Blessed by the Potato

I’m heading into the busiest three weeks of the year for me. Caffeine levels are at max, and I’ll be trying to survive the stress and sleep deprivation until this project is done, so don’t expect a long post in the next while. Here are a few short updates though.

Renting in Toronto: I’m scoping out rental houses in Toronto to get a feel for where current rents are. For several years market rents have been quite stable and it’s been easy to conclude that the absurd price:rent ratios were not going to be fixed by rents increasing. Every now and then a rental would come out way above market, where clearly a landlord was trying to actually cover their costs on a recent purchase price instead of collecting market rates and hoping for appreciation. However, this fall I’m seeing that rents are actually up, with a huge spread in prices (and price:rent). For houses that would be ~$1.3M in a particular neighbourhood, I’m seeing rental rates from $2600 (about where prices from last year would be with inflation) through to $3600. And it’s not just “that one crazy listing” (though one listing did sit for over a month at that top end and is now down — not sure if it found a tenant or just got pulled), there are places at each point in the spectrum, which makes for price-to-rent ratios of anywhere from 460X to 375X — a pretty big spread.

Even at the high-end of that range, renting is still the better deal (because prices to buy are crazy), but it’s surprising to see nearly a thousand dollars a month in possible rent inflation in just a year’s time. Moreover, I’ve commented before that one of the nice aspects of renting over buying is that you get a lot more for your housing dollar — we could never afford to live here if we had to buy. Well, if rent rates are increasing that much, we might not be able to afford to live here even as renters. On the one hand that’s a scary thought, on the other, I don’t really think Toronto’s priced dual-professional families out of even the burbs forever. I’ll have to keep a closer eye on the market to see if it’s just an anomaly of a few crazy people putting their listings up at once without knowing the market rent, or if it’s truly gotten that much more expensive.

In discussions with a reader on the rent-vs-buy choice (which I’ll turn into a post later), I had to bring up the point that buying is in many ways easier (distinct from better) when you’re looking for a detached house. While there are detached houses available, and while it’s the better move financially to rent, there are 20 or 30 for sale listings for every house for rent. It can take months of looking to find one that ticks all the boxes for you, and part of what makes that a challenge is that as a renter you’re almost exclusively looking for as-is properties (or close enough to as-is — it’s possible to put some work in to a place to make it your own space with a long lease or even to negotiate repairs and upgrades with a landlord, but you’re not going to do anything major), whereas when buying you always have the option of getting any old place and gutting it.

I also volunteered to re-write the rent-vs-buy calculator page as part of the Reddit /r/PersonalFinanceCanada wiki effort. I’ve written so much over the years on real estate and the rent-vs-buy choice and the math involved, but I really don’t have a good “start here” resource, and the last time I tried to write one it got way too long and ranty (and when I tried to make a “start here, how-to” page for investing, it turned into a book). Again, busy now, but look forward to something like that later in the fall — and if there’s already a good guide that would serve the average Redditor off the street, let us know and you’ll save me the trouble.

Because Money: I’ve been a guest several times on the Because Money internet show (in fact, the guest with the most appearances on the show). This year I’ll be joining the team as a producer — basically clicking on things while the hosts and guests chat, and every now and then throwing graphs up on the screen because I’m a nerd. We’ll also have MYD doing the hard work of off-line producing, which will make Because Money a downloadable audio podcast and not just a YouTube sensation. For season 3 Chris Enns will fill the seat of Ensign Redshirt/Male co-host #3, and we were really clear in our enunciation of the words of warding to try to ensure that the same curse does not befall him.

Course: This busy period was not unexpected, and that’s why there was nothing in the release schedule for the course in September. However, things started getting busy earlier in August than I had expected (plus I actually took an actual vacation instead of using that time off work to work on the course), so most of the modules I had promised for August are not up yet. Sorry about that, I’ll try to get them all done in the October update (none of the August videos are shot, but most of the articles are at least partway finished).

Questrade: They can’t leave well enough alone over there, and have tweaked their UI again. It’s a fairly minor change so I’m not going to rush to update the errata for the book.

July has just ended and the Practical Index Investing for Canadians course is progressing well. Roughly 70% of the content is done and online, everything that had been projected for June and July, with a few bonus items as well (though two of the videos are still rendering here, they have been shot and will be up soon). I’ve updated the syllabus here.

The towel-day pre-order price is on its way out. You have until Friday to get the course at the incredible rate of $49 (no coupon code needed — that’s the price that’s set on the course platform site). After that it will go up to the next pre-order level before release, and to the final price in the fall.

