Investing The 12-Minute Way (Revisited)

The 12-Minute Series was originally posted in 2012.

We’ve decided to republish it integrally because we believe it can still help as everyone aspires to make things better.

Let’s hope it stirs up the discussion and stimulates you to change the world 12-Minute at a time!

This article was originally posted on September 12, 2012

Keep It Simple

You should only use financial products you understand. So, stick to the basics. Complex and complicated products often only serve those who sell them.

Same goes for stocks, only invest in solid companies you know and understand.

In this great Internet/Information era, it’s relatively simple to get data on any public company. To stay effective, we recommend you only take 12-Minute when you first analyze a potential candidate for your portfolio or watch list.  

Avoid Wasting Money on Costly Mortgage Insurance

A few weeks ago, two people asked me questions regarding the same subject, their mortgage insurance; they were concerned and had some doubts about it.

My initial intentions on the matter were to quickly write about them while adding brief comments. I started my draft. But ideas kept coming the more I thought about it.

After a while, I finally decided to let my mind go on and freed up my pen (it’s more like my keyboard but you know what I mean); a «quick beef» post transformed into a much more elaborate article.

So here’s what came out of it. Hope you like it! 

The conversation I had with those folks reminded me of an Article I wrote back in 2010. Looks like the financial institutions are still singing the same old tune.

It was kind of late for them because it seemed like they already wasted a lot of money on these products, but as they say, better late than never.

With their permission, I will abort the outline of their respective situations. Afterwards, exposing my point of view, I’ll share with you 12 Helpful Tips about Mortgage Insurance.

Note that to protect their privacy, some figures have been altered and rounded up, irrelevant details may also have been omitted but the spirit of each situation was respected.

The Average Person Pays Too Much

First off, my neighbor (we will call him Joe) is renewing is mortgage soon and did not really know how much his mortgage insurance cost him so far.

Exhilarating Tax Time

I take advantage of a brief intermission in my day to tell you that last week; I took some time to file our taxes. It was kind of exhilarating as we are getting a huge tax return this year because of our Special Extra RRSP Contribution for 2015.

My old college teacher wouldn’t be proud of me as for him, getting a juicy tax return meant you lent your money to the governments for nothing. It certainly would have been better to arrange for smaller payroll deductions and get a smaller tax return afterwards. But I’m sure he would be lenient with me for once as special circumstances justify my oversight. The bottom line is that, in the end, we will have more money in our pockets.

We will use that substantial return to save some more in 2016 as all our main family projects already have been planned for. This will generate some kind of snowball effect: special savings in 2015 result in special tax return in 2016 which leads to even more savings in 2016 and so on and so forth.

For many years now, I’ve made it a point to file our tax returns myself. That way, I can understand all the implications and save as much as possible on unnecessary taxes; for example, applying all our family’s medical expenses only on my own tax return made us recover a couple hundred bucks again this year.