This is where your finance takes place

Yup, another review of this personal finance best seller. Why would I bother reviewing something that has been read by a million bloggers and reviewed too many times? Simply because it worth it! Since I started my quest in the financial world, I keep hearing about this book and how good it was. Since I had nothing to do (does this really happen?), I bought the book and opened it. It took me two days to devour and it was absolutely delicious (the coffee and cheese cake or the book? I won’t tell you!).

I was kind of curious to see if this book could bring something more to my existing financial plan. Well it did! While The Rich Barber’s rules are fair and simple, I would like to add some TFB spices in the melting pot:

#1 The 10% rule

Pay yourself first. If there is one rule you need to remember, it is this one. Take an automatic withdrawal of 10% of your pay cheque, and invest it in mutual funds. There is nothing sexy with a “Pay Yourself First” plan and definitely nothing exciting about systematic investment. However, it works perfectly if you want to get 1M$ in 30 years. I basically pay less on my mortgage and use the Smith Manoeuvre for a good part of the 10%.

#2 Get insured

The very first time I had concerns about insurance was when we find out that my wife was pregnant of our first son. This is where I realize that a family needs proper coverage. On the other side, if you are all alone and have no dependants, there is no point of getting a huge insurance. Insurances have not been created to make people rich but to financially cover for the lost of an individual.

#3 Get a will

Then again, this is crucial when you have a spouse or kids. Nonetheless, everybody should have a notarized will and close family members and friends should be aware of where is your important paperwork.

#4 RRSP

Yikes, the 10% was not for my RRSP? No, the 10% of my income was for the vacation property, my trip to Greece and my brand new BMW. I still need to save more money into my RRSP in order to have a decent retirement income. Fortunately, I have a good pension plan at work so I don’t have much room for my RRSP contribution.

#5 Buy a property

If there was one thing that caught my attention from this book was the fact that, in finance, you are always better be the owner than the lender. Be the owner of your investment, don’t lend money to banks. Buy a property; don’t pay a rent to a landlord. You could technically rent and invest the difference; however chances are that you will do something else with this money!

#6 Be Frugal

This was a well debated subject in the book. Basically, if you follow the 10% rule and you contribute to your RRSP, budgeting and being frugal will not become the key to your financial freedom. This is a very good thing for me as I always have a hard time containing myself!

#7 Investments and taxes

There is a tight relationship between those two terms. The main question was the following: “are you better off paying your mortgage down or investing more money than your 10%?”. This is where something obvious hit me in the face: you are paying mortgage interest with after taxes money. Therefore, paying off your mortgage gives you a net saving of 6%. In order to make the equivalent return on the market, you must make 8,57% (after commission fees or MER’s) with your investments. Chances are that you are better off paying down your mortgage and invest the difference later on.

#8 RESP

Oh man! Do I have to put money aside for my kids too? Is this will ever end? In fact, the book suggests that you take your kids allocation and invest it into a RESP. This is quite simple and quite profitable.

I really liked the book overall because it is a really good recap of what I had learned so far. The things was that I could have learn all this reading the book in 2 days instead of taking 4 years to think, experiment and establish priorities in my financial plan!

 

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Work harder, get a promotion, buy yourself a nice house and the latest plasma tv and if you can’t afford it, there is always a financial institution on the corner of the street ready to lend more money. Many people have fallen into the deadly spiral of credit. For those who are, maybe it’s time to get in line with a debt elimination process and to get valid information on certain type of financing. This is where Get Loaned can help you out.

What is GetLoaned.com?

This web site has been created to provide internet users with valid information on different types of loan. For example, you can determine if you are eligible for a VA Mortgage or a FHA Mortgage. Those two financial products have interesting characteristics such as low interest rate. From my understanding, several people could have access to these types of lending but do not know that they are eligible.

What makes you want to visit this site?

If you are looking for other ways to get financing by paying low interest rate or for more flexible lending options, you may find what you are looking for at Get Loaned.

Since I am not American, I didn’t know about them. So I went through this web site with the curiosity of discovering other type of financing. The VA Loan for example, is available for veterans and may offer better lending condition than your current debts.

Are the resources really helpful?

While the information on the site is clear and seems to be valid (I’m not too familiar with American credit products), I was hoping to find a little bit more about credit but I will cover this topic later on.

