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moneysense.ca, 28/01/10
This and That: Getting rich off Rich Dad, “teaser” interest rates and more…
- The upcoming episode of CBC’s consumer watchdog show Marketplace (Fridays 8:30 p.m. in most of Canada) promises to be interesting. Host Erica Johnson finds out who is really getting rich through “free” Rich Dad real estate seminars. (Hint: It ain’t the seminar attendees).
- If you thinking about opening up a TFSA high-interest savings account, check out the fine print. Rob Carrick points out that many financial institutions are offering “teaser” interest rates that will revert to a much lower rate in the future.
- Mark Hulbert reports in The New Times on a new study that found that an actively-managed fund has to outperform the index by 4.3% annually before expenses just to break even net of expenses.
- Kevin Press of Today ’s Economy Blog shares observations gleaned from an interview with Gail Vaz-Oxlade.
- You’ll hear gold bugs often going on about the inherent value in the yellow metal. Michael James doesn’t buy that and says just like money, gold only has value because we agree that it has value.
- Million Dollar Journey featured a guest post on six relatively painless way you can cut costs but keep the Latte Factor in your life.
- Thicken My Wallet has a valuable tip: make sure you shred all your personalized junk mail such as credit card offers.
- Preet puts on his thinking cap and debates what happens when you inversely weight the components in a capitalization-weighted index.
- The Intelligent Speculatorreports that new leveraged ETFs in the works plan to use monthly rebalancing to provide better tracking for long(er)-term investors.
- Canadian Financial DIY discovers that post-dated cheques and stopped cheques can cause you considerable grief.
I’m unable to highlight all the articles worth checking out in my weekly round up but you can check them out through my Twitter feed. Hope everyone had a great weekend!
moneysense.ca, 28/01/10
Thanks for the link Ram – have a great weekend!
Thanks for the link CC:)
It’s too bad that you can’t draw many attendees to a seminar called “get financially comfortable with discipline over many years”. False promises of quick riches seems to draw people in. Thanks for the mention.
Thanks for including the article #10! I read only a select few blogs, yours being the best quality and I would never have happened upon it. Good read. Keep up the good work, CC.
Good posts. I’m really surprised about those cheque rules. I’m surprised the bank legislation isn’t summarized by the simple line: “Screw you customer”.
Hi CC, thanks for the mention.
I dunno, maybe the seminar isn’t badly named – the 1% (chance of becoming a) Rich Dad, 99% (chance of becoming a) Poor Dad seminar. They just need to add the percentages.
Maybe Michael has an idea there … the OK Dad seminar series. Outline: only ever take on mortgage debt, save 18% of your income, half to buy stuff, half to invest, invest in passive cap-weighted index ETFs equally in TFSA and RRSP, go back to watching TV, wait 35 years, start taking out 4% a year, go back to watching TV. Oops, that’s the whole seminar.
@CanadianInvestor: Too bad nobody will be willing to pay $45K for that seminar. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, some of these seminars will cost you $45,000. I almost drove my car off the road when I heard that this morning on CBC’s Current.
Kiyosaki is a hack and it’s not surprising to see him pick up Tom Vu’s old seminar nonsense.
I recommend reading this critique of Rich Dad Poor Dad:
http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html
Thanks for the link Ram.
REF: Rich Dad Poor Dad. There’s too much of this sort of Get Rich crap going on in Canada. Education is one thing. Buyer beware is an excuse law makers use not to get on to these people. If some of these scammers were cracked down on hard maybe it would send a message. I find it funny that when someone is bilked out of hundreds of thousands or millions, the press is all over it and government gets involved, but when it’s Joe Blow just trying to improve his life a little, nobody can give 2 cents worth of interest. They look at him as though he was stupid for falling for it. Maybe more of us so called “informed” investors should start attending these seminars and questioning the motives of the presenters. Sure security would kick us out, but someone has got to start standing up to these scumbags.
