January is a great time to pause and reflect on the previous year, take stock of lessons learned, and make a plan for the year to come. To help you in your reflecting and planning, we’ve rounded up our most popular personal finance blog posts of 2016.
Best of 2016 – our most popular personal finance blog posts
1. Investors Group Portfolio Review
On our website, anyone can submit a request for a portfolio review, and we will look at the fees the client is paying and how well diversified they are. Most of the requests are from people who have a mutual fund account with a financial advisor at a bank or a mutual fund company.
Over the summer, Peter (not his real name) sent us the account statement from his Investors Group account which had $180,000 in mutual funds. As we expected, the fees on his Investors Group funds were on the high side.
Read the full review of Peter’s portfolio here.
2. Top Personal Finance Bloggers in Canada
We are avid readers here at ModernAdvisor, and we’re fortunate that Canada has some excellent bloggers covering our unique financial landscape. So we made a list of our favourites; the bloggers profiled here run the some of the top personal finance blogs in Canada.
Check out the list and follow these influential bloggers on social media here.
3. “The Best Financial Advice I Ever Got”
Readers liked our Top Personal Finance Bloggers in Canada post so much that we decided to create a series where we asked some of the bloggers to weigh in on topics that are important to Canadians. In our third most popular post of the year we asked them:
“What’s the best financial advice you ever received? (Or the absolute worst?)”
You can read what they had to say here.
4. RESPs – Individual or Family Plans?
Contrary to popular belief, you can transfer funds between individual plans, just like one beneficiary of a family plan can use more of the funds than the other beneficiaries. Isaac goes through what to consider when choosing between setting up a family RESP or multiple individual RESPs.
Read more about individual RESPs vs family plans here.
5. Four Ways to Make Money as a Stay-at-Home Parent
Many parents are interested in the idea of making a stay-at-home plan work. In this article, we looked at four practical ways a parent can generate income so they can stay at home and enjoy more time with their children.
Read about money-making tips here.
6. Millennial Money: Tips From Canada’s Top Personal Finance Bloggers
Number 6 on our list was was another blogger survey post. This time we asked them:
“What is THE most important thing Millennials should be doing to improve their financial situation?”
Read their thoughts on Millennials’ finances here.
7. [Podcast] Tax Tips and Traps With Faizal Valli, CPA
Faizal covers the changes in the most recent federal budget back in March. For all the tips and traps, read the transcript or watch the video here.
8. Choosing an Online Financial Advisor
This was a guest post by Robb Engen. Robb is a fee-only advisor and runs a popular personal finance blog, Boomer & Echo. He writes:
Using a robo-advisor is also a good approach for those investors who don’t have the time or skill to manage their own portfolio, but who are savvy enough to understand that high-fee bank mutual funds are harmful to their wealth.
9. 10 Common Misconceptions About Robo-Advisors
Robo-what? Though online investing platforms like ModernAdvisor aren’t exactly new, not everyone knows what they are or why you’d want to use one. In this 2-part post, I clear up some of the common misconceptions people have about robo-advisors:
10. 11 RRSP Mistakes to Avoid
RRSPs are a fantastic saving and investing tool, but many Canadian investors don’t fully understand how they work. From misunderstanding the rules to forgetting to contribute altogether, Isaac covers the most common mistakes we see investors make with their RRSPs.
Read 11 RRSP Mistakes to Avoid here.
