Blessed by the Potato

I just finished Dave Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber Returns (and a big thanks to Nelson of Financial Uproar infamy for not only giving me a free copy of the book, but also eventually shipping it, too! [And a further aside: he gave me some free slurpees to make up for the delay in the thing he was giving me for free anyway, which shows that deep down inside, he’s really a super nice guy] ;)

I really enjoyed it. It’s a short read, just over 200 pages with block-formatted paragraphs and many blank filler pages to make it fly by even faster. He writes with a very casual, humourous, down-to-earth tone and conveys the simple yet important financial lessons we all need. The book is broken up into many short chapters of just a few pages each; in fact the whole thing reads a little like a well-put-together blog printed out and bound. It reads like my blog, or at least, what I imagine my writing voice reads like outside of my head (though that may go over about as well as how I imagined my speaking voice sounded outside my head before I had a tape recorder).

There are no complex calculations, just common sense (or uncommon sense) and some rules-of-thumb. I’m going to find this a very easy book to recommend and pass along.

About the first half of the book is spent on the basics: living within your means, controlling debt, paying yourself first. He does a good job of covering the psychological tips that can help people set and meet goals, and candidly discusses some strategies that have and have not worked for people he’s met with over the years. The second half is more on investing, and covers index investing, the importance of fees, reasonable rates of return (and how important the rate of return can be to final outcomes), and so much more. He very nicely hits the main points on the eternal RRSP vs TFSA debate, including two important behavioural ones that don’t fit into the math: what if you spend the tax return from your RRSP so you aren’t really contributing pre-tax dollars, or are tempted to raid your TFSA for non-emergency spending?

Other random take-aways: he calls the Vancouver and Toronto housing markets crazy. It was just one paragraph, but I was glad to see it — the bubbles really do impact the financial planning in the rest of your life. He didn’t have a definitive position on emergency funds or LoCs either: EFs are great, but entice people to over-spend. But so does having a LoC at the ready. He’s got a very sensible answer for the eternal question of paying down the mortgage or investing (yes, and right away!). Mentioned at several points, living within your means and saving for the future actually leads to people being less stressed and happier, even though they don’t have as much stuff to enjoy right now. Stuff isn’t that awesome, anyway.

All-in-all, good points.

Now if I may be permitted to wander off into unnecessary criticism land (where I spend enough time to be a dual citizen), the lack of math and scary details cuts both ways. It’s a very easy read as it is, and not at all intimidating, which makes it easy to recommend to the financial novice in your life or the financial expert who will just enjoy it as a breezy bedtime read. But the lack of details mean people are going to have to fend for themselves or go off and do some further reading before they get into the tricky business of actually following through on creating a financial plan and investing. That extra step may slow them up, and some details, tucked safely away in a protective appendix where no one could accidentally hurt themselves, might have helped with the get-up-and-start-now aspect. Or it might have doubled the length of the book for no good reason.

Anyway, that leads me out of unnecessary criticism land and into the kingdom of self-promotion (whose customs I find strange and foreign). As you may recall, I wrote a book called Potato’s Short Guide to DIY Investing (one I now have to update, if only to include The Wealthy Barber Returns in my reading list for what you should have read before reading my book to get the basics of having money saved and ready to invest down). It is a short book, written by me, about do-it-yourself (DIY) investing, and it was written by me! Wait, I’m doing this self-promotion thing all wrong.

What I was thinking as I was finishing off this book is how well my book complements it. David’s book does a good job of telling you that it is important to invest for your future, explaining the ways you can invest, and most importantly, prefacing all that with a lot of good advice about how to budget and save enough so that you’ll actually have money left over to invest. He tells you about the importance of fees (though I have a graph), and does a better job than I do about explaining why indexing is the way to go. From there, my book picks up and tells you how to do that: what a few examples of low-MER index-following investments are and where to find them. Step-by-step instructions on how to open an account and actually buy or sell the bloody things. A bit about basic asset allocation (though admittedly, that could use a bit of spit-polish in v1.1). What you need to write down as you go along so that you have a head start on panicking at tax time. Basically all the stuff that’s not in the other personal finance books.

I wrote my book intending for it to be so short, so easy to read, and so practical that it could be the first book you read on investing, and use it to get started so you could get the power of compounding working for you as soon as possible while you continued to educate yourself. I was clearly wrong on at least one point: it should be the second book you read.

Just a quick note: TD Waterhouse has removed the $50 admin fee for TFSA accounts as of 2012. Previously, this fee was easily avoidable by signing up for their “e-services” electronic statements program, but now you don’t even need to do that. IMHO, TD Waterhouse still remains a great option for passive investors: use TD e-series until you get up over the $50k mark, at which point you qualify for $10 commissions and can start switching to even lower MER ETFs.

A fairly exciting few weeks. My last lecture at UWO (at least until I get invited back), yet my first as a full-fledged PhD. It was not as polished as the version I gave last year, which is a shame since the students this year seemed a little more bright eyed and bushy tailed; that may have been helped by the fact that it was a decent day in an unbelievably mild winter, and not… ugh, I don’t even want to think of last winter.