What is interesting about Get Loaned is that you have a access to information and they are not trying to sell the loan. If you want to go further, they link to another website offering these products. In fact, there are absolutely no ads, buttons or banners on the site. Simple and shy links are placed here and there within the text.

Can improvements be done?

I would certainly start with the design. While is it clear and easy to navigate, I think we are missing something sexy. I am well aware that financing options are not the more glamorous thing on earth but this is exactly why we need some color or curves in the design.

There are a lot of other possibilities to be developed with this kind of website. First, they could write example of the benefits gained from VA loans or FHA loans with a “before and after” scenario. Second, they could try to have a similar template to what the mortgage company they are linking to. Please note that I used the word similar as doing an exact copy would mislead customer to think that it is the same owner that runs both sites.

Third, as I mentioned previously, I was expecting to find more information such as tips on how to manage credit. An article section where we can read additional information on specific topics should be created. Fourth, depending on the commercial link between the mortgage company and Get Loaned, they could also make a comparison chart with different lenders for the same products. It is always interesting for customers to see what is offered on the market and the difference from one institution to another.

Disclaimer: This was an honest but paid review. We did it because we think it is a great financial resource on the Web and our opinion has not been biased. We are now offering to review your website for a highly competitive price. If you wish The Financial Blogger to review your website, please feel free to contact us at thefinancialblogger (at) gmail (dot) com or visit our advertise section.

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For the past 5 years, the Canadian stock market has been sky rocketing for many reasons. We saw Canadian banks making more profit than ever and we also had several income trusts providing a great income solution until it was brutally stopped by the Conservative Party. But the major reason why the Canadian stock market jumped so high is linked to the price of resources. The Global economy was booming and was leaded by Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC).

Therefore, natural resources, especially energy resources, have been in high demand.

What is New Fuel Now?

I think that NewFuelNow.com was created based on this premise. It is a financial website offering information on energy stocks. They made a great break down of all the energy sources (even ones that I didn’t know it exists!).

The website also includes recent news about energy, articles on a specific topic (written by the website owner or contributors?), a huge glossary of energy terms and sections about the most known energy sources (petroleum, coal, natural gas)

What makes you want to visit this site?

If you are interested in energy stocks of if you want to follow this industry closer, you should definitely add New Fuel Now to your bookmarks!

You can find an awful lot of information about different type of energy and they were able to list an important number of stocks in each category. For example, if you think that Uranium is the next big thing, you can go under this section and look at all the stocks (in alphabetical order) that are related to this resource. They listed trading information (chart, high, low, variation, etc.) on every stock in their website.

Are the resources really helpful?

While the glossary and categories are well organized. I was hoping to get more info on each company. The information on each resource is well written, complete and interesting. It will definitely help you out understand the impact of each of them on our economy and the potential role they may play in the future.

I appreciated the commentaries as each article is going deep into a specific topic. While posts may seem a bit long sometimes, I can appreciate that you can’t just say “the price of oil will go down” and write 200 words on it. The energy sector is quite complex and requires time from the readers.

Can improvements be done?

I think the design is neat and make the surfing easy to do. If you don’t want to bother going on the site everyday for news, you also have the possibility of subscribing to their mailing list which is another great idea.

I noticed that there was a lag of a few seconds when you are pulling out the stocks chart on each energy category. It’s not a big deal but it would surely smoother the transition from one page to another if the charts could appear right away.

I think the next step for them would be to add a more detailed description of each company. While it would be a long process, it would definitely be a good thing to have. They could also decide to open a forum about the energy stock market. Creating a community would increase their website popularity and would encourage new ideas to emerge.

Disclaimer: This was an honest but paid review. We did it because we think it is a great financial resource on the Web and our opinion has not been biased. We are now offering to review your website for a highly competitive price. If you wish The Financial Blogger to review your website, please feel free to contact us at thefinancialblogger (at) gmail (dot) com or visit our advertise section.

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Further on my RRSP Series, I contact Preet from Where Does All My Money Goes to get a copy of his brand new RRSP Book. Since Canadian Capitalist and Four Pillars already wrote their review last week, I decided to postpone this Friday review today. Instead, I’ll be giving away one of his book on Friday! If you haven’t win CC’s contest, here’s your chance! Read further if you want to know how to participate to this contest!

Who is Preet?

Besides being the writer behind Where Does All My Money Goes, Preet is an investment executive (the title sounds great, isn’t?) affiliated with Scotia Mcloed. He has been in the financial industry for several years and his recognized among his peers.

