I’m looking for guidance on the most effective investment strategy for my rental income in relation to my current mortgage and tax situation. · Rental property: Fully paid off, generating $33,600 annually. · Primary residence mortgage: $420,000, 3.5% variable rate. · I have been doubling my mortgage payments, contributing $4,200/month, and previously applied $2,800/month of rental income toward the mortgage, for a total of $7,000/month. At current rate mortage will be paid at same time as retirement. · 2025 taxes: Approximately $8,000, driven by higher combined wage and rental income. My current plan: I’m considering depositing the rental income into a cash TFSA, then moving the accumulated amount into my RRSP early in February, as I have contribution room in both accounts. The goal is to reduce my taxable income, but this approach slows down my accelerated mortgage repayment. My question: Given this setup, is it more advantageous to continue aggressively paying down the mortgage, or to prioritize tax‑advantaged contributions (TFSA → RRSP) with the rental income and accept a slower mortgage payoff? I’m hoping to understand the trade‑offs and what strategy may be most beneficial in the long term.read more
My wife and I rent right now, and I'm very happy with that decision currently. We get flexibility, we don't have to worry about replacing a roof or furnace, and we can move when life changes without selling a house first. Owning can be awesome when you want to stay put and make a place your own. I definitely want that eventually. But I don't see renting as throwing money away while we wait. We're paying for a place to live and for the flexibility that fits our life right now. For us, renting works financially because we pair that flexibility with discipline. If every dollar not going to a down payment or repair bill just gets spent somewhere else, you lose one of renting's advantages. We still need to save and invest on purpose. Has renting or owning given you more freedom at this stage of your life?
Since so many people ask how to invest in this sector, or this country, or this asset, I’ve decided to make a comprehensive guide on how you can invest in specific areas. This is NOT portfolio advice, simply information about tickers that you can research yourself. Save this for later so you have a list of ETFs to come back to! Canada: $XIU$XIC$ZCN All expose you to the TSX in Canada. These ETFs consist of all top Canadian companies and access to our national stock exchange. $VCB$VGV$VLB$VAB$VSB$VSC$XBB$XCB Expose you to Canadian bonds; whether it be long-term, short-term, corporate, government, etc. $VDY$XEI$CDZ Expose you to Canadian dividend companies $XRE$ZRE$VRE Give access to Canadian REITs $ZEB$XFN$RBNK Lets you buy the Canadian banks USA: $VFV$ZSP$XSP$XUS$HXS Lets you buy the S&P 500 (learn about hedged vs. unhedged in my other post) $XQQ$HXQ$ZQQ All give you access to the NASDAQ 100 $IWR$VO$VOE$VOT$IJH$SCHM Lets you buy US Midcaps $IJR$IWM$VB$VBR$VBK$SCHA Lets you buy US Smallcaps $DIV$SPYD$RDIV$DHS$VIG$SCHD$VYM$DGRO$SDY Give access from small to high dividend US companies $VTI$ITOT Lets you buy the whole US market $TLT$IEF$VGIT$GOVT$SHY$VGLT Give access to US bonds $XLC$XLY$XLP$XLE$XLF$XLV$XLI$XLB$XLRE$XLK$XLU All give you access to each sector in the S&P such as financials, energy, healthcare, etc. International: $XEQT$FEQT$VEQT$ZEQT Give you an all-in-one exposure to Canada, US, emerging and global markets. $VEA$IEFA$SCHF$SPDW$EFV$EFA Give access to general international exposure $EWJ$EWU$EWC Gives direct access to developed international countries $INDA$MCHI$EWT$EWY$EWZ$EWW$EIDO$EWM Gives direct access to emerging international countries Assets: $KILO$PHYS$CGL Let’s you buy gold directly through ETFs $SVR$HUZ Let you buy silver through ETFs Savings/Interest: $CASH$HISA$PSA$HSAV Access to Canadian savings and interest payments $HSUV-U $PSU-U $HISU-U Access to US savings and interest payments There’s so many ETFs I didn’t go into with dozens of categories, but this should give you some basic starting point to look into your ETF investments. This is simply the starting point, when choosing your investments always research the ETFs, what they provide to you, their fees, your goals, your risk, and what you’re looking to get out of investing. As always do your research and happy investing! Subscribe to the newsletter: relatablefinance.substack.com read more
