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pokeyman posted:Returns are nowhere near uniformly distributed over time. You only get the average return if you stay invested. Being out of the market on the four days that effectively contribute the year's net return will cost you much more than 2%. I know. I said back of the envelope. Besides, the opposite is also true. We, rightfully so, have a bias towards couch potato style investing around here, but if you were actively managing your risk, sitting out during a time of great uncertainty is basically what it would look like. I don't think you'd be picking up tips from a goon at the Thanksgiving table though if you were good at this already.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:23
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pokeyman posted:I mean, that's another way to say "this time it's different". And maybe it is! I have no way of knowing. Will that affect stonks? I can't imagine it doesn't so after the last few months I increased cash and bonds to 30% of my portfolio. I'm probably going to pick a target date to start averaging back in around summer. Maybe I'm paranoid but I'm not going all cash or anything. (Or gold LOL)
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Oct 15, 2020 14:49
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Here's the secret that makes passive investing work so well. If the stock market tanks so much that you lose all your money, so has everyone else, so money is worthless. If you're afraid of the fall of the American empire, instead of buying ETFs you should stock up on ammo, rad-away and bottlecaps.
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Oct 15, 2020 14:57
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No I definitely think that's the far spectrum of having tolerance for risk; normally I keep 10% in cash equivalents but my risk tolerance has changed. I don't think the economy will fall but I think it could be months of turmoil. I wouldn't be leaving 70% in equities if I thought America would fall in the next few months. That's a pretty lovely way to ignore what I typed.
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Oct 15, 2020 15:04
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I wasn't just replying to you. But to elaborate, if you think the market is going to recover, then just keep your stocks in the market.
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Oct 15, 2020 15:08
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xtal posted:I wasn't just replying to you. But to elaborate, if you think the market is going to recover, then just keep your stocks in the market. Ah okay sorry to act like you were. An extenuating circumstance is that I'm semi-retired (I guess FIRE) and I can't eat equities.
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Oct 15, 2020 15:10
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Looking for some thoughts on what to do with my employee stock program which is traded in USD, which I want to diversify to reduce the risk of holding all a single stock. I'm paid in CAD which is what I'm using to set up a general ETF portfolio. After selling this stock, is there a strong reason to keep it in USD? My registered accounts are already maxed out with CAD so I don't think I can do any tax optimization by holding US funds in there. If I do want to keep it in USD, it seems to be a nightmare to get it between Morgan Stanley and Questrade without paying for wire transfers - I'm looking into doing an EFT to my bank and then a pre-authorized-debit to Questrade, otherwise I'm looking at a Transferwise account to see if I can get cheaper transfers that way. If there's no strong reason to keep the proceeds in USD, what's the best way to convert it to CAD? The two candidates I've seen are Norbert's Gambit which is a bit scary, and requires getting the funds into a brokerage (e.g. Questrade) first, or to use Transferwise which claims to be the cheapest way to do conversions and transfers.
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Oct 19, 2020 21:05
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Bizarro Buddha posted:Looking for some thoughts on what to do with my employee stock program which is traded in USD, which I want to diversify to reduce the risk of holding all a single stock. You can likely just transfer the equity itself into your QT account and then manage it from there. If that's not to your taste, you can probably update your employer's program with the info for your QT account so that your stock ends up there to begin with. Failing that, Norbert's Gambit is the best way to exchange currencies and it costs only the difference in exchange rate (compared to asking QT to 'exchange' your money where they charge a tiny premium). Norbert's can take a couple business days to be journaled across which is something to keep in mind but not always something that matters. Were it me, I'd sell the stock like you say and then just buy a portfolio of ETFs in USD, you can get the same exposure as you could with CAD ETFs. If you want to hedge against USD movement or express sentiment about the USD it becomes more complicated and honestly I don't know very much about how this works outside of registered accounts. You're already exposed to USD from the fact your stock is being given to you in USD and you're going to be operating with that value in USD.