Then I found out I won tickets to the Book Lover’s Ball, via a contest to write an attention-catching opening line to a novel. The ball is a fundraiser for the Toronto Public Library, so I entered hoping to win since it would be the perfect gift for Wayfare: a lover of both fancy parties and libraries!

The Ball was very much not what I had expected. I know of basically two definitions for ball: a fancy dance party, and a round thing you kick, bat at, or throw. The key part to the first definition being the dancing, and Wikipedia backs me up on that. There was no dancing. There were black ties and ballgowns and an excellent dinner, but no dancing. Which is just as well, because Wayfare is progressing from very pregnant to extremely pregnant, which would have made dancing awkward and painful. While I can see the poetic symmetry between Book and Ball, I think perhaps some more descriptive titles could have been chosen, such as: the Author’s Affair; Book Lover’s Banquet; the Knowledge Feast [which I particularly like since it could also apply to the library itself]; the Library Soiree; the Book Lover’s Benefit; or the Public Library Gala.

We met some famous authors, as well as a number we were assured were famous, though we had to take the organizers’ word for that (certainly more famous than me, anyway, which counts). We were asked to adopt a branch or implored to bid on the charity auctions several times, had some drinks, chatted, had dinner, and then the lights came on and we were asked to leave since people had to get up for work the next day. It was a fun night, and in support of a cause I can easily get behind.

We had a last chance to get dressed up in our finery and have a fancy night out to ourselves before having to worry about babysitters, which was fun. Please, take that as the take-home message before I get into the painful financial blogger OCD part below (in fact, feel free to skip the next two paragraphs, look for the bold text to start the link summary).

The tickets, won in a contest, were free. Given the face value (which granted is in large part a charitable donation), it was quite the contest win and a fantastic gift. Yet we spent hundreds of dollars on a tux and gown to go. Then hundreds more on a hotel room for the night. Then a surprisingly large amount on overnight parking downtown: I figured it would be expensive: $20 or maybe $30 for less than 24 hours near Front St.; I was shocked and angered to find it was $66 for 21 hours. Even though it was the least consequential cost of the evening, it really burned me up. Partly because I didn’t take a few minutes to research my parking options and to know in advance what to expect, and partly because I blindly followed the hotel’s instructions on where to park, and they should have warned me or had some kind of reasonably-priced option (a voucher or something if they don’t have their own lot). All told, the event ended up costing a majority of the vacation budget for the year, though I don’t think we had big vacation plans this year since we’ll have a newborn and I’ll have a new job which may not allow for a vacation this first summer anyway. The whole experience reminded me of the story of Diderot’s dressing gown (which is in recent memory thanks to reading The Wealthy Barber Returns — review to follow).

And speaking of Diderot’s dressing gown and creating new obligations, I now have a winning opening line to a novel, so there is some expectation that I follow that up with, if not a novel, at least a story of some kind. The thing is, I had no inkling of a story to go with that line: I was just reaching for something humourous and attention-catching that would fit within the strict character limit of the twitter contest. But if I’m unemployed anyway, no harm in trying to write a story, I guess (as long as I keep up the job applications)…

Links: The notion of housing risk goes mainstream.

A slew of articles recently on the risks associated with sky-high housing prices, like most everyone is waking up to the reality at once, including: the Globe’s connect-the-dots, Canadian Business’ prediction that the market will crash, and several others.

Macleans is surprisingly straightforward: “Yes, we’re in a bubble, and it will probably pop soon.” which was bolded in the text. I wasn’t happy to see “A whopping 75 per cent of mortgages in Canada are fully insured by Ottawa, according to the Financial Stability Board.” put forward as a reason not to worry.

The Financial Post reports that banks are dumping their exposure to even “prime” mortgages on the CMHC or securitization market. “Financial institutions are required to have mortgage-default insurance when a consumer has less than 20% equity. However, the banks have been seeking insurance on loans with even high downpayments — something not required by law — so they can securitize those bulk lending loans, thereby getting them off their balance sheets and reducing their capital requirements.” This is bringing the CMHC close to its limit for providing coverage, and it’s asking the banks to slow it down.

Just a few weeks ago, the news was dominated by the rush to the bottom in medium-term fixed-rate offerings by the banks. Now, those special offers are coming to an end.

A neat new hedge fund opportunity. Have a read, and no matter what you end up thinking of it, trust me and click on the “invest now” link to have a look at what comes next.

A very short post over at Divestor about selling Rogers Sugar after appreciating so much. I’ve had many such dilemmas this last year or so: with prices on things like Rogers Sugar, REITs, or other low/no-growth dividend payers hitting all time highs, am I being paid to take on equity risk? Sure, they’re towards the less risky, less volatile end of the equity spectrum, but I’m not sure if I’m comfortable locking in at 6%, especially when many preferreds are in the 5% range.

An article about behavioural economics.