The updates will be coming slower now, though. You’ll notice in the syllabus that though most of the course is there, there are only a few things scheduled to be completed in August, and nothing for September. That’s because I know I’ll be too busy at the day job to get any material up through then, so it won’t be until October that the final bits of the course are up and done.

If you have any suggestions (or prefer that I prioritize one section for August) send me an email and let me know!

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First time hearing about this? The Practical Index Investing for Canadians course is an online course to help you learn how to become a do-it-yourself investor. It builds on the material in the Value of Simple as well as the Money 201 and other lectures I’ve done since to help you get started as DIY investor.

June is nearly over and the course development is progressing well. There are a few parts near the beginning that I had flagged for completion in June. With just a week left, a few may slip into July. However, section 8 (Taxes and Tax Shelters) is complete, including parts that were not expected for several months yet — overall the progress is going well.

I think prioritizing that section was a good move, as it was of interest to some of the students who had signed up for the early access, and it creates one complete section to better show what the course is and what it adds above and beyond the walk-through in the book.

I’ve updated the syllabus here. [Edit: here is the latest syllabus for July] The Towel Day/pre-order price of $49 will continue until mid-July, when it will ratchet up as the full release gets closer. If you’re interested in learning more about how to become a do-it-yourself investor, be sure to sign up soon!

Things have been quite busy at work lately, but I’ll be taking some time off over the summer (and I’ll have fewer all-nighters) which will also help keep the course development on track (and I may even be able to catch up on the timeline).

In other news, Brexit Brexit CPP.

Happy Towel Day!

As you know, I’m a fan of Douglas Adams, borrowing the “Don’t Panic” message and putting it in large, friendly letters at the beginning of my book. So it’s only fitting that I do something special for Towel Day.

First off the predictable move: you can get a big Towel Day discount on The Value of Simple by buying through my e-commerce site and using the code TowelDay. Now until Friday only!

But let’s get to something better and more thrilling than that, something more keeping with the spirit of Towel Day. First, a blockquote to remind you of what that spirit is:

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
–Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It has not been a secret that over the past several months I have been working on an online course to complement The Value of Simple and help people get set up as successful do-it-yourself investors. It was almost a year ago that I posted the first draft of the course outline. Since then I’ve given more library talks, a guest lecture for Ellen Roseman’s UofT course, and had more conversations with experts and potential students on how to better refine the course. Most importantly, I’ve done a lot of reading on delivering an online course effectively, and changed my approach to it.

However what I have not done is finished the bloody thing.

So here is my towel: I have the structure, I have a few modules done and uploaded, I have a history of building and delivering courses and workshops in science and personal finance. If you believe that I have just mislaid the rest of the course you can buy it right now at a huge discount, and help test it and shape its evolution as it comes together.

How big a discount? You can get it for just $49 right now as a Towel Day/pre-order special, roughly¹ 80% off! Why just $49? In part as a tribute: that’s the age Douglas Adams was at his untimely death. And in part because this is early, early access — so early it’s better called a pre-order. However, it will be finished, it will be polished, and if you plan on signing up eventually then doing so now is a great deal. (Note: no coupon code needed, I’ve simply set the price at that level and will raise it for new subscribers as material is added and the course is fleshed out)

Click here to go to the course page and enroll!

1. Roughly because though the final price will likely be $279, I’m very tempted to make the final price $246 because you can even!

Every year I fall for it, the hopeless optimism of the holidays: “Oh, I’ve got two whole weeks out of the office, I’m going to get so much done!” The to-do list has been piling up all year, from little things like finally fixing the RAID array on the desktop and doing some much-deferred software updates, to making plans to see old friends, to finishing off some major side projects and long-overdue blog updates. Oh yeah, and with all that time “off” I’ll somehow catch up on sleep and have some fun playing trains with Blueberry and try all the video games on my wish list.

And every year it’s the same burnout: I didn’t quite manage to do all my shopping online before the break, and lose the first day off to traffic and parking and retail hell with the other last-minuters. Whoops, forgot to factor in that 5 days are “lost” to the insanity of Potatomas and related holidays. ‎And a day or two of work that I brought home with me has to get done at some point. Then I’m down to just a few days to get two weeks worth of planned stuff done, and I feel like crap for not accomplishing anything.

So next year I’m going to have to go in with lower expectations, which means accepting that some things are not going to get done. This year that’s going to mean Fallout 4 will just have to wait (and my Radblock just arrived from OPG, too!), and so will the course (which is fast becoming vapourware).