Our Best Wishes

Wow! It’s already that time of year again! I can’t believe 2017 is almost a thing of the past...

Perhaps a sign we are not getting any younger, let’s hope it’s also an indication we are enjoying ourselves. Don’t know about you but for us, pleasant times always seem to go by much faster. And age kind of amplifies that feeling.

With big emotions, both good and bad, the last year sure still went by in a flash!

Enjoy Precious Time with Family and Friends

With a brand-new year already at our doorstep, we hope you can take a break from our hectic modern way of life and enjoy precious moments surrounded by family and friends.

Last year’s tumultuous experiences sure gave us an eye-opening perspective and renewed our focus to strive for a healthy balance life.

We are now more grateful and appreciate all we already have. We also savor our privilege of choice and cherish many possibilities to help others.

Have Faith and Dismiss Obscure Thoughts

New Star Wars movies always inspire us corny analogies and statements.

Luckily for you, this one will be quite classic and simple: « May the Force be with you! ».

We just love when a touch of Disney’s magic brings back Star Wars’ wisdom into the mix. We should be well served in the next couple years.

We will also have a great chance to experience the powerful Disney-Star Wars duo up close as we are going to Disney soon.

We look forward to sharing our magical venture with you in an upcoming post.

Meanwhile, let’s hope the Jedi in all of us can survive longer and won’t cave in to the sometimes-irresistible temptations of the dark side.

Photo Credit

Experience Living with Only 75% of Your Salary

Could you live with only three-quarters of your salary? Extreme savers may find this quite easy as they probably already save more than 25% of their actual income. But let’s face it; they are still exceptionally rare individuals.

Heck, many can’t even get by with their full revenue.

I’ve been experiencing it first hand myself for the last 2 years. As some of you might know, my working conditions allowed me to take a differed 6-month leave of absence in 2017 and to spread out income deductions over a longer period so I’ve been paid 75% of my salary since 2015.

So today, we’ll talk about financial and psychological implications of having your salary amputated and how my family and I fared with it. We definitely think the broad benefits are worth the hassle.

I’ve been doing it for real but everyone has the option to at least artificially implement it. For instance, by using pre-authorized transfers to automatically put aside a significant portion of their paycheck. It can be a great way to discover if you have the financial means but also the stomach to live with less money. If you prefer, gradually doing it could give you a chance to learn to slowly cope with it. 

Is Living with Less That Hard?

12-Minute Balance (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 May 12, 2012

Many believe that one of the most important keys to happiness is balance. Sadly, many lives equate to a never ending juggling act struggling in search of that so elusive concept.  

The 12-Minute Approach offers you simple yet powerful ways to achieve that so precious balance in your life.

Let’s hope that, by focusing on rhythm, order and harmony, these 12-Minute Ideas help you strive toward that balance so essential to your happiness and well-being.

Equal Balance between Needs and Activities

In order to stay happy yet still be effective, your life should be equally balanced between your needs and your activities.

Preparing to Take Assets Out of RRSP

Early in the year, we talked about taking time to think and analyze the possibilities surrounding future withdrawals from our investment accounts. In the initial stage, our reflection concentrated on questions like how? And how much? At this point, we will sadly report that our efforts have not significantly paid off. We have not demystified the 4% rule yet. Neither did we develop or stumble upon a better alternative.

All that analysis still eventually oriented us towards the when?

Too Much RRSP May Equal Too Much Tax

As a result, we recently discovered our RRSP value may be too high and are now considering withdrawing money from it sooner than expected. In that context, it looks like we will deregister an important portion of our RRSPs to avoid future tax problems. Essentially, we discovered that too much money in our RRSPs may result in paying a lot more tax later in life or having a big tax bill attached to our heritage, mostly destined to our lovely daughter.

We will admit having too much money is a good problem to have. But it’s important to start taking measures now to possibly avoid wasting an important chunk of it later. With retrospect, investing more in TFSAs instead of RRSPs would have been a better choice, from a fiscal standpoint at least. Fortunately, it’s not too late for some type of gradual rebalancing.

Our RRSPs grew up faster with larger contributions and higher returns than projected. In that regard, part of the credit can be attributed to our successful DIY investing approach.