S&P 500 is now just 0.8% from a record high but plenty of stocks are still down big from their highs this year: • $EOSE -83% • $OKLO -78% • $OPEN -72% • $RGTI -71% • $JOBY -68% • $PL -66% • $KTOS -65% • $AVAV -63% • $APP -58% • $ORCL -56% • $CRWV -56% • $ASTS -54%read more
Very excited to welcome @austinxmoney as Blossom’s first Product Manager!! Up until now, I’ve been leading product but it’s challenging giving it my full focus while jugging other CEO priorities, so I am so pumped to have someone fully dedicated to support me in improving the app for this amazing community 💕 Austin brings 6 years experience as a PM from eBay and other startups and has also been a Blossom member and shareholder for over a year 🔥 He’ll be working closely with our amazing designer @sophii.svg to ideate and design new features and will be active in the community to make sure we are always listening to all of your incredible feedback 🥳 Lot’s of exciting things in store for this week (big update coming on Wednesday) and for the rest of the year! 👏 Help me give a warm welcome to @austinxmoney in the comments!
🐝 In today's Weekly Buzz I dove into the arguments published in Fortune and Yahoo Finance by Capital Economics analyst James Reilly who calls the AI trade a “late-stage bubble” and is projecting a 30% drop in the S&P 500 from its highs by 2027. 💡 His arguments include: - 📈 S&P 500 earnings growth concentrated almost entirely in tech and chips, now matching dot-com era peaks - 💸 Combined free cash flow of the four largest AI hyperscalers projected to turn negative in 2027 due to AI CapEx - 🏦 Big Tech bond issuance more than doubling year-over-year to fund the cash flow gap - 🚀 A fresh wave of AI IPOs, which Reilly calls the clearest late-bubble signal (most notably Anthropic’s IPO, which he called an ‘IPO of doom’ and compared to Pets.com, whose IPO was seen as the beginning of the end for the dot-com bubble) 💥 Obviously calls for a crash are nothing new, but I thought the argument was worth covering, so wanted to open up a discussion thread to hear everyone's thoughts on Blossom! 💬 One quote I liked in this context from Peter Lynch: ""Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves." Take last weekend for example when everyone thought the market was going to crash Monday due to the open letter from Anthropic 🤣 💡 That said, I think the risks are real and the '30% drop' prediction is a good thought experiment for us all to make sure your portfolio matches your goals and risk tolerence... if your investing for the long-term, statistically you WILL experience a crash eventually, the test is whether you can ride it out without panic selling 👀 🫡 My full write-up should be in your inbox! read more
Did you notice $MCD ’s performance today? Down -5.XX%. Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s CEO, just told us this morning: “[…] customer expectations are once again shifting and industry dynamics will remain challenging.” That’s one way of saying consumers can’t afford a Big Mac anymore. 😆🤣 He also said: “The industry growth algorithm is changing. We expect industry traffic growth in our wholly owned markets will be flat while inflation remains elevated.” A little bit more straightforward on this one. Thank you, Mr. Kempczinski. 👍 He was also interviewed today, outside of their annual investor meeting, and said: “We need to stop talking about this being a difficult environment, and just say: that is the environment. Because as we look forward, we are not expecting things to change […] we do think inflation is gonna be with us for, unfortunately, I think, many more years at an elevated level…” Well, that couldn’t be much clearer: he doesn’t think inflation is going anywhere anytime soon. Do you remember KTS #1? And the greatest (self-proclaimed 😂) post in the history of Blossom: “They Are Telling Us – So What Are You Waiting For?” 😂 They have one clear thing in common: INFLATION. Those who took the TIME to read and understand these two posts from March 2024 are now most likely prepared for high and sticky inflation. Inflation has been here all along. But now, companies are giving up on the idea that it’s temporary. You’re already feeling it. Is your portfolio prepared for it? I always give you my best! 🏆 This is the Way! 🏄🌊 read more
Hearing talk of people becoming more and more bearish Google $GOOGL. I mean I can see the angle, with agentic AI and people using LLMs for chat answers more and that eating into their search revenues. However that has ALWAYS been the bear case on Google and look how the stock has done. Yes it’s more expensive today so I can see it again but also it has more things going for it today than ever. 82% cloud growth, Waymo, but Gemini kinda sucks soooooo. 🤷♂️
