2009 September | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

2009 Q3 Bloggers' Stock Picking Contest

Posted by Preet on Sep 30, 2009 | 8 comments

A few personal finance bloggers decided to participate in a friendly stock picking contest for 2009. The criteria was to pick four securities in equal dollar amounts listed on a Canadian or American exchange (not including derivatives) to just sit on for the duration of 2009 with no changes allowed. We are to provide updates every quarter and the contest ends on the last trading day of 2009. The initial prices were based on the closing prices of December 31st, 2008. Disclaimer My picks were pure swing for the fence plays – two of them were 300% leveraged ETFs, one was a 200% leveraged ETF and the fourth was a penny stock play. Leveraged ETFs only do well if the...

Secret Children

Posted by Preet on Sep 29, 2009 | 4 comments

I thought I would share a quick story today. Years ago I had sat down with a prospective client after having put on a seminar for a small group of investors. The investor and I had gone through the regular first steps of putting together a financial plan: we explored and defined his goals, got all the details of his current situation and I was about to leave to do the number crunching when he walked me to my car after the meeting only to make a confession. He hadn’t told me of one other goal of his: he had a secret love child who was almost 20 years old and he wanted to make sure that he received an inheritance, but didn’t ever want his wife to find out. At...

Planet Orange – An Attempt To Teach Young Kids About Money

Posted by Preet on Sep 28, 2009 | 5 comments

Without a doubt, pretty much everyone I’ve met thinks that society as a whole needs to do a better job (any job?) teaching our young ones about money in general. Throw in a financial crisis and education on money matters is more top-of-mind than ever. But where and when do you start? The earlier the better I say. Clearly the material taught has to reflect the life stage of the pupil, and since I have no kids and only recently starting hanging out with babies, I have very little working knowledge of how to effectively engage children. However, ING Direct has just launched “Planet Orange” which is designed as an interactive way to teach young kids (Grades...

A Lap Of The Blogs

Posted by Preet on Sep 25, 2009 | 7 comments

If you are new to WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com, every Friday (and occasionally lagging into Saturday like today!) I run a post called “A Lap Of The Blogs” which provides links to articles I found interesting and think that others may want to read for themselves. I also sometimes include some commentary on what’s going on in my personal life and a weekly “racing video” since my former life was in the auto-racing industry. The name “Lap of the Blogs” is in reference to “A Lap Of The Gods” which is an old video series which chronicled on-board footage of the world’s greatest F1 drivers lapping various racetracks from around the world. NOTE: you have to...

Even More Clarity on Vanguard ETF Taxation

Posted by Preet on Sep 22, 2009 | 4 comments

A well informed authority on indexing emailed me to offer some further insight into the taxation nuances of Vanguard ETFs. Without revealing the source, I can assure you that what follows comes from a real expert on the subject matter. For those who have missed it, you may want to read these related posts first: Vanguard ETFs have Different Tax Considerations that other ETFs, and Tax Efficiency of Vanguard ETFs Follow-Up. The claim that the activity of the investors in the Vanguard traditional index funds will cause adverse tax consequences for holders of the ETF class of shares has been raised before. However, this has yet to materialize and the proof is in the pudding....

Tax Efficiency of Vanguard ETFs Follow Up

Posted by Preet on Sep 21, 2009 | 2 comments

Last week I had mentioned that Vanguard ETFs had slightly different tax considerations than most other ETFs due to their unique structure (they are actually a separate share class of Vanguard index mutual funds.) Larry MacDonald from Canadian Business Magazine has added some more information to the mix in his most recent blog post. He even provides a short side by side comparison of the capital gains distributions of a traditional ETF and the Vanguard commensurate ETF. The differences are quite large in some cases/years. There were also some follow up questions on my original blog post, the answers to which may be of interest to other readers so I’m including it...

Maximize The Sale Price Of Your Home

Posted by Daniela on Sep 20, 2009 | 4 comments

Designer extraordinaire, and guest author Daniela Garritano returns and this time she is writing about Selling Your House For More. If you would like to secure her services, don’t be afraid to email her by clicking here. Take it away D… In my line of work, you never know what you’re going to find when you walk into someone’s home. I always admire my client’s for making a valiant effort to really improve the atmosphere in which they live. I know making a change can be hard. Much harder for some. But if you’ve made the fearless decision to sell your home, you can either call in a pro (ahem…) or read on for some proven tricks of the trade that can...