Changes in our pension plan conditions also greatly impact our future financial situation. Unfortunately, planning for an early retirement kind of goes against the grain. Consequently, we made very conservative assumptions during the last round of negotiations as initial talks amputated pension benefits by almost half for early retirees like us.  

The final agreement was better or less bad than anticipated, we will only lose about 10% of our retirement payouts. Again, this will probably end up generating additional taxable income later.

With all those factors combined, the perspective of paying more tax during retirement than in active life unexpectedly becomes very probable.

As an example, you can see from the Leaving Money in RRSP Chart that, just a 100K$ portion accumulated in your RRSP today, at 45, could generate a nasty tax bill of more than a million bucks 40 years down the road. RRSPs can be a great tool to avoid paying taxes now as it differs your fiscal obligation. But if your ultimate tax rate is high like in this example at 50%, you might end up paying a big chunk of that deferred tax back.

Now that we know we are going to take money or stocks out of our RRSPs, it’s time to explore related technicalities.

Gradual Transfer to Tax-Friendly TFSA

Let’s briefly get back to how much? Projecting income and corresponding tax levels over an extended period is far from exact science. You can still have a general idea of fiscal implications and take actions that should improve the situation.

Portfolio Update November 2017

Once again, it’s time for another update of our DIY Portfolio. As usual, our following update can be expected in about 12 weeks, in February 2018.

Meanwhile, you can have a look at previous portfolio updates here:

Portfolio Update August 2015

Portfolio Update November 2015

Portfolio Update February 2016

Portfolio Update May 2016

Portfolio Update August 2016

Portfolio Update November 2016

Portfolio Update February 2017

Portfolio Update May 2017

Portfolio Update August 2017

The weak US dollar is still hurting our DIY Portfolio a bit, but the bleeding at least stopped in early September and we have seen signs of a meaningful turnaround since. As we talked about before, we can still expect more interest rate hikes from the Bank of Canada that should put additional pressure on the relative value of US vs CAN dollar.

Wacky Golf Fact (Revisited) – Getting Lost in a Bunker

The Wacky Golf Fact Series was originally posted in 2016.

Our initial plan was to add new articles to this fun series but the Rules Modernization proposed by the golf authorities caught us of guard.

Even though these new rules won't be in effect till January 1st 2019, they still propose major changes and will completely revolutionize they way we play golf and enforce the rules. Don't get us wrong, we welcome these changes and they should be great for golf! We are just not ready to talk and write about them yet. 

So you will note that our article still refers to the actual and soon to be thing-of-the-past golf rules.

This article was originally posted on December 18, 2016

Everyone has heard about getting lost in the desert. In some countries, it’s even considered a common occurrence, especially when a violent sand storm is raging.

But have your ever heard about getting lost in a bunker (or on the beach as some say)? Not in a military bunker but rather a golf bunker a.k.a. a good old sand trap!

Many clumsy or impatient golfers lose a lot of strokes in them...but actually losing your ball in a bunker is rare.

Beware these special bunkers that seem to act like quicksand and swallow your ball.

Housekeeping 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 April 12, 2012

Living in a clean environment can contribute to your well-being and happiness but proper housekeeping takes time.

So, here are some 12-Minute Ideas to keep your house neat and tidy. Hope this helps make your home more peaceful, relaxing and inspiring.

How to Manage Your DIY Portfolio While on Vacation

Earlier this month, we talked about our 21-Day Summer Trip Around the UK and many seem to wonder how we are able to take care and manage our DIY Portfolio while enjoying rather extensive vacation.

So, the big question this time is what do we do with our holdings when we get away from home for 3 long weeks?

Those who know us already anticipated our short answer which simply is: nothing different!

For starters, we never take a lot of time to manage our portfolio and sure don’t have to monitor it on a day-to-day basis. We normally take only a couple minutes each week to look at our holdings and set up upcoming operations.

If we are available, we usually like to manually process our stock buying and selling. From time to time, we still must rely on automatic orders like when we know we will be busy working. Programmed orders can always be bypassed if more time becomes available afterwards.   