AI data centres are much more than GPUs. A project this large needs: • electricity • grid equipment • cooling • electrical infrastructure • server + hardware systems That’s why I’m watching the picks-and-shovels around Meta’s Alberta buildout. But theme exposure alone isn’t enough. I want to see real contracts, real orders and meaningful revenue before getting excited about any stock. https://www.instagram.com/p/Ddw45EBmEuL/ Not financial advice. DYOR.read more
A new milestone on @blossom for me. Thank you 7000 times for 7000 followers!! 🚀 I really appreciate everyone who follows along and reads my posts or distribution/dividend announcements since 3 years now If only 1 out of every 7 of you decided to follow me on my new YouTube channel, I’d honestly be so happy. 😊 It took me a while to finally decide to start this channel. My wife really doesn’t want me showing my real face on the internet, and I completely respect that because we both want to protect our privacy. So I decided to create an avatar that looks a lot like me without being exactly me… although he definitely dresses like me! 😂 That also means I have to create my characters, write my scripts, generate voices and video sequences with AI, and then edit everything together. It takes a LOT more time — and can sometimes be VERY frustrating 🤣 — compared with simply sitting in front of a laptop, turning on a camera and talking. But along the way, I discovered something I really enjoy. It allows me to develop my creative, cinematic and humorous side, while talking about investing and trying to share useful information without making finance boring. Hopefully, one day the channel can generate a few dollars — even if it’s just enough to cover the cost of the AI tools I currently pay for out of my own pocket to create these videos. I may be retired, but somehow I’ve managed to give myself a new unpaid job! 😂 It takes a lot of time and some money… but while I’m making videos, at least I’m not cleaning the house. Watch Episode 14 about Procter & Gamble and you’ll understand. 🤣 More seriously, I’d genuinely love to hear your feedback and comments about the channel. My goal is to keep entertaining you while sharing information about investing, new investment products, distributions and dividends. And if you enjoy what I’m creating, subscribing to the channel would probably be the nicest little way you could support what I’m building. ❤️ https://youtube.com/@andypiimedia https://youtu.be/TokPcifO3vo I was happy when I reached 5K, now 7000 wow! Thank you to read me almost each day. read more
I am currently 47 years old. Unfortunately in that time frame I have lost a lot of family members. Some (most) were accidents, some to age, some to cancer, and one to suicide. That’s 11 deaths total. Only 1 person out of 11 had a will. When you are grieving the last thing you want to do is close an estate up. It’s even harder if nothing has been prepared in advance. After the initial shock of the death settles (the phase where everyone is usually nice), greed comes through in a most alarming manner. I’ve watched people turn into monsters. Make sure you have a will!!!! or people will fight. I know most people hate thinking about their death or their spouses death but honestly it’s just a fact of life. I’ve personally been the executor of 2 estates now. This is my advice: 1. If your young get life insurance. If you’re retired it’s not worth it. 2. Make sure you have a will. 3. Make sure you have a personal directive. 4. Make sure you have a power of attorney set up. 5. If your married make your spouse the beneficiary of your TFSA and RRSP(has to be done through the account not the will), they will roll into the spouses account without taxation. 6. If you’re married, and you own a house, make sure both names are on the title, joint tenant, NOT tenant in common. This activates right of survivorship on property and doesn’t have to go through the estate. 7. If you’re married, both people should have their name on all the vehicles, joint, otherwise it’s a headache after death. 8. Buy a file folding system. I have a plastic one that has a clasp and handle. 