Sens Lounge: "Pleeease won't you be.....my neighbour"

[jbeck5]

What’s a good place/way to invest money collecting dust in my chequing account? I contribute to an FHSA every year but the return is pretty mid so far. Was thinking of sticking it somewhere with better return until the contribution deadline in Dec.

I stuck it into a TFSA and then bought stocks with it... So I would buy like 2-4k in like Walmart or Amazon or Google or visa or MasterCard or apple and stuff like that. Also banks. Also Berkshire Hathaway is a good buy, generally. But do research. Everytime I would save a couple thousand I would look at companies that are reputable and tell you what stocks to buy and sell and why. In essence, do research, but also can be safe with the big companies that make a good return year after year over decades.

 

[jbeck5]

I was looking to get into investing on wealth simple for the first time starting in November, but my bank advisor told me to wait because of the US elections. Its so overwhelming to read up on what to invest in that i haven't done anything aside from putting away a few grand in a GIC

My financial advisor wanted me to put my money into GICs that would return like 6% but instead hand picked a dozen or two stocks and made like 35%.

I wouldn't have bought this house if I listened to him lol.

 

[Micklebot]

My financial advisor wanted me to put my money into GICs that would return like 6% but instead hand picked a dozen or two stocks and made like 35%.

I wouldn't have bought this house if I listened to him lol.

Weird. Financial advisor should be asking questions about your goals and risk tolerance, and make his recommendation based on that. If he told you GICs that would suggest basically zero risk tolerance, where as you clearly had a reasonable tolerance if you ended up buying stocks. Also, 35% return is insane...

 

[DrEasy]

I haven't had a good experience with financial advisors. They just seem to go through a flowchart, and then they recommend you some product that they probably get a commission on.

Before the advent of WealthSimple, I wanted to dip my toe in the stock market, but again the advisor would run me through the damn flowchart instead of setting up an account and buying me some stock. I guess I expected the kind of guy I would call on the phone and tell them to "buy! sell!".

So yeah, I highly recommend WealthSimple. The app is super easy to use, and they have a whole bunch of products that my stupid bank doesn't offer me, or that they keep for their big accounts. I'm even using their free tax filing system now. Just don't get addicted to day trading or you'll lose your shirt!

Their newsletter is great too, and you don't need to be a client to read it: TLDR | Wealthsimple

 

[Big Muddy]

x

 

[Ralph Malfredsson]

What’s a good place/way to invest money collecting dust in my chequing account? I contribute to an FHSA every year but the return is pretty mid so far. Was thinking of sticking it somewhere with better return until the contribution deadline in Dec.

Everything is on sale now - great time to buy!

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

I'm sorry but the Paris Accord/Agenda 2030 should take a back seat to us getting our country fixed. The only way we do that is by leading the world in as many sectors we can when it comes to natural resources. Handcuffing our ability to be as self sufficient as possible will never result in a prosperous society.

We're also handcuffing ourselves bigly by blocking out half the planet as trade partners to be reliant on the USA. Especially right now. Carbon tax is not the massive killer expense certain groups make it out to be.

 

[Stylizer1]

We're also handcuffing ourselves bigly by blocking out half the planet as trade partners to be reliant on the USA. Especially right now. Carbon tax is not the massive killer expense certain groups make it out to be.

What do you mean? The carbon taxing on fuel alone had a domino effect on everything making prices rise. Home heating fuel too. If we are truly looking for markets to sell our oil and natural gas there will be plenty to choose from.

Out of the 195 countries that signed on to the Paris Accord only 46 actually instituted a carbon tax. The US was not one of them. They hardly recycle there.

 

[Ralph Malfredsson]

I haven't had a good experience with financial advisors. They just seem to go through a flowchart, and then they recommend you some product that they probably get a commission on.

Agree so much on the commission based financial advisors. IMO the majority prey on the uninformed and the elderly - they deliberately confuse them and then sign them up to products that are not in their best interest. I think poorly of them.

 

[mysens]

Common folks won't see any tax cuts. Lets be honest about that. And business gets a ton of incentives...and then all they do is demand more concessions and threaten to leave if they don't get them. It becomes a race to the bottom with countries competing over throwing money to businesses.

You need to balance being business friendly while also protecting your resources and environment (and workers rights). Not to mention...manufacturing jobs aren't what they used to be. While more jobs the better, they aren't exactly the types of income that allow for middle class living these days.



No carbon tax for industry ends up blocking us out of any EU trade. Those carbon taxes are there to satisfy international requirements. Drop that, and our only trading partner becomes the USA.....and that would definitely destroy the country.