What is the main idea?

The main idea was to create a unique resource in regards to the world of RRSP’s. There is not much information for investors that want to know more about this great financial tool. Therefore, Preet is coming with this very useful book, trying to compile every possible RRSP strategies. He finally came up with 41 things you can do with your RRSP’s.

The strategies in this book go from parking your RRSP in a money market account to hold your mortgage within your RRSP account and end up with what he calls the “Preet Principle”; a more sophisticated and more intelligent way of investing money.

What keeps you reading?

What I really like about his book is the “blog” format. Small chapters, easy to understand strategies with a smiley face at the end of the paragraph. I like the examples used in this book as it makes investing in a RRSP account easy and clear for everybody. While some chapters sound a bit basic, it is still a good refresh for everybody.

The strategies are increasing in complexity and level of knowledge as you are reading them. Therefore, neophyte investors can read the first 100 pages and the skilled investors can go directly to the second half of the book.

Are we going somewhere with it?

Definitely. The fact that this book was written thinking about new to more experienced investors at the same time give the opportunity to anybody that cares about his retirement to learn something new. It’s a great tool to increase your investment knowledge in term of RRSP’s. Hence you can apply the techniques or at least discuss them with your financial advisor. This would constitute a great point of discussion during your next meeting!

Overall, I really enjoyed reading The RRSP book. If you want to know what it’s all about, you can buy it at amazon.ca or participate to my contest!

Contest Rules

Preet agreed to give me a copy of his book so I can give it away to one of my readers. So here are the contest rules:

- Leave a comment with your opinion on RRSP’s (1 vote)

- Register to my RSS FEED (please send an email to: thefinancialblogger(at)gmail(dot)com to advise me) (1 vote)

- Create a link back on your blog to this article (1 vote)

The winner of the contest will be published on January 26^th in Saturday Financial Ramblings.

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Two weeks ago, I received a package addressed to Frugal Trader (from milliondollarjourney.com) but with my own address obviously. I opened it up and what did I find inside? The Little Book That Makes You Rich By Louis Navellier! Is is a sign of destiny? Will this book really going to make me rich? Before reading the book and writing this review, I asked FT if I could keep and he accepted. So I want to thank him for letting me reading this great book.

Who is Louis Navellier?

Forgive my ignorance but I had absolutely no clue who he was before opening his book. After reading the preface where he claims that this little pocket book will make money for money when I’m sleeping, I decided to do further research on the character. After all, one having such pretension must have a pretty strong background to back it up.

In fact, Louis Navellier has been in the investment industry for the past 27 years. He is one of Wall Street s renowned growth investors, with a track record of beating the market 4-to-1. Pretty impressive, isn’t?

What is the main idea?

The main idea of this book is to share an investment strategy (another one!). Mr. Navellier picked-up 8 main fundamentals that he and his team are evaluating on 5,000 stocks on a weekly basis. Here are the fundamentals:

- Positive earning revision

- Positive earning surprises

- Increasing sales growth

- Expanding operating margins

- Strong cash flow

- Earnings growth

- Positive earning momentum

- High return on equity (ROE)

While he walks us through his height fundamentals, he provides us with live example of stocks with charts and grids. For those who hate technical stuff, this book was written for you. Everything is well explained without going into the hardcore details of financials.

What keeps you reading?

Easy to read, easy to carry, easy to understand. This book is almost perfect! Have two kids, a MBA, a regular day job, a blog and other projects on the go… oops! I forgot my wife I don’t have much time to read. However, this book kept my attention from the very first page… but for the wrong reason: They spelled the author names differently in the foreword section (Louie vs Louis).

Seriously, this small book goes straight to the point with 10 pages chapters, explaining different financial concepts with an easy to understand approach. Reading this book was as great as drinking a nice bottle of wine: even though the wine making behind your bottle is highly complex, drinking it is a smooth an enjoyable process!

Are we going somewhere with it?

Hell yeah baby! In fact, once you have read the book (you can buy it online here), you can go on Louis’ website (www.getrichwithgrowth.com) and you will get a free access to his 5,000 stocks data bank. Each of them is rated according to his 8 fundamentals. Therefore, is it pretty easy for you to use your new knowledge combined with his information to pick the right stock for your portfolio.

Now that I am done reading the book, I’ll go ahead and try his strategy with a fake portfolio. Who knows, I might end up virtually rich?

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