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Oct 19, 2020 21:24
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My employer will only deposit the shares with Morgan Stanley or Fidelity in the US. I couldn't work out from any of the documentation on the Morgan Stanley site if they're happy to transfer stocks and how much they charge for doing so, and likewise with Questrade, I guess that's why I focused on selling through Morgan Stanley because then it's just cash to transfer. It's also simpler to sell with Morgan Stanley because they have all the cost bases right there. If I think about the cost of converting USD to CAD as a percentage, I think it makes sense to buy an ETF portfolio in USD like you said so that I'm letting gains compound before paying that conversion cost somewhere down the line - completely ignoring the currency movement because there's no way I can predict that. I think I've managed to figure out a path to pay from Morgan Stanley to TD via EFT with a US routing number, and then from TD to Questrade with a PAD... I'm going to test each of those with a small amount to make sure everything's fine before proceeding.
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Oct 19, 2020 22:57
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Bizarro Buddha posted:My employer will only deposit the shares with Morgan Stanley or Fidelity in the US. I couldn't work out from any of the documentation on the Morgan Stanley site if they're happy to transfer stocks and how much they charge for doing so, and likewise with Questrade, I guess that's why I focused on selling through Morgan Stanley because then it's just cash to transfer. It's also simpler to sell with Morgan Stanley because they have all the cost bases right there. I think it's probably worth consulting an actual professional for this because if it's an American-held account with MS and you're moving stuff to a Canadian QT account you need to know if there are taxation things happening there that affect you. An example would be that every dollar transferred into your QT cash account might be taxable as income or capital gains - I don't know. If you use Norbert's, just to be clear, you aren't paying any additional fees or anything on top of the difference from the exchange rate. You aren't losing any % in terms of value. You don't even have to talk to someone, you just open a chat window with QT and ask them to journal your shares to the appropriate holding (DLR.TO to DLR.U.TO for CAD->USD). They do it all the time.
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Oct 19, 2020 23:14
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That's a good point, I was thinking about the costs of converting currency normally, not through Norbert's. My understanding of the taxation situation is that when I sell my stocks and gain USD I owe capital gains, but moving that USD around is not a taxable event. That's how I've done my taxes in the past at least!
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Oct 20, 2020 00:22
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I'm a dual US-Canadian citizen, and I recently discovered I have about 6 years of tax returns I need to file stateside. I don't believe I actually owe the USG anything since I'm well under the foreign earned income exclusion limit. Anyways the process seems quite complicated and not so fun. I'm in Toronto, is there any way to find people who will actually teach you how to do this yourself so I'm not paying ridiculous sums on tax preparation services every year? My mother has a tax preparer, but they charge over $1000 per return which seems crazy high to me. Also, I can't use a TSFA since it's not covered by the Canada-US tax treaty as far as I know. What's a good option for investing? Should I just open a Questrade account and stick some money in index funds?
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Oct 20, 2020 20:36
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Cat Army 
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The Iron Rose posted:I'm a dual US-Canadian citizen, and I recently discovered I have about 6 years of tax returns I need to file stateside. I don't believe I actually owe the USG anything since I'm well under the foreign earned income exclusion limit. We've got a few clients for whom we file 1040's for, and as long as there's no tax withheld or owing, it seems pretty straightforward. That is, we just download the 1040NR (I assume you're a non-resident here) in a PDF from the IRS, fill it in manually, get the client to sign it, and we mail it to the IRS. I don't know if you have any extenuating circumstances, but if you don't have any income earned in the US, I doubt you need to file other schedules like the 8840, where you list exemptions due to treaties. Also, $1,000 per return seems crazy high for simple US or even Canadian returns. We have a few clients that require actual effort in filing separate 1080's due to US partnership income, and I don't think we charge anywhere near $1,000 per return for that. $1,000 for the whole batch sounds more reasonable.
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Oct 20, 2020 20:57
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mojo1701a posted:We've got a few clients for whom we file 1040's for, and as long as there's no tax withheld or owing, it seems pretty straightforward. That is, we just download the 1040NR (I assume you're a non-resident here) in a PDF from the IRS, fill it in manually, get the client to sign it, and we mail it to the IRS. Uh, U.S. citizens can't use a 1040NR. If you have any sort of Canadian income, retirement savings, pension, or enough assets, there's more paperwork for that, too. (And don't forget your foreign bank account report that has to be submitted to the Treasury every year...) $1,000 might be high for just a U.S. return for a single person, but for an American couple living in Canada, $1,000 per year in tax prep costs is not shocking.