Why would we need to satisfy and adhere to the EU when Canada only traded a 120 billion with them and we traded over 1 Trillion with the USA? That's a 10 to 1 difference. This is the wrong way to think. Trading with the USA is not hampering our dealings with the EU, there are many countries who are not part of the WEF commitment to NetZero that we could also trade with. This is clearly a lack of clear and concise information that our CBC news outlet puts out there. Food for thought.

 

[mysens]

I'm sorry but the Paris Accord/Agenda 2030 should take a back seat to us getting our country fixed. The only way we do that is by leading the world in as many sectors we can when it comes to natural resources. Handcuffing our ability to be as self sufficient as possible will never result in a prosperous society.

This is correct. We need to use our resources. Imagine the amount of money this will generate. Its absurd to not take advantage of this. We could still trade with the USA but all the other countries who wish to have our resources. No brainer.

 

[mysens]

How does this not convince you that for the last 9 years we are in a massive hole. This is absolutely atrocious. This is the data that people need to understand where the carbon tax is one of the biggest contributors to our abysmal GDP. We need to expose our resources that the rest of the world wants, not only the USA.

 

[Tnuoc Alucard]

100%

There are a couple golden rules...

1) invest your savings or else you're losing money with inflation
2) pay off things with interest first.(Mortgage, car notes, loans)

*unless your investments are returning a higher percentage than the interest on your expenses, then keep investing and don't pay them off yet.

Agree 100%…. The Books that we read back in the day….”The Wealthy Barber” and “Boom, Bust, Echo” laid out investment planning in simple terms and logic. could never understand friends who were investing in GICs over the past 20 years, when interest rates were at or below 2%?????

Also, taking full advantage of “anniversary or ballon” payments to your mortgage to wipe away practically three times the amount of interest with those payments was crucial to paying down a mortgage years ahead of schedule

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Why would we need to satisfy and adhere to the EU when Canada only traded a 120 billion with them and we traded over 1 Trillion with the USA? That's a 10 to 1 difference. This is the wrong way to think. Trading with the USA is not hampering our dealings with the EU, there are many countries who are not part of the WEF commitment to NetZero that we could also trade with. This is clearly a lack of clear and concise information that our CBC news outlet puts out there. Food for thought.

Because we're trying to diversify, and move away from the lunatic USA? Do you want to have the USA calling the shots on us forever?

 

[Beech]

I am watching a lovB Volleybal match between Salt Lake and Madison.

A women has a sign. It is meant to say "Welcome to Salt Lake City, Utah"

She has it abbreviated
"Welcome to
SL,UT"

Oh f***, I nearly died

 

[jbeck5]

Weird. Financial advisor should be asking questions about your goals and risk tolerance, and make his recommendation based on that. If he told you GICs that would suggest basically zero risk tolerance, where as you clearly had a reasonable tolerance if you ended up buying stocks. Also, 35% return is insane...

I guess it was all relative. My goal was to buy a house, so he kept saying "you don't want things to drop" whereas I had enough diversification that even if a couple stocks failed, it wouldn't be by a lot, and most would do well...it just didn't make sense to me.

Yeah, it's pretty good. COVID years was a time to make quite a bit of money to be honest.

 

[Micklebot]

View attachment 996820How does this not convince you that for the last 9 years we are in a massive hole. This is absolutely atrocious. This is the data that people need to understand where the carbon tax is one of the biggest contributors to our abysmal GDP. We need to expose our resources that the rest of the world wants, not only the USA.

Ireland and Poland at the very top of the list both have carbon taxes, as do a bunch of the other countries on that list. I don't think "noun the verb" sloganeering is the way out of this. There's not going to be a magic bullet. That said, while our growth has stagnated, we are still pretty competitively positioned overall. particularly when you consider the Gini coefficient as part of the equation.

Things could certainly be better, I'd love to see us fix interprovince trade barriers as a first step, Carbon taxes are a nudge economics solution to an environmental problem, I'm all for finding a better solution to that problem, the issue I have is with those who just want to no longer address the problem and pretend there won't be any ramifications. Wrt opening up our resources for trade, I think we need to be careful in how we go about it. I won't pretend to be an expert on the matter, but I'd like to see a measured approach that brings the value to Canada and Canadians, not corporations.

 

[Stylizer1]

I guess it was all relative. My goal was to buy a house, so he kept saying "you don't want things to drop" whereas I had enough diversification that even if a couple stocks failed, it wouldn't be by a lot, and most would do well...it just didn't make sense to me.

Yeah, it's pretty good. COVID years was a time to make quite a bit of money to be honest.

People gained because many others lost.

