Using Popular Funds as Portfolio Benchmarks

Before my days as a DIY investor, I mainly invested my money thru mutual funds and Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs).

Back then, as a Canadian, some of my popular choices included XIU (iShares S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF) and RBF266 (RBC Canadian Dividend Fund) as I already was leaning toward dividend investing.

I now use these two funds as benchmarks to measure my performance as an investor.

Be careful here, I’m not advertising or promoting these two particular funds in any way. You should rather view them as examples or as proper representatives of their asset class. Many other funds could have been used and the illustration would have probably been pretty similar.

Some of you might think that beating these funds does not represent much of a challenge and that they constitute a pretty poor standards.

A Fresh Start

Earlier this year, after enduring somewhat serious health issues, I decided it was time for me to get back to writing. Both my physical and mental wellbeing were depending on it.

I started by focusing my efforts on the second part of my novel. After a while, it became obvious that the next step was to revive my blog, as I kind of neglected it following a strong year in 2012.

But was I in for a pretty bad surprise!

Stupid Technical Problems

A couple of careless manipulations later, I experienced some technical problems and erased all content of the blog. I also had committed the digital cardinal sin: no backup!

That was a huge disappointment! All those hours down the drain…

As a computer specialist, I should have known better. But let me loosely employ the French expression : « Le cordonnier est toujours le plus mal chaussé » by referring to the ill-shod shoemaker.

The initial shock passed, I managed to find old drafts and restore most posts. But all comments and pictures on the blog were still lost for good.  

After sobbing for about a week, I choose to view this huge misfortune as an opportunity to revamp the whole thing. So, here we are!

12-Minute Principles

There's more to the 12-Minute Approach than great number 12. Some principles and premises also inspire this revolutionary method.

They are exposed here with some brief explanations:

1-Realize Your Dreams  

Having dreams is essential. Dreams give life a meaning. They give you a purpose and a sense of direction.

Planning to realize your dreams is also important. By setting goals and making plans, you’ll move closer to your dreams.

Your unconscious and intuition will guide you thru the venture even if you don’t possess all the details right now.

2-Be Efficient

Being efficient allows us to make our life easier and to accomplish more. Working less but achieving more is always desirable.

Develop your lazy side. Famous inventions and colossal achievements often come from intelligent but somewhat lazy people.

12-Minute and Your Career

The 12-Minute Approach offers you a multitude of techniques to improve your job and career.

Here are some ideas we hope will inspire you on the way to becoming real happy and efficient professionals in your respective fields.

Achieve A Little More Each Day

A quick and easy way to start improving right away is to take 12-Minute to accomplish one simple extra action each day.

Try to evolve by taking one different action that really counts. This single additional task is pretty simple to implement.

It should slowly but surely spread improvement around you without disturbing you too much. After a while, you’ll be able to incorporate another new action in your routine. And so on…Little by little, you will adapt and things will get better without disrupting your routine excessively.

Magical Number 12

The more we look at it, the more Number 12 appears Magical!

In its original stages, our research revolved more around number 15.

But, as soon as we dug deeper, 12 evidently became the front running candidate. 

For one thing, a dozen always fits way better in a box!

More seriously, remarkable Twelve as deep roots throughout History; 
it even has some kind of mystical character associated to it.

The Number of Nature

To start, twelve really seems tightly linked and related to Nature.

The 12 months of the year…

Investing The 12-Minute Way

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.  

Furthermore, many Dividend Stocks are companies you already know about and thus, it should be somewhat easy for you to understand their business model. With experience, it will become more and more obvious for you to qualify candidates.