retire sooner

I found these 6 rules to retire sooner from MSN.CA

mortgages: variable or fixed (4% vs 5.15% !)

I was talking to my mortgage broker today as I'm getting ready to renew my mortgage later this summer. She recommended again (I said no the first time around for my initial term) to go with variable. As I was browsing the Internet to find more info, I stumbled on my RSS feeds and this info from Larry McDonald was just under my nose:

But academic studies, notably those from Professor Moshe Milevsky at York University, show that variable rates on mortgages are better over the long run. You will save on interest costs at least 75% of the time, and knock a year off your amortization period.

That's very interesting information. What I'm wondering though is what are the odds that in the next 3 to 5 years, the variable rate goes way above the 5.15% I could lock in now for 5 years.

I think I will take the chance this time with variable if more research proves it's a good option. For example, I'll double-check what would have happened if I had taken variable 5 years ago instead of locking at 4.49% for a fixed five years term.

giving Etrade a break: funny ads

I've complained about Etrade before, but guess what ...I'm still with them! They've improved their service and their security tokens are still a very safe feature.

So I thought they've earned a break from my previous 'bashing' ... here's a link to some funny ads they've put out: http://www.youtube.com/etrade

nothing new to report :-)

I've been pretty busy at work and at home with the baby so I haven't been blogging too much as you've noticed :-)

A quick thought though: one of the funds I own, CHOU RRSP has been going down this year. Since it's a deep value fund, I decided to buy some more since Francis Chou is currently looking for bargains. If I buy XIU right now (the 60 biggest companies of TSX index), I'd buy into a lot of oil related speculation. I think it's good to own uncorrelated assets.

a sucker's rally?

an interesting quote from Business Week today (which speaks by itself!):

Stocks: Beware the Sucker's Rally

Have equities finally hit bottom, or is the market's recent rebound a trap for overeager investors?