@Dave: I’m glad CBC is doing this story and asking tough questions. But I just can’t begin to imagine someone shelling out $45K to learn how to invest in real estate or anything else for that matter. You could get a full 4-year college education with that kind of money.
Unfortunately there will always be a market for people looking for an easy way to get rich, looking for a “secret” that others haven’t yet discovered. I don’t follow the advice of salesmen such as Kiyosaki but I believe that he strongly advised his followers to buy real estate until the real estate bubble burst at which point he claimed that what he was saying wasn’t really “buy real estate”.
The holy grail of becoming wealthy may, in fact, be that there is no holy grail. Some people become wealthy because of luck as much as skill. Read what Warren Buffet has to say about how lucky his good friend Bill Gates was in terms of timing, having access to computers, etc.
It takes many hours of hard work to become wealthy and, oftentimes, it takes a stroke of luck as well.
Hopefully, after Marketplace airs, many people who were thinking about going to Kiyosaki’s sales seminar will think twice.
$45,000?????????????????????????????????????????
I didn’t hear that on CBC radio today on my drive in, although I did hear a plug for the program.
Sounds like something that rhymes with Fonzi
The PVR is all over it tonight. I’ll be watching it tomorrow.
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I just watched that program on the CBC, here all this time I knew very little about Kiyosaki. Ridiculous.
Here’s some real estate investing advice, look up positive cash flow in the dictionary, then with $45,000, BUY some property.
@CdnCapitalist: There are people out there who can be influenced or bullied into these scams. What I am saying is that the lawmakers of this country do not give a damn about the average joe getting ripped off. It is fine for all us “educated” people here to laugh this crap off, but the fact is there are some very slick people out there who can pull this stuff off and do. The thing is when these things are identified as scams or ripoffs, there is not enough information being passed around and it needs to be. When these seminars come to your town you should be spreading the word. I was scammed myself a couple of years ago. Turns out the guy is wanted in BC, pops up in Alberta under a different name, things get hot, he skips town and is out east somewhere still scamming people, probably under another name. Hard to do due diligence on people who have the system figured and can hide behind shell companies and weak laws that supposedly protect “investors”. The police know who he is but can’t charge anyone under “buyer beware” cop out rules or can’t be bothered because it’s only a few thousand bucks. Canada has quite a reputation for fraud due to our weak stance on these issues.
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2261893
Ridiculous.
Thanks for featuring my article CC!
I took a quick look through some of those articles… First, no one should be shocked by financial institutions offering higher introductory interest rates on any accounts (or lower for Credit Cards). Second, James is right… value is assessed by those who buy/sell goods (i.e. gold). It’s the basis of markets since the beginning of time. Thanks again for some good reads.
@Dave: I’m not laughing at all. Nor am I ridiculing the people who sign up for these courses. I’m just incredulous that these “courses” cost anywhere between $12K and $45K. That’s a lot of money. And I agree that we, the general public, have a responsibility to spread the word and shine a harsh light on these “courses”.
After seeing the Marketplace piece, it’s not clear that Robert Kiyosaki is the bad guy here. He may be, but he claimed that his former partner made a deal with a questionable company and that he is not happy about it. Talk is cheap, but if Kiyosaki manages to extricate himself from the deal and then returns his profits to wronged seminar attendees, I’d be prepared to believe that he is a good guy. However, if he just and waits for the bad press to blow over keeps the money he makes, I’ll think the worst of him.
Re: Latte factor. Make your lattes yourself people! It’s $13 for a 2LB bag of Costco branded Starbucks beans. It’s $200 for a good expresso machine (not super cheap). Mine is still working after 7 years. It’s $30-40 for a burr coffee grinder, you’ll get tired of a spinning blades one. It’s $5 for an Ikea handheld spinning thing to froth the milk. You probably already have a microwave.
With this setup and a I can make a latte in 1 min 20 sec that tastes way better than most coffee you can buy in Vancouver. I drink 2-6 per day and I estimate it to be 30x cheaper. Much better for the environment too. Only problem is milk consumption.