We just treat trips or vacation as completely booked periods. Three fully-occupied workweeks would be handled the same as three weeks of vacation.

So, before our summer trip, being on a buying mode, we simply set up buying orders on selected stocks from our Watch List that would trigger at specific thresholds. Using our own tool, we typically like to buy stocks that would reach a Dip Factor of 3, 3.5 or 4. For your information, no orders were triggered during our latest trip.

With internet now accessible from almost anywhere, if necessary, we could access our online brokerage accounts and input transactions while on vacation. Then again, privacy may be an issue. One more reason we prefer not to.

A quick anecdote. We were in the US a couple years back when markets plunged because of one of the debt-ceiling crisis. US media was talking about it all the time. Being there, we felt the pressure even more and were tempted to consider selling some of our stocks. We were fulling invested at the time and we had no buying or selling orders set up. Being on vacation with limited internet access, we had no way to manually input transactions on our autopilot portfolio. In the end, we were very fortunate we had no opportunity to give into the panic because markets went back up a few days later after the crisis was resolved.

We are very proud to limit time we spend managing our DIY Portfolio. Our conservative passive style of investing sure helps us accomplish so. It also allows us to always enjoy our vacation a little more!

Photo by Lady C

Our 21-Day Summer Trek Around UK

Over the years, going on trips every now and then has become essential to our family life. I must admit that traveling projects are somewhat against my nature, being more an appreciate-what’s-around-the-house kind of guy. Thanks to my girls (or women should I now reluctantly say) and their irresistible influence on me, we still manage to plan noteworthy trips on a regular basis.

After the fact, I’m usually very happy that I went along with their mad traveling desires. In the end, it’s always interesting to discover and experience different cultures and points of view. It also makes us appreciate even more what we already have here around home sweet home.

This summer’s trip around the United Kingdom was no different.

So, without further due, let us share some thoughts and impressions of our exhilarating summer trip around beautiful cities and countryside of the UK.

LONDON

Our initial stop was the great city of London. And what a stop it was! 

Wacky Golf Fact (Revisited) – Unsuspected Members of the Thieves Guild

The Wacky Golf Fact Series was originally posted in 2016.

Our initial plan was to add new articles to this fun series but the Rules Modernization proposed by the golf authorities caught us of guard.

Even though these new rules won't be in effect till January 1st 2019, they still propose major changes and will completely revolutionize they way we play golf and enforce the rules. Don't get us wrong, we welcome these changes and they should be great for golf! We are just not ready to talk and write about them yet. 

So you will note that our article still refers to the actual and soon to be thing-of-the-past golf rules.

This article was originally posted on November 18, 2016

When you play golf, you’re bound to see animals here and there. Some are beautiful, others less so; most may seem the shy-quiet type, yet some rare ones are proud and loud. Most golfers simply view them as innocent by-standards. But stay alert because, when you least expect it, some of these poor creatures may sneak up on you and literally try to get a piece of the action. Watch out before they reach their ultimate goal: to steal your precious ball and ruin your game!

12-Minute and Your Schedule (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 March 12, 2012

The 12-Minute Approach can be applied tons of ways to your schedule. We will submit you some ideas here but the possibilities are almost endless.

Why 12 Minutes

Using the 12-Minutes Approach will allow you to be more efficient; doing something different only 12 minutes every day can produce surprising results.

If you break down your day in 12-Minute Periods, you’ll find that there are 120 such Periods:

1 day = 24 hours x 60 minutes =

24 hours x 5 x 12-Minute = 120 x 12-Minute

Ideas to Deal with Rising Mortgage Rates

On September 6^th, the Bank of Canada implemented its second rate hike of the summer. We must assume it’s only the beginning as the Canadian economy has been doing quite well. Essentially, rising interest rates is the main option for the Bank of Canada to keep inflation under control in booming economic conditions.

As a result, Canadians can expect borrowing costs to get higher. In that context, the principal preoccupation of many house owners is having to pay more for their mortgage.  

So, what can we, simple mortals, can do about it?
  

Stay calm as you probably have time to adjust

Stay calm! There’s nothing critical yet. First, significant hikes won’t happen overnight and will be gradual. Second, effect may not be that immediate so you still have time to prepare for adjustments. Online mortgage calculators can allow you to anticipate eventual increase of your payments.

