My previous post ended with the thought that a flat tax might be a better system than the monstrosity of the present. I was going to do a write-up on it but some readers wrote in recently and did a better job expounding on flat taxes than I would have ...

The kerfuffle over recently proposed TFSA changes raises once again the question of whether or not our tax system is way too complicated with its plethora of differential tax rates and exemptions. Concerns include:

An email from David K. of Toronto nudges me to post on a point I had thought to include in yesterday’s column on short selling leveraged ETFs – but left on the cutting room floor. It concerns the strategy of shorting leveraged ETFs and the distinction between historical and future ...

Recent proposed changes to TFSAs are creating a bit of a stir in the media and blogosphere. What’s all the fuss about?

F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and This Side of Paradise, was a successful writer in the 1920s and 1930s who earned $500,000 (U.S.) a year in today’s prices. Yet he and his family could never seem to save despite concerted efforts to budget and “accumulate capital.”  William J. ...

In the previous post, I had linked to an article by a financial advisor who had painted a rather bleak picture in regards the level of service provided by financial advisors remunerated through trailer fees and other embedded commissions. It suggested that financial plans were performed at even lower rates than ...

A reader sent in an email with an interesting supplementary to the claim that trailer fees represent the cost of financial advice (in Part I). As you may recall, MacKenzie Financial’s publication claimed that an apples-to-apples comparison of ETFs to mutual funds required that the ETF orange be converted into an ...

According to the 3rd annual Edelman goodpurpose survey that was launched today, despite the prolonged recession, the social purpose of brands is more important than ever.  The Edelman survey sampled 6026 adults in the U.S., China, Canada, U.K., Germany, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan and India to track attitudes and actions ...

Here is the second part of the post on the ETF vs. mutual fund debate ….

Oh my! Mackenzie Financial, the biggest mutual-fund family  in Canada, has fired a broadside at exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Financial columnists Ellen Roseman and Jon Chevreau have recently commented on the critique, which can be found on the Mackenzie Financial website under the title ‘I thought I wanted an ETF.’ Here are ...