- Jonathan Chevreau refers to this article by Glorianne Stromberg, a former OSC Commissioner, in his blog post on continuing criticism of the Canadian mutual fund industry for its high fees: “The incontrovertible fact is that costs matter. And Canadians who invest in the high-cost mutual funds offered by the Canadian financial services industry are unknowingly giving up an exorbitant amount of the long-term capital they would otherwise be accumulating while needlessly exposing themselves (based on their actual return) to the market risk of loss of capital. This is unconscionable.”
- How do you make an expensive investment product even more so? Why, by wrapping them in a portfolio and charging a premium, of course. My only experience with wraps was the TD Managed Index ePortfolios, which charges about 1% more than the underlying funds. I don’t think 1% is worth the few minutes it takes to rebalance a portfolio every year.
- Bell Mobility is raising the System Access Fees charged to customers on a monthly plan to $8.95 a month. The cheapest monthly plan from Bell is now a hefty $33.85 including taxes. I am so glad that we switched both our occasional use cell phones to Virgin Mobile.
- To fix or to float, is an eternal dilemma whether it is mortgage rates or natural gas prices. This CBC article tries to answer the question. The answer is fairly clear in the case of mortgage rates but less so for natural gas prices.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 0xcc // Oct 10, 2006 at 9:03 am
Before I found out about the increase in the Bell system access fee I started to look into other plans for our (also occasional) cell phone use. I am planning on doing a post on my blog about it but I think I have come to the same conclusion as you, that Virgin Mobile is the way to go. I did have a couple of questions about Virgin though. All the other mobile carriers seem to have an expiry time frame for the minutes you buy, does Virgin? Also, I assume that the per minute charges they talk about for their plans don’t include taxes (but neither does any other advertised plan) but that is the total charge you pay, no system access fees, no activation fees, nothing like that; Is that your experience?
2 Canadian Capitalist // Oct 10, 2006 at 10:11 am
I did a couple of posts on Virgin Mobile (just search for them on the main page), they used to have an outstanding expiry feature, but they soon became like the big boys. The best expiry plan they have is $25 (+tax) for 90 days. I think their per minute rate is 25 cents (+tax). But there are no SAF, no activation fees for new phones, no 911 fee, no account maintenace fee… its still the best choice for pre-paid.
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