9. Put EVERYTHING in this file folder that would be needed if you died tomorrow. a) all land titles B) information on house insurance so it can either be eventually canceled or name changed over. C) your will (or the location of your will), power of attorney, and personal directive D) the information for your car, car insurance, and registration on vehicles. E) information on life insurance. F) all current year papers needed for filing your taxes. Because the survivor will have to do it and will need that information. G) where your household bills are. ALL OF THEM, electricity, gas, Netflix, magazine, subscriptions everything you can think of that is in their name. Because you are going to have to cancel them. H) their credit card information where to contact to cancel the cards I) birth certificate, SIN numbers, marriage, license, etc. J) information on all your investments accounts, bank accounts, etc. K) anything else you can think of for your situation If you’re married, I’d have one box per person. When you die, the funeral home will issue many death certificates. And your lawyer will give you copies of the will. These will be needed to change over any accounts. Everything else goes through the estate which is taxed and the lawyers take their fees so I’d avoid this as much as possible especially if you’re married. This is why having property in both people‘s names is so important because it doesn’t have to go through probate. I am widowed now and I have my black file folder and my two remaining children know if something happens to me, all they have to do is grab the folder. Everything they need to take care of my estate will be located in this folder. At the beginning of every year, I open this file up and go through everything to make sure it’s up-to-date. If you are young and do not own much or can’t afford a will, you can draft one up but it must be handwritten to be classified as a legal document. You cannot type it out!! If you’re not worth much, everything will most likely be sold to pay your bills and cover your funeral expenses. But you can state who your executor will be in your handwritten will. Disclaimer I’m not a lawyer or an accountant and this is not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer and talk to an accountant. Make sure everything is set up for you and your situation. These are situations that I personally ran into. Good luck Also I’ll add in. IF you have a lot of assets make an appointment with your accountant first. They will tell you how to properly set things up. Then take that information to your lawyer. read more
In my 20s, I spent 5 years pumped full of prednisone and methotrexate to fight off a rare disease, falling over $40,000 in debt, and even had to get a total hip replacement due to the prednisone destroying the bone in my left hip. Today, I am completely financially free, in the best shape of my life, and I get to spend every day with Soniya, who never left my side, and our three kids. If you are going through a dark time right now, please remember that it gets better. The suffering eventually ends. You just need to outlast it, and then slowly build yourself up. If I could overcome massive debt and a body trying to kill me, you can achieve your dreams too. Let's keep working towards the lives we deserve! I talk more about my experience in this video: https://youtu.be/PiifoiBYd04?si=pKPeVeTXJzmu7sS8
I’m excited about the car, but honestly, the buying experience was pretty disappointing. We scheduled a 10:30 appointment because we wanted to look at and test drive a Model Y Performance. When we got there, they didn’t even have that model available to demo. Then we were told someone forgot to charge the demo cars overnight, so we’d have to wait about 30 minutes before we could test drive anything. Thirty minutes later, they came back and pointed to another couple across the showroom and told us, “They actually just scheduled the 10:00 slot, so they’ll be driving before you guys if that’s okay. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” So our 10:30 appointment turned into us finally getting behind the wheel around 12:00 about an hour and a half late. Then we found out they basically had no inventory on the lot either. There were only two Model Ys available for sale, so unless one happened to be exactly what you wanted, you were out of luck. The staff and Location was poorly managed. The sales team was unorganized, sloppy and reminiscent of the AT&T experience of “if you want it bad enough you’ll wait forever and deal with my bad attitude for it first.” vibe. And rather than focusing on one customer at a time and then moving onto the next, They decided to float from customer to customer leaving you with the similar feeling of an understaffed restaurant trying to hold it together during the rush hour. Despite the experience, we really liked the extra space and seating configuration of the Model YL, so we begrudgingly pulled the trigger and ordered a 2027 Model YL. This wasn’t a great look for the company stock wise. I’ve always heard amazing things about the customer service experience from Tesla but if that’s what they’re referring to they’re all blowing steam.💨 Let me know what you think ⬇️😳🫣 $TSLAread more