Stats Canada is apparently going to refine the CPI calculation, which if it lead to a lowered CPI figure could lead to savings for the government (as many payments are inflation-adjusted). The article indicates that CPI is currently overstated, and I find that a bit odd, as I’ve long thought that CPI was understating inflation. Given the current government’s philosophy on stats, I wouldn’t be surprised if the revision was more about cost savings than data accuracy.

Canadian Capitalist talks about a “barbell” investment strategy. This is perhaps a good example of where combining two extremes doesn’t really give the same result as having a bunch of average stuff, or where increasing risk does not mean increasing returns.

Michael James says his MERQ measure is too extreme to be believable. But it’s really showing the impact of high fees. I still think it should be in dollars (and whenever I get off my butt will do short post on exactly that), but either way the important part of the message is that fees build up and cost an investor dearly.

Warren Buffett chimes in on investing in gold, bonds, or stocks, businesses, and other things. The summary widely picked up is that he isn’t keen on gold, but there’s also this gem: “Bonds promoted as offering risk-free returns are now priced to deliver return-free risk.” John Hempton adds some colour to that notion of investing in stocks rather than gold or bonds.

And after a few posts in a row cheerleading hybrids, news comes out that the Prius is going to get cheaper and better equipped for 2012. I’m kind of torn on that news: on the one hand it’s good for future hybrid owners, as it makes the financial decision even easier (though the Matrix also got stability control standard, so you don’t need to move up as many feature packages on the comparison car), which will be good for helping to get more on the road. On the other hand, reducing the MSRP of future vehicles means mine will now depreciate faster (not that I entertain plans to sell any time soon — I kept the last car until it was ~14 years old).

The teaser page for the Prius C (for compact) is also up, indicating it will get a fuel consumption rating of 3.7 L/100 km and a price tag under $21,000. Just a bit bigger than a $17k Yaris, that could be a tough choice for those that need a cheap, efficient commuter vehicle.

“I have yet to meet a father who didn’t see little feet emerging and immediately feel the need to run out and throw himself at an insurance salesman.” — Garth Turner

Wayfare and I just had a very short discussion about our life insurance needs. I off-handedly remarked some time ago that one of the factors that maybe should go into the typical rent-vs-buy analysis is the reduced need for life insurance as a renter, but since I didn’t know what the cost was, it was hard to model (and I assumed, trivial).

Anyway, with a new spud under cultivation, I thought it was worth discussing seriously, and we very quickly agreed that we didn’t: she makes more than I do (though as of next week, “0” is an easy bar to hurdle), but both of us are capable of supporting a single-parent family on our own. If we both die, both our sets parents are well-off enough to take in a grandchild and not become destitute themselves (at least with our savings to help out).

As renters, we don’t have a mortgage to discharge or huge transaction costs for moving, so it would be reasonably easy (at least financially) for the survivor to move to a smaller, cheaper place. And the aforementioned savings would help with any burial expenses, additional childcare costs, or bereavement leave.

A few online calculators confirmed that our life insurance needs were basically zero (varying between a $150k policy and negative $80k depending on the calculator and assumptions used). I went ahead and got a few quotes for a $100k term-10 policy, and it’s not terribly expensive, but not trivial either: about $150/year for someone my age. This might all change once I see little feet with their widdle toes, but for now, hey, we don’t seem to need it.

There is a company out there with the majority of its operations in China. It has had an incredible, unbelievable run in its stock price, up 400% from the bottom in 2009. This run has been supported by impressive sales numbers, growing the top-line (revenue) by better than 50% per year for several years running, and the bottom line (net income) by better than 70%.

They are in a business that is apparently not very capital intensive: their PP&E is less than a third of one year’s earnings, yet their margins remain very strong. This company generates an impressive amount of free cash, with minimal capex requirements (the single largest use of cash, by far, is for “investments”, which commentary indicates are largely fungible bonds). They carry an incredible amount of cash: 10X inventories, and almost 3 year’s worth of capex, in cash, at any given time. Including investments, they have resources to cover their current inventory and full-year’s capex 19 times over. They could stop all shipments, not make a single sale ever again, and still continue paying the expenses associated with the R&D and general operations of the company for a full 10 years by using the liquid resources they have built up.

That, my friends, is a staggering amount of non-productive assets to keep on the balance sheet. Why is it not going into R&D, or capex, or aquisitions, or better yet, to dividends and buy-backs? If you knew all the intimate details about a business that was doubling every other year — because you are running it — why would you ever choose to hold cash — so much cash — instead of buying more of that business? So my spidey senses start tingling: are the assets listed in the financial statements really there?

Is this the next great Chinese stock fraud?

Now of course, you probably all know exactly which company I’m talking about. We all know the company is real. The books are very likely real. I’m not seriously suggesting otherwise. But I have to wonder if perhaps when you are looking at this company if one of the risk factors you write down on your analysis shouldn’t be “potentially the biggest stock fraud since Nortel, WorldCom, or Enron. Biggest ever.”

Disclosure: no position. And yes, I am a little jelly.