For very popular fixed-rate mortgages, payments won’t be affected till renewal. Many variable-rate mortgages involve fixed payments also only affected at renewal. You’ll end up paying more interest and your balance will accordingly be a little higher.

Keep Saving and Investing Simple

In this day an age, we have access to an impressive variety of financial products. It sometimes feels like every time you blink, the financial industry comes up with a new gimmick promising you to astonishingly make your money grow faster or to protect it from any danger.

But, as we will explain today and contrary to what many suppose, you probably can successfully save and invest simply understanding just three main financial vehicles. 

No Need to Become a Financial Wizard Capable of Grasping Every Intricacy

For most people, all that financial mumbo jumbo can be overwhelming and apart from inevitable death, the only thing guaranteed is probably that they, the financial institutions, will make a big chunk of money selling these. And most of the time, it will be at the expense of the consumer…the ever poor consumer.

On top of it, almost nobody really has spare time to manage and invest money during busy workdays. And we are not even talking about developing the necessary skills to do so.

Wacky Golf Fact (Revisited) – Hitting Forward Tee-Markers with Hedgehopping Drives

The Wacky Golf Fact Series was originally posted in 2016.

Our initial plan was to add new articles to this fun series but the Rules Modernization proposed by the golf authorities caught us of guard.

Even though these new rules won't be in effect till January 1st 2019, they still propose major changes and will completely revolutionize they way we play golf and enforce the rules. Don't get us wrong, we welcome these changes and they should be great for golf! We are just not ready to talk and write about them yet. 

So you will note that our article still refers to the actual and soon to be thing-of-the-past golf rules.

This article was originally posted on October 18, 2016

For this month’s chronicle, our main suggestion would be quite opposite to Lee Trevino’s advice on putting in strong winds: “Keep it low!”

Like power lines are a grave danger for low flying aircrafts, forward tee-markers can be hazardous to low altitude tee-shots.

At some point, hitting tee-markers happened to all of us, respectable golf enthusiasts. Sometimes, it can transform decent drives into horrible ones. Other times, they were already terrible strokes to begin with. But most of the time, it can be funny and even hilarious, especially to less penalized playing partners.

Workout 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 February 12, 2012

Whether you want to lose some weight or be in better shape, a simple solution exists:

Add a 12-Minute Workout to your daily routine!

Taking an extra 12 minutes a day or 1 hour a week to work out can greatly improve your figure and your general health.

12-Minute Solutions

You have a problem, a difficult situation to resolve…

We probably have a 12-Minute solution, an insightful suggestion for you!

Analyzing problems differently, thru 12-Minute lens, can be quite refreshing and you’ll see that solutions can be much easier to come by adopting that special angle: the unique 12-Minute point of view.

Despite its powerful nature, we still suggest learning our somewhat atypical technique by applying it on lighter problems first. After a few training runs, being familiar with its subtleties, it will be simpler to tackle on more challenging difficulties.

Troubled by nagging problems, many get confused. Most of the time, they’ll think they are doing too little. But they could also be trying too hard and even doing too much.

Portfolio Update August 2017

Time really flies; two full years already have passed since we published our first Portfolio Update. For us, the whole process has been quite satisfying and as usual, you can expect a brand new update in November 2017, in about 12 weeks.

If you wish, you can have a look at our actual portfolio and previous updates here:

DIY Portfolio

Portfolio Update August 2015

Portfolio Update November 2015

Portfolio Update February 2016

Portfolio Update May 2016

Portfolio Update August 2016

Portfolio Update November 2016

Portfolio Update February 2017

Portfolio Update May 2017

By this time, one would think that Trump’s rally should have faltered or at least slowed down with all his unorthodox politics. But after a brief pause possibly announcing some sort of decline, against all odds, markets continued piling up records (or US markets to be more precise).  

Wacky Golf Fact (Revisited) – Generate Humongous Drives Using Cart Paths

The Wacky Golf Fact Series was originally posted in 2016.

Our initial plan was to add new articles to this fun series but the Rules Modernization proposed by the golf authorities caught us of guard.