I was listening to episode 426 of the Rational Reminder podcast and they started talking about something I really hadn’t thought much about before. We spend so much time figuring out what kind of investor we are. What’s my risk tolerance? How much risk should I take? How much do I need to save? But what about the other side of it — what kind of spender are you? At some point the money we’re saving and investing is actually supposed to be spent. They talked about three types of spenders: Tightwads → Unconflicted Consumers → Spendthrifts. There’s actually a test for this, so of course I had to take it. I scored 15 — Unconflicted Consumer. What am I actually saving all this money for? For me, I don’t think it’s material things anymore. When I was younger maybe it was. I’ve talked before about buying a motorcycle in my early 20s when I finally had a decent job and some money. At this point in my life, I think it’s experiences. My wife and I are celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary and we’re going away together for 10 days. We’re spending more on this trip than we normally would, and I’m completely okay with that. We’ve both worked hard, we’re busy raising our kids, and life seems to move faster every year. Ten days where we can get away together, slow things down and celebrate 15 years of marriage means something to me. That’s something I’m willing to spend money on. Someone else might look at what we’re spending and think that’s crazy. But maybe they’ve dreamed about owning a Mustang for 30 years and that’s what they want to spend their money on. I’d probably look at the Mustang and think… nope. But that’s the point. What do YOU want to spend your money on? I think we spend so much time learning how to save and invest that we don’t really think about what happens when it’s finally time to spend it. If you’re a natural saver or a “tightwad,” after 30 or 40 years of telling yourself NOT to spend money, can you suddenly flip that switch in retirement? Apparently I’m an Unconflicted Consumer, so maybe I’ve got a fighting chance. If you want to try the University of Michigan test, here it is: https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_55xxAQrYK0WRlY2 Take it and post your score. I’m curious where everyone falls. read more
Hey Everyone! My name is Austin and I am working at @blossom on the product team! Our team is constantly looking for ways to improve the platform and build features you care about. I am hosting a series of 45-minute user interviews every thursday to learn more about how you use blossom today. Anyone is welcome whether you are a new or longtime user of the platform! Interested in chatting? Click the link to find a time that works for you. https://calendly.com/austin-blossomsocial/45min
Thank you to all of my followers , we have reached 20K followers on Blossom 1.2k followers on X Over 300 subscribers for The Edge Report Newsletter Board of Advisors ( Option Specialist) at DividendVisions We are working on a couple of things : building a YouTube Channel - building a portfolio and trading options in Public Possibly a weekly live show with a media partner read more
I looked at the 1-year total return performance of these high-income single-stock ETFs, and this is another reminder that yield alone can be misleading. 📉 SHPE: -9.77% 1Y total return | 28.49% yield 📉 TSLY: -9.07% | 29.13% yield 📉 METE: -6.65% | 18.20% yield These ETFs are designed to generate significant income from individual stocks like Shopify, Tesla and Meta, but over this 1-year comparison, all 3 produced negative total returns despite their high distributions. 💡 My takeaway: Getting a 20–30% yield feels great, but what matters is how much money you actually have after distributions AND price/NAV movement. Income is only half the story. Total return matters. Would you still hold these for the monthly cash flow? 👀read more
