend who is a ‘car-guy’ – who will tell you about all the features about the car you are considering buying. However, this is NOT necessarily a market maven. The ‘car-guy’ will talk to you because they like talking about cars, whereas the market maven will talk to you because they genuinely enjoy helping others and enjoy disseminating the information they collect to others solely for the purpose of their...

Price Vigilantes

Posted by Preet on Jun 16, 2008 | 1 comment

The Tipping Point is a very popular book written by psychologist Malcolm Gladwell which discusses the phenomenon of how ideas, products and behaviours can “tip” in explosive ways. Some examples he cites in his book are: the seemingly instant drop in crime in New York, the resurgence of Hushpuppy footwear, and how the book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood went from selling 15,000 hardcover copies but then slowly gained momentum until it “tipped” a year later into selling 2,500,000 copies. There are many very interesting concepts discussed in the book such as the Law of the Few, the Power of Context and the Stickiness Factor which Gladwell...

2008 Personal Tax Calculator

Posted by Preet on Jun 15, 2008 | 2 comments

This handy calculator is maintained by Ernst & Young and allows you to calculate your marginal tax bracket, tax rate on capital gains, dividends and interest for any province or territory in Canada. Updated for the 2008 tax year. Click here to use the 2008 Personal Tax Rate Calculator for Canadians

Your Personal Savings Rate

Posted by Preet on Jun 15, 2008 | 10 comments

Your personal savings rate is simply the percentage of your income that you put away for long term savings. There may be some debate as to whether you should use your gross income (before taxes) or your net income (after taxes) when making the calculation. For example, someone earning $50,000 per year has a gross income of $50,000 and assuming roughly $10,000 in income taxes payable will have a take-home pay (or net income) of $40,000. Again, your GROSS income is your income before income taxes and your NET income is your income after income taxes. If this person was putting away $4,000/year for long term savings then their personal savings rate is either 8% or 10%...