 

[Stylizer1]

Ireland and Poland at the very top of the list both have carbon taxes, as do a bunch of the other countries on that list. I don't think "noun the verb" sloganeering is the way out of this. There's not going to be a magic bullet. That said, while our growth has stagnated, we are still pretty competitively positioned overall. particularly when you consider the Gini coefficient as part of the equation.
View attachment 996862

Things could certainly be better, I'd love to see us fix interprovince trade barriers as a first step, Carbon taxes are a nudge economics solution to an environmental problem, I'm all for finding a better solution to that problem, the issue I have is with those who just want to no longer address the problem and pretend there won't be any ramifications. Wrt opening up our resources for trade, I think we need to be careful in how we go about it. I won't pretend to be an expert on the matter, but I'd like to see a measured approach that brings the value to Canada and Canadians, not corporations.

Ireland and Poland have very small countries compared to Canada and have GDP's equal to that of Ontario and Quebec.

In 2023 almost 60% of Poland's energy came from coal and have started fazing it out because it's getting too costly to mine. Ireland has a population of 5.3 million and the majority of their energy comes from Wind.

China, India, and the US make up 70% of coal burners and yet don't have a consumer carbon tax. Canada still mines coal and exports most of it to Asia.

There will always be markets for energy so we should finally be taking advantage of it to benefit our country first. Fix the problems that have plagued our Country for decades and then you would see more people ready invest in a new philosophy when it comes to climate change. The only way this happens is with new money. Instead we are being forced into a corner by the people who caused the pollution in the first place and are now the ones with the solution off of our backs.

 

[jbeck5]

People gained because many others lost.

Not because. AND*

But there are winners in losers in anything...

But the S&P500 generally goes up long-term.

If you play it safe, you generally win.

The losers are the people who go risky or just let their money sit in the chequing account.

 

[Stylizer1]

Not because. AND*

But there are winners in losers in anything...

But the S&P500 generally goes up long-term.

If you play it safe, you generally win.

The losers are the people who go risky or just let their money sit in the chequing account.

No, the losers where the actual people economies are based off of and the consolidation of wealth from those who benefited from the lock downs.

The losers you refer too are basically 90% of the middle class who's wealth took a large hit.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

No, the losers where the actual people economies are based off of and the consolidation of wealth from those who benefited from the lock downs.

The losers you refer too are basically 90% of the middle class who's wealth took a large hit.

From an investing pov, the losers were those who sold during the 4 or 5 weeks when the stock market was crashing due to Covid. If you simply held your position you probably were back above water by August or September of 2020.

The other losers though, as you suggest, were the small business owners that were hurt or wiped out by the lockdowns. But that's quite different than the discussion of investing that was going on here.

 

[FunkySeeFunkyDoo]

Ireland and Poland at the very top of the list both have carbon taxes, as do a bunch of the other countries on that list. I don't think "noun the verb" sloganeering is the way out of this. There's not going to be a magic bullet. That said, while our growth has stagnated, we are still pretty competitively positioned overall. particularly when you consider the Gini coefficient as part of the equation.
View attachment 996862

Things could certainly be better, I'd love to see us fix interprovince trade barriers as a first step, Carbon taxes are a nudge economics solution to an environmental problem, I'm all for finding a better solution to that problem, the issue I have is with those who just want to no longer address the problem and pretend there won't be any ramifications. Wrt opening up our resources for trade, I think we need to be careful in how we go about it. I won't pretend to be an expert on the matter, but I'd like to see a measured approach that brings the value to Canada and Canadians, not corporations.

Can you expand on the bolded? How does the Gini coefficient (I assume a lower value here is better than higher?) make us "still pretty competitively positioned"?

 

[Do Make Say Think]

View attachment 996820How does this not convince you that for the last 9 years we are in a massive hole. This is absolutely atrocious. This is the data that people need to understand where the carbon tax is one of the biggest contributors to our abysmal GDP. We need to expose our resources that the rest of the world wants, not only the USA.

Yes to going all-in on resources, LMAO at the carbon tax being a reason for low GDP per capita, you clearly don't understand how the carbon tax was administered. By the way, it is gone now.

Our GDP per capita is low because the boomers decide to prevent new housing from built everywhere and then got filthy rich off of their homes they bought for a pittance. We are a nation of lazy bastards who sit on assets and make sure the future pays for our failings.

 

[Stylizer1]

From an investing pov, the losers were those who sold during the 4 or 5 weeks when the stock market was crashing due to Covid. If you simply held your position you probably were back above water by August or September of 2020.

The other losers though, as you suggest, were the small business owners that were hurt or wiped out by the lockdowns. But that's quite different than the discussion of investing that was going on here.

I was speaking in general as to who the losers with checking accounts were over the "covid years".