Hey friends, slowly but surely gaining more subscribers, so on behalf of everyone here, welcome!

Hope you enjoy, comment, share ideas, but most importantly, thank you for putting your time and trust in me.

It’s all the shared learnings and interactions that inspire these weekly Journals (I respond to every comment) all with the goal of simplifying personal finance, investing, and building our mindset to be not afraid, but excited about money, and creating seriously large portfolios.

We are a group of 18 to 75 year old’s, the average being in the 25-45 year range, interestingly slightly more women than men, ranging from novice investors to experienced investment bankers and capital market enthusiasts.

Given the broad swath of readers, it’s hard to thread the needle week-in-and-week-out to everyone’s enjoyment, but hopefully, something in here inspires you personally to take action, or maybe you read something that is worthwhile sharing with someone else you know.

Eddie

Personal Finance

While everyone and everything in August moves at a snails pace, maybe it’s time to make some moves while things are quiet. Some very easy ideas to consider:

1. Download Wealthsimple account, by far the best and easiest investing app out there. Use my referral code: PRGS3Q and get $25.

2. Increase Automatic Investments. Bump up your monthly contributions and ETF purchases. Even an extra $100/month goes a long way ($630,000 over 40 yrs).

3. Turn on Automatic Dividend Reinvestment. SP500 dividend is about 1.5%/year. Don’t let that sit in cash. Over 40 years, S&P500 has grown 27x on a price appreciation basis. But check this out, if you reinvested those dividends, the investment would have grown 137x. Compounding is intensely powerful.

4. Focus on max funding TFSA first. Not sure where to find your contribution room? Here is a quick guide.

5. Still got cash in your Chequing account? Transfer it to Wealthsimple and earn 2.5%—the cash account comes with a debit card and you can tap on your phone, send e-transfers, wires, etc. Same as a bank, but no fees and you get paid.

6. Got kids? Open a self directed RESP. Government matches your contributions up to $7,200—who doesn’t like free money? Plus the growth is tax free. (A story about my Grandad—driving his kids around one day, sees a homeless person, he points to the man and looks at his kids and says “boys, that’s where you’ll end up if you don’t get a good education”).

7. Audit your subscriptions—they are killing you. Review your credit card statements, streaming services and apple subscriptions for stupid stuff.

8. Read The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel. Money is a bad word and often misunderstood. This book is simple and shows you how to develop a better understanding and relationship with money. I just finished re-reading this book. Highly recommend.

9. Fresh out of university? Contribute $500/month for the next 40 years and retire with $3.5 million.

💝 Newsletter subscribers get 10% off the Simply Investing course with the code: SIMPLYINVEST

🎁 Get $25 when you open a Wealthsimple account. Use my referral code: PRGS3Q

Stock Markets

Stock markets are on a tear.

We have potential summit talks between US and Russia, tech stocks absolutely crushing earnings expectations, meanwhile US jobs data that is underwhelming which might lead the US Federal Reserve to lower its interest rate (which is good for financial assets). Oh and Trump keeps yelling that the Fed Chair himself should be fired.

Part of me is worried there will be a correction soon. I mean, how long can things go on so rosy?

The other part of me doesn’t care one bit. I’ve become quite comfortable with the highs and lows of the stock market, it’s just the way it is.

And what’s more:

• Stocks go up, I buy more shares, I win.

• Stocks go down, I buy even more shares, I win.

Don’t be emotionally reflexive.

Be proactive.

Always buy.

Real Estate

Why do you hire a General Partner when investing in large commercial real estate properties? Because acquiring, managing, leasing, operating, accounting, legal, and selling—all takes a helluva lot of work. This much I’ve learned in my short time in the business now going on three years.

I’ve had experience investing as an LP for about a decade now, and I certainly didn’t appreciate how much is involved (including the Brokers that help us transact)—and why we pay the successful GPs their coveted “promote” (extra share of the profit over a certain hurdle rate).

After witnessing on the front lines how it all truly operates from the GP perspective, they deserve every penny. The LPs make a lot of money too, all they have to do is write a cheque and sit back. Not every deal works out—there is no free lunch—but on average if you can earn 15% on a real estate investment, you should be happy as a clam.

As of late we sold one commercial real estate investment. Owned for 6 years and the net to LP return was 18% annualized.

We are in the process of selling another commercial real estate investment, the deal is now unconditionally sold, and the net to LP return is 19% annualized over 5 years.

Anyway, team effort goes a long way to large successful real estate transactions. We are very happy with these recent results and looking forward to redeploying in new opportunities.

1 Quote

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.”

Charles Dickens

A Question

What number in the list in section 1 are you going to tackle first?

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