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Oct 20, 2020 21:19
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tagesschau posted:Uh, U.S. citizens can't use a 1040NR. If you have any sort of Canadian income, retirement savings, pension, or enough assets, there's more paperwork for that, too. (And don't forget your foreign bank account report that has to be submitted to the Treasury every year...) $1,000 might be high for just a U.S. return for a single person, but for an American couple living in Canada, $1,000 per year in tax prep costs is not shocking. Damnit, I somehow missed the "citizen" part, since most of the clients are non-resident Canadians. In my defence, I've been trying to stay away from caffeine for like, almost two months now for health problems, so I get brain farts more easily. I just reviewed a client who's actually a US citizen, and we filed a regular 1040, a 2555 (Foreign Earned Income), and 1040 Schedule 1 (since they moved some lines from the 1040 to its own separate schedule in 2019). Still a good idea to see a professional at least once if there are problems. Now you know I'm not a CPA yet. Although good news: I don't know if I mentioned it here, but I passed the prerequisites for CPA Ontario, and now I move on to the pre-CFE Professional Education Program. Hopefully it'll just be another two years (not including the 30 months' professional experience requirement) before I finish.
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Oct 20, 2020 21:31
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I just asked a big firm partner for fun and was told 1k/couple is the absolute price floor for US returns prepped in Canada by bigger firms and any complexity at all would of course drive it higher. (Also that a boutique crossborder firm like KVDB *probably* is cheaper).
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Oct 20, 2020 22:26
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Sassafras posted:I just asked a big firm partner for fun and was told 1k/couple is the absolute price floor for US returns prepped in Canada by bigger firms and any complexity at all would of course drive it higher. (Also that a boutique crossborder firm like KVDB *probably* is cheaper). Yeah, that's my experience (about $1500 for mine because I have some stupid US financial stuff) with a smallish firm that has US expertise but doesn't specialize in it.
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Oct 20, 2020 22:35
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Are there public Canadian companies that are poised to do well if US rail gets a big boost? https://twitter.com/samjmintz/status/1318910466798780416 ... I just like trains ok?
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Oct 22, 2020 15:57
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Can Bombardier trick Amtrak into buying crap from them?
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Oct 22, 2020 16:04
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gently caress yeah, all in on Bombardier! It looks like a few extra rail lines into Canada might on the table. Maybe we'd sell them some more steel? Obviously this is all highly speculative based on something that probably won't even happen, but hey that's what my fun investing money account is for. Might pick up some more CN Rail or something anyway.
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Oct 22, 2020 16:46
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Heard on the radio today that TTC is recommending Bombardier for future contracts again despite their constant fuckups.
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Oct 22, 2020 18:07
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odiv posted:Are there public Canadian companies that are poised to do well if US rail gets a big boost? The PNW line would go from Vancouver BC to portland, but this has been talked about for ages so who knows.
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Oct 22, 2020 18:10
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There's that Buffalo/Detroit link (with a side to Toronto) which passes through Canada. I'm assuming it's just a usage lease of the Detroit/Toronto link, although I was under the impression is was already at capacity since it's a single line.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:10
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I assume this would be $25B for an expansion of the same crap and not high speed or electrified lines.
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Oct 22, 2020 19:59
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cowofwar posted:I assume this would be $25B for an expansion of the same crap and not high speed or electrified lines. Or stretches of high speed lines that are bottlenecked in tons of places by lower speed ways, for the best expense/utility failure.
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Oct 22, 2020 20:29
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If I recall correctly bombardier sold off almost all of its lines of business and only makes, I want to say, small-mid sized plane engines for private jets?
