Preet | WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com

Mutual fund costs over time

Posted by Preet on Dec 19, 2011 | 29 comments

Mutual Fund Fees Over 25 Years… Ouch I put together a spreadsheet that will help people really quantify the effect of fees on a mutual fund over a long period of time for investors. It also shows you exactly how those fees are divvied up between your financial advisor, his or her dealer and the mutual fund company. You can make a side by side comparison of two different scenarios so you can see a fully advised, actively managed option versus a DIY, couch potato option, and everything in between. Here’s a screen shot (or download the spreadsheet here: The Real Impact of Fees on Most Mutual Fund Investors): Over 90% of contributions consumed by fees? In this...

Bloggers For Charity Final Update: Winning Bid of $5,000

Posted by Preet on Dec 18, 2011 | 0 comments

The day before the bidding closed, Concentra Financial placed a bid for $5,000. As winners, they will now have to send me a copy of their donation receipt dated between December 17th, 2011 and December 31st, 2011. After that, they have the opportunity to be a “blogger for a day” and I’ll run a guest post written by them on January 17th, 2012. Congratulations to Concentra, and many thanks to all the bidders.

On CBC’s The National tonight and an update on Bloggers For Charity

Posted by Preet on Dec 13, 2011 | 0 comments

Just a few quick notes: 1. I’ll be back on The Bottom Line Panel on The National with Peter Mansbridge on CBC tonight. Our segment (which is pretty lengthy at about 20 minutes) usually comes on at 26 minutes into the show. So about 9:26pm EST on CBC NN, 10:26pm EST on CBC Main. 2. The highest bid for Bloggers for Charity for this blog is $250 by Frank Restorick. Send me an email if you want to outbid him. You send the money to the charity of your choice, I give you a post on this blog to write your heart out. Click here for full details.

Friday Funnies: We bailout the banks to help businesses… right?

Posted by Preet on Dec 8, 2011 | 0 comments

Clarke and Dawe sketch comedy deftly critiquing the sentiment about bailing out risk taking banks instead of the businesses they in turn are supposed to lend to. Click here if you can’t see the embedded video.

Reader Question: Are MERs tax deductible?

Posted by Preet on Dec 6, 2011 | 3 comments

I received an email from a reader and thought I would share my response for everyone. QUESTION Preet: Are MERs eligible to claim as carrying charges on income tax return? I’ve been told they are not but I don’t understand why since they are an expense to the investor. Look forward to your answer. Thanks ANSWER As always, I need to remind everyone I am not a tax professional and you need to verify anything you read on this blog with your own professional advisor. Having said that, mutual fund Management Expense Ratios (MERs) are never tax deductible. This seems to be since income distributed by the fund to the unitholder is done after the fund has deducted...

Join me for a live, on-line discussion Thursday at Noon answering your Personal Finance questions

Posted by Preet on Nov 30, 2011 | 2 comments

Hi everyone, The Globe and Mail has asked me to answer questions non-stop for an hour starting tomorrow (today for email subscribers) at 12pm noon until 1pm (EST). So to be clear that is Thursday, December 1st. You can ask questions on anything money and personal finance related (budgeting, ETFs, kidnap insurance, mutual funds, life insurance, debt, credit cards, tax, wedding planning, etc.) and I will do my best to find links to other people who can add value. Occasionally I’ll chime in with an answer on the spot. If you’re lucky, it’ll be a right answer too. So click here to pre-register (just provide your email and you can get a reminder up to 15...

Interest Rate Swap Dealers and Comparative Interest Rate Differentials

Posted by Preet on Nov 28, 2011 | 0 comments

I had read an interesting paper a few years ago about how interest rate swap dealers take advantage of credit pricing anomalies to reduce the cost of borrowing for companies while still making money. I was reminded about it when I met a hedge fund manager over the weekend at a party who made mention of a similar strategy. What is an interest rate swap? The most basic interest rate swap is when you exchange a series of cash flows based on a floating rate interest payment for a series of cash flows based on a fixed rate interest payment. There are a few reasons you might want to do this. One might be because your company has a change in risk policy and wants to trade the...