Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Who(m) do you trust with your money?

• A “financial advisor” has been arrested in Ottawa and charged with stealing the people’s money that he was supposed to be investing for. He declared bankruptcy and then disappeared, he has since been found and charged. This is why I am very leery of anyone I don’t know (and a few of the people I know) doing anything with my money. It’s MY money! Be very careful with you trust with YOUR money too.
• The Ottawa Citizen reported on irregularities at the Public Guardian’s Office for Ontario. There are evidently allegations of theft in this office, which is the office of the provincial government that manages (I believe) the moneys for folks who are mentally incapacitated or handicapped. If the charges are true, whoever is convicted should be flogged, because, if true, that is about as low as you can get (stealing from this group of people is Evil, especially if your job was to help them).
• We are finally retiring the refrigerator we have had for about 15 years which is going to cost a lot, but it will end up saving some money (I hope) too.
  • Currently our Fridge’s rating is 84 KwH/month so about 1008 KwH/year (and this rating was when this was NEW, it has been misbehaving lately, so I suspect it is using a lot more power than that).
  • The new Fridge’s rating for the year is about 550 KwH, so that means I should save about 400 KwH at least a year, which translate to somewhere around $0 per year on my electrical bill (I am hoping more).
  • My wife (through a friend) got a very good price so I am quite happy about the purchase, I am just unhappy about having to do the purchase, but it is rare that I am happy with a big ticket purchase.
• Gas prices have dropped in Ottawa to around 90 cents per liter which is good, given I have a large amount of driving to take care of in the coming weekends.

Enjoy your weekend!

This Week’s Posts

• How Cheap Are You?
• The Importance of Sell Stop: Limit Your Losses
• Stop Buy?
• Trading Activity and the Stock Market

As a stock market neophyte, I tend to not act on my “hunches” much, and I think in the long run that will be a very good thing. Most of us remember the “if I’d just bought Cisco in 1989″ or the “if I’d bought Mitel in 1980″, however, do you remember if you thought, “Boy that Bre-X looks like a good investment”? If you are honest you most likely thought that at some time (hopefully you didn’t act on it, and if you did, maybe you made a little money, who knows).

Stock market investment is comparable to legalize gambling a lot of the time, especially the way some folks try to do it (get in fast, get out fast, don’t do much research). If you are investing in companies or industries that you do not understand, you are asking for trouble (to paraphrase Warren Buffet). Now if all you know about is Renaissance History, then maybe investing is NOT where your money should be in the first place, however, most of us have a little more sophistication than that.

You must also understand how the stock market works, the tools that are available to you and that any and all money you put into the market can be lost (the chance of this is not the same for every stock, but money in the stock market is not real until you sell whatever you own). I had many friends who were Millionaires in the late 90’s on paper (i.e. the value of the stock they owned was worth that), and some were even foolish enough to borrow money on the basis of this, and when the stocks fell (remember I am in High Tech, so they FELL), a lot of them were in very dire circumstances. The cash and tangible assets you have (i.e. money in bank and safe bonds as well as your house) is what you are worth, what you have in the stock market is what you MIGHT be worth, if you cashed in at that very moment. It’s a subtle difference, but one you need to understand.

I am trying to say, you have some amazing resources on the net to research about stocks and how to trade and what to trade (I’ll tell you how, I am not telling you what, because I am an idiot when it comes to picking “winners” (I have been known to be able to pick the loser in a one horse race)). Check out these sites to learn more about what you should be trading, but learning and studying is the important part, after all it is your money, correct?

Good Investing Sites

• Canadian Capitalist
• Investor Geeks
• Dividend Guy
• Invest Intelligently
• Crunch Money

Related Stories

• Importance of Sell Stop to Limit Your Losses
• Stop Buy?