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Oct 23, 2020 01:19
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The Iron Rose posted:I'm a dual US-Canadian citizen, and I recently discovered I have about 6 years of tax returns I need to file stateside. I don't believe I actually owe the USG anything since I'm well under the foreign earned income exclusion limit. Sup fellow dually. I went through this exact process last year. Here's my takeaways from the situation WITH A BIG FAT WARNING THAT I'M NOT SURE IF I DID THE RIGHT THING OR NOT SO TALK TO AN EXPERT AND DON'T LISTEN TO STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET. I started this process for probably the exact same reason you are looking to do it, that being that I realized that filing taxes in the states is mandatory and read a bunch of horror stories about all the awful things the IRS can do if you're not compliant with their policies. What I did is the following. Filed an FBAR report: basically this is a form detailing any and all monies and securities that you have. Bank accounts, RRSP, etc. Part of the IRS law is that any citizen must disclose their foreign holdings, and this report is how you do it. This includes a TFSA, which is not "tax free" according to the US government, more on this in a bit. File a US tax return: The really important number here is 105,900. This is the amount that is excluded from US taxation for foreign income (in US dollars). If you're not over this number, this is A LOT easier. If you're over this number but close to it there's probably other exclusions or credits available that would get you below it. If you're above this number by a fair bit, talk to a tax expert cause I have no idea what to do. I filed a 1040 and a 2555 to the best of my knowledge and all the numbers added up to what I expected, which is that I don't owe the IRS anything. One important difference between Canada and the US that you mentioned is the TFSA. Essentially (to the best of my knowledge) the US government doesn't consider money earned within a TFSA (from whatever equities its invested in) to be tax free. They treat it as though its taxable income. So if you have 10k in a TFSA and it makes 500 dollars in 2019, that 500 is taxable income. With that said, if you're not near the 105,9000 US threshold, you can use a TFSA without any issue or taxation. It is a good thing to keep an eye on though if you go near that number, and if you're using a TFSA as your primary device for holding retirement assets, you might want to reconsider that to get away from the potential of US taxation. Also, you'll see a lot of articles about US taxation on inheritances, lottery winnings, stuff like that. The US has these policies to whale hunt. They don't seem to care or have the time to pursue average people with average incomes. The goal is to get you when you inherit a10 miillion dollar estate, not when you get a 3 dollar an hour raise. The thresholds for estates and all that stuff are higher than what will happen to almost any dually, so try not to lose too much sleep about it. Again, do some research into these numbers as needed depending on your situation. Finally, my mom and dad have been doing this for decades and have had multiple times where the IRS came back to them and said "you did your form totally wrong here's what you should have done you owe us nothing see you next year". Again, it seems like just doing your best to disclose what is likely an average situation keeps you in the clear. Between an FBAR and a 1040/2555 that's almost certainly good enough, assuming you're not a high earner or have a huge amount of assets. I'll let you know if I get thrown in jail for tax evasion.
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Oct 23, 2020 02:27
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Shappa posted:With that said, if you're not near the 105,9000 US threshold, you can use a TFSA without any issue or taxation. I am pretty sure this is incorrect. The $107,600 (for 2020) applies only to earned income, and cannot be used to reduce taxable income from dividends or interest on assets held in a TFSA (or elsewhere). The number you're looking for for 2020 is the standard deduction, which is $12,400 for single taxpayers ($24,800 for married couples filing jointly). Any unearned income over that amount may incur taxes, but you ought to get a credit for the taxes you pay to Canada.
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Oct 23, 2020 05:27
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tagesschau posted:I am pretty sure this is incorrect. The $107,600 (for 2020) applies only to earned income, and cannot be used to reduce taxable income from dividends or interest on assets held in a TFSA (or elsewhere). The number you're looking for for 2020 is the standard deduction, which is $12,400 for single taxpayers ($24,800 for married couples filing jointly). Any unearned income over that amount may incur taxes, but you ought to get a credit for the taxes you pay to Canada. Where did you get that number from? I'd like to read up more on that and understand how a TFSA works in relation to expat taxation. If that's correct, then essentially someone would be able to safely use a TFSA so long as it wasn't generating more than 12,400 in profit each year (or this number minus any other passive income) correct? That's still a pretty decent amount to work in but obviously very attainable, especially if the user had their primary life/retirement savings within the TFSA. Seems like there's also a few extra forms to fill out if a TFSA is used, especially if mutual funds are involved.