My Wealthsimple rank: - TFSA in the 1999 age group is 94th - FHSA in the 25-29 age group is 214th These are both crazy numbers and it took me 6 years to get to this result. The thing about investing is you’re either really lucky or have a sound strategy. These are the 3 things I did to get to this number without making a crazy income: 1. Consistently Invested 🎢 I learned in 2022/2023 that a lack of consistency was destroying my portfolio. I became complacent and stopped investing all together for a couple years, which ultimately diminished my total portfolio as I was not DCA’ing in to my long positions. Consistently catching red days and movement up is how you win. If you don’t participate in the market, you don’t get to reap the benefits and you also lose focus on trying to get better everyday. This goes with anything in life. You HAVE to be consistent. 2. Keeping Conviction 🤞🏾 It’s easy to see your stock go down 20% and think it’s over. That isn’t how life or the stock market works. Healthy pullbacks, market sentiment, and geopolitical conditions are all part of the game. I sold some amazing companies like $PLTR $ATZ and $TSLA many years ago and look at where they are now. If a companies vision, financials, and performance have not changed, it is an indicator to possibly double down instead of being scared. 3. Paying Myself First ✅ This is truly the reason why my portfolio has reached this level. My money goes to my investments first. My investments have been my biggest bill for the last 3 years. Simultaneously, the markets have been extremely generous, pushing my portfolio to almost 100% in total gains. If you pay yourself first, you prevent yourself from overspending or even possibly going in to debt to live your daily life. Moving forward my top positions that I suspect will push me even higher are $AMD$SOFI$ZNQ and $AMZN. I don’t plan on selling any of these until 2028 at the minimum. read more
If you DCA'd during the $BTC bear market and ignored the negative comments, enjoy the next few years. To my fellow $MSTE , $BDAY, and $ISBG holders: expect some 20%+ drawdowns, but the overall trend is up and to the right and new all time highs! To the haters: please save your comments. I heard your criticisms for a year straight and still bought over $1M in BTC ETFs. If I listened to you, I would be an unsuccessful investor. Instead, I followed the data, stuck to my thesis, and now I am up hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it's JUST GETTING STARTED. So congratulations to everyone who held strong, enjoy the next few years, and Welcome to the $BTC bull market!
President Trump just rejected Iran’s proposal for a 7-day ceasefire and has told that he expects to begin bombing Iran AFTER the November midterms. Key word: “AFTER” At least he waited until after 4pm.. Have a good weekend family.
Iv sprinkled fun built into my routines. I spen about $100 on video games per month. My wife about the same on her fun. We both go out for dinner once a week. We call it Fat Fridays. My wife is from vietnam, but she has low key become addicted to Wopper Wendsdays as well. Beyond this, We dont tie down our net worth milestones to our rewards. I think we should though. I was listening to the @karyungtom@moementumfinance podcast and the idea of 1% every $100,00 actually sounds kinda nice. This would force us to spend. My wife and I couod both benefit from this. I might not be a very well informed investor but my wife and I budget like no other.
Have you ever heard of a music group called “Green Day”? I actually didn’t like their music too much when their songs were first being released. Even though they were a very popular group, I thought they were too punk for my taste!😂 But over the last few years I’ve come to appreciate their music more, probably because of Spotify, and the ease of streaming music. Green Day actually has quite a few hit songs, and I like quite a few of them. I guess you could say that I’m a “Green Day” fan now. 🟢🪭 Some of their more popular songs, which I think are pretty good, are Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), and When I Come Around. One song that I’ve discovered recently, that I quite enjoy, is called 21 Guns. I think it was a moderate hit when it was released, but I don’t think I ever heard this song until recently. Anyways, it’s a pretty nice song that you might want to have a listen to, when you have a chance. Pretty catchy tune. Here is a link to a live version of the song on YouTube. https://youtu.be/HVaYkdG4k_I On another note, my portfolio also had a nice “Green Day” today!🟢😂😂 Daily gain of +$230,568!👍 Quite a few of my Bitcoin related investments ($MSTR, $FBTC, $IBIT, $FBTC) and tech related names ($NVDA, $SMH, $META, $AMD, $VGT, $QQQM) did very well today! How did your portfolio do today? 🤷♂️ Did you have a nice “Green Day” 🟢 as well?😂😂😂 read more