Appreciate the thank yous. I post a fair amount on this thread because it is a subject I spend a lot of time on, and I hope what I have learned gets passed on and is helpful to others who might not have the same access to information and 45 years of experience. I also find it quite interesting to have so much information written down in one thread, and to be able to go back over the posts from the beginning and look at how things have evolved over the past 4 years. I have started at post one and read all the way through a couple of times; truly a very interesting exercise.
I have always believed the very best thing you can do for your children is to make them financially literate. Starting to invest young is far and away the easiest way to end up wealthy. Our schools should be doing a much better job of teaching kids that. Even university fails miserably at teaching financial literacy to their students. I have guest lectured a large number of MBA classes, and was initially amazed that most students didn't even know what the Rule of 72 is, let alone many more complicated investment principles.
The other reason is to give people a perspective to perhaps evaluate the information they are getting from their financial advisors. There are good advisors out there, and a great many mediocre to bad ones. We all need a way to try to be able to separate them without going through 3 years of zero or negative returns to determine if they are any good.
Something I posted on another thread that relates to the posts above about U.S. dollar investments -
For larger quantities of U.S. dollars, say over 5000, Knightsbridge is worth checking out. Also worth checking is AMA and the Snow Birds Club. For small amounts of cash I just use the Bank.
In my case, when I travel I have a U.S. dollar credit card, that gets paid out of my U.S. dollar bank account automatically. U.S. dollar investments are sold to add cash to the U.S. dollar account. I hold a fairly large chunk of investments in U.S. dollars. That way I am not subject to the fluctuating exchange rate and am insulated from Trudeau's drive to make the Canadian dollar worth 25 cents..
https://www.knightsbridgefx.com/?msc...52e9b0106d85d4
These guys are well worth being a member of if you travel a lot.
https://www.snowbirds.org/
APRIL 2024 Exchange Rate
USD/CAD = 1.3674
( *$1 USD will cost you $1.3674 CAD )
CAD/USD = 0.7313