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Oct 25, 2020 16:54
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Is TFSA valuation for this purpose mark-to-market, or do you only take gains on equities when you sell them? When we moved to the US we liquidated our TFSAs rather than deal with the paperwork, so I never had to figure that out.
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Oct 25, 2020 17:03
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Shappa posted:Where did you get that number from? That's the standard deduction, which counts against all taxable income, earned or unearned.
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Oct 25, 2020 22:59
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I don’t know if anyone read this Toronto Life (yes, I know) article the other day, but it got me wondering. How is a 25 year old who makes $70,000 a year able to accumulate $5 million in mortgage debt? The only thing I can think of is that he’s going through private lenders and not banks. He mentions “partnering up” on a few properties but that doesn’t explain away the full $5 million and of course he’s promoting his own podcast and networking events.
Mr. Apollo fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Oct 27, 2020 |
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Oct 27, 2020 02:19
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Mr. Apollo posted:I don’t know if anyone read this Toronto Life (yes, I know) article the other day, but it got me wondering. How is a 25 year old who makes $70,000 a year able to accumulate $5 million in mortgage debt? The only thing I can think of is that he’s going through private lenders and not banks. He mentions “partnering up” on a few properties but that doesn’t explain away the full $5 million and of course he’s promoting his own podcast and networking events. Twitter quite convinced that it's all lies like that somewhat famous "couple earning 250k/year with two days part time work between the pair, needs a little more spending money so thinking about working another day" financial profile many years back. https://twitter.com/ronmortgageguy/status/1319781044464340992?s=19 https://twitter.com/ronmortgageguy/status/1319825521841180673?s=19
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Oct 27, 2020 04:54
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Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I spent a bit of time this evening going though his social media and it seems like he’s trying to be a Tom Vu / Tony Robbins type character. He has a podcast and “networking group” that you can join. The people in the networking group can set you up with properties to buy and loans if the banks won’t give you one. It seems like every other word is an acronym that describes some sort of system on how to get rich with real estate. The founders of the networking group all have the same “rags to riches” child of immigrants type story. One thing that raised my eyebrow is how many times he said that he wanted wealth and prestige and to get rich quick in the original article. Looking back at it now, it’s pretty clear that it was an infomercial. “I made mistakes but still got rich. Join my group and I can teach you the secrets of success.” edit - OK, yeah, this tweet from the start of the thread that you posted sums it up. It’s to promote his investing club. https://twitter.com/ronmortgageguy/status/1319615064568102912?s=21 His website (https://www.austinyeh.com) has been “down for maintenance” since that mortgage broker explained his scam and got more retweets and likes than the Toronto Life article. Mr. Apollo fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Oct 27, 2020 |
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Oct 27, 2020 05:51
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I couldn't get to any of the parts you're talking about because I close the article in a fury every time I try to read it
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Oct 27, 2020 05:55
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xtal posted:I couldn't get to any of the parts you're talking about because I close the article in a fury every time I try to read it TL;DR it’s a scam to promote his investment club that you have to pay to join and a monthly membership fee (all money goes to charity, honest) and then he convinces people to include him on the title in exchange for his advice and showing them “undervalued properties” that other people in the club are selling. He actually only bought 2 properties.
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Oct 27, 2020 06:23
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Honestly can't decide whether Toronto Life got had or if this is correct, expected use of their column inches.
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Oct 27, 2020 06:32
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We just sold our house and have around $100k sitting whilst we live with in-laws waiting to see what happens with covid and the housing market. Where is the best place to stick this while we build a bigger down payment? Neither of us are currently using our TFSA room (23k~ each) and both are debt free and have a decent emergency fund. We expect to be saving for at least 12-18 months. Is a HISA the way to go or should we both be looking at ETFs in a tfsa? Both max our TFSA and the rest in HISA?
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Nov 2, 2020 18:56
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Honey Im Homme posted:We just sold our house and have around $100k sitting whilst we live with in-laws waiting to see what happens with covid and the housing market. Where is the best place to stick this while we build a bigger down payment? HISA because your horizon is way too close to be making bets on anything with an index ETF IMO.
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Nov 2, 2020 19:19
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What is the current winner for HSIA anyhow?
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Nov 2, 2020 19:58
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