Even though these new rules won't be in effect till January 1st 2019, they still propose major changes and will completely revolutionize they way we play golf and enforce the rules. Don't get us wrong, we welcome these changes and they should be great for golf! We are just not ready to talk and write about them yet. 

So you will note that our article still refers to the actual and soon to be thing-of-the-past golf rules.

This article was originally posted on September 18, 2016

Today, we’re gonna mix driving and hard bouncing cart paths. Driving as in hitting a tee shot and opposed to trying to control a vehicle. You’ll see that these trivial ingredients can produce ridiculously explosive long drives but also ridiculously funny situations.

Most golfers love (or would love) to hit the ball long. Some are even willing to try almost anything to add a few extra yards to their drives. Aiming at cart paths and benefiting from big bounces off them sure can be an excellent way to hack it much longer. Any passionate golfer worthy of the name must have tried it at some point during his illustrious career.  

12-Minute Basics (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 January 12, 2012

Help To Change 

By suggesting simple methods and unique ideas, the 12-Minute Approach will help you implement change and improve.

For exemple, for most people, the optimum concentration period is only 12 minutes. That is, the time they can really focus on a task.

Squirrel Your Way Out of the Rat Race

Tired of being trapped in the never ending rat race? Of living or surviving we should rather say, till your next paycheck, burning through money almost as you touch it, always wanting more and seemingly getting less?

A solution exists: simply act more like a squirrel!

Squirrels are expert savers. They work very hard to find their favourite delicacy: precious nuts. So after struggling to discover some, they stash most of it away. They know provisions will be quite useful when harder times come by.

The squirrel in you knows the value of money and can avoid wasting it. He knows how hard you worked and how much precious time you spent to earn it. He’s inclined to save in anticipation of rainier days and convinced stashing some away will someday get you free. Financially free but also liberated to spend as you wish the rarest resource of our so-called advanced era: your invaluable time.

Saving more, spending less and by the same token, struggling less can be a wonderful liberating idea.

So get some inspiration from our squirrel friend and escape the excruciating rat race. Besides, it may never be possible to get ahead of it and even less to win it anyway.

Photo Credit

Quickly Evaluate Stock Potential with Long-Term Chart

As we already stated in our last Portfolio Update back in May, briefly looking at long term stock graphs can tell you a lot and allow you to quickly sort out potential investing contenders.

Rarely will you let out an immediate genuine wow! Likely favourites may shockingly produce a deceiving yuck! And iffy candidates, in a flash, may appear surprisingly much brighter than anticipated.  

That first glance may sometimes leave you a little puzzled but most of the time, it will instantly fix your opinion about the long haul potential of a stock, thus changing or confirming your initial inclination.

We know past performance doesn’t guarantee future results but you surely have better chances of success choosing solid proven long term performers constantly going up than erratic unpredictable loose cannons.

Wacky Golf Fact (Revisited) – Hammering Down Tee and Walking On Water

The Wacky Golf Fact Series was originally posted in 2016.

Our initial plan was to add new articles to this fun series but the Rules Modernization proposed by the golf authorities caught us of guard.

Even though these new rules won't be in effect till January 1st 2019, they still propose major changes and will completely revolutionize they way we play golf and enforce the rules. Don't get us wrong, we welcome these changes and they should be great for golf! We are just not ready to talk and write about them yet. 

So you will note that our article still refers to the actual and soon to be thing-of-the-past golf rules.


This article was originally posted on August 18, 2016

This unusual story was related to me by my good friends, Bob and Gaby.

A couple years ago, they went out to the golf course on a cold brisk day for their first game of the season. Everyone knows it would take more than bad winter-like conditions to stop good old golf enthusiasts like them.

Yet, that morning, Bob and Gaby found out that some maniacs are wackier than others as they were paired up with 2 complete strangers…

It all started right after they introduced themselves to each other. One of these odd guys, dressed more for duck hunting than golf – but we could pardon it because it was pretty damn cold, pulled a hammer out of his golf bag!

Using Hammer to Tee Off

And not a little tiny hammer but rather one of these big construction-type metal ones with a black rubber handle!