Friday, November 16, 2012

Short Takes: Rogers Threatens $2 Million Charge, Why IPOs Underperform, and more

Ellen Roseman has a story of Rogers telling one of its customers to pay a bill for $225 or face a charge of $2 million!

Larry Swedroe explains why IPOs generally underperform.

My Own Advisor reports that Kia Canada misreported its cars’ fuel efficiency and is planning to pay actual cash to their customers in compensation.

Gail Vaz-Oxlade argues that women need to build up their financial lives independent of their husbands (in a post no longer online), taking into account their unique circumstances such as living longer than men and possibly taking time off from work to have children. This is sensible advice. However, she also says “When a woman and a man divorce, his standard of living most often goes up while hers goes down.” Divorce drives up total living costs: an extra rent, extra furniture, possibly an extra car, etc. Most likely both men and women end up with a lower standard of living, on average. Is it really plausible that on average all the extra living costs and more get shifted to women in a divorce, and men end up better off? I can believe that this happens some of the time, but I also know of cases of men living on just a fraction of their former pay due to hefty support payments for their children and ex-wives. In most cases I suspect that both men and women lose out financially in a divorce.

The Blunt Bean Counter explains how to save on your taxes with tax-loss selling. He also has some thoughts on what to do if you’ve got a large capital loss from previous years.

Canadian Capitalist offers his best financial tip: buy a home you can afford.

Money Smarts brings us his best financial tip: take the long-term view.

Retire Happy Blog looks at some key ages in retirement planning from 55 to 71.

Andrew Hallam makes the case for hiring an oddball financial advisor.

Preet Banerjee has a video of himself driving a BMW around a racetrack in the rain. Not all of the passengers stayed calm.

Big cajun Man finds a lot of things to worry about at 2:00 am.

Malcolm Hamilton explains why it is futile to try to safely beat inflation when your savings are outside of a tax shelter.


  1. I think the worries actually find me, but now that I know that the Israelis have proven that my subconcious is doing MATH while I am asleep, maybe I should sleep more?

    Thanks for the link have a GREAT weekend.

  2. Thanks for the mention.

    Yeah, I get annoyed when bloggers/gurus state 'facts' that are likely just made up.

  3. I know a few men who are much worse off than the woman, post-divorce. Claims like these annoy me.

    Thanks for the link, enjoy the sunny weekend.


  4. I suspect that more women than men end up worse off because generally speaking (and yes, of course there are plenty of decent men, like uh ME out there) more women than men end up taking care of the children, while the men do pay child support, often that child support only covers a portion of the real everyday costs of raising a child.

  5. @Geoff: You may be right, but I still think that both are worse off in most cases. I'm sure that many men who are denied custody would gladly accept custody and the associated costs. That said, I do believe the courts do a good job of considering the interests of the children.