January Budget 2012

I can't believe that 2011 is already over! Well, it's back to the old budget for the first month of the new year. Oh, except for the fact that I increased the amount allotted for transportation from $99 to $104 because the TTC wants more of my money. No much else to say here except if I go over budget once again, then maybe I'll just raise the limits, but I know that's counterproductive so we'll see. I'll have a December Budget Review up soon and I don't think it'll be a pretty sight.

-the Paperboy

Investing 101: Reading Stock Quotes II

Let's talk about what to do with all that money that you've worked so hard on saving up. In this section titled Investing 101, I'll go over different terms and ideas that every investor should know.* Hopefully the information provided will help give you a general idea of how things work and build a foundation for you to go and further educate yourself. Welcome to class. Today's topic? Reading stock quotes (again).

Reitmans Position

Reitmans was founded in Montreal in 1926. The company operates 968 stores across Canada under 7 names: Reitmans, Smart Set, RW & Co, Thyme Maternity, Penningtons, Addition-Elle and Cassis (although I read somewhere that the company plans to close down the 22 Cassis stores and reopen them under the other names). Reitmans also recently launched an online store and has a quick ratio of 3.32 (MRQ) which is more than enough to cover its debt. The high payout ratio of 93.19% (TTM) is a concern but the company has been very consistent with dividends distributions. I opened a position in Reitmans today after it fell almost 7%. My entry point gives me a 5.55% yield which isn't too shabby. Retail stocks have been taking a beating lately but I'm always happy to pick things up cheap. I'm currently overweight in the financial sector so having more exposure to the service sector is nice. Besides, I shop at RW & Co so I might as well get some of that money back right?

-the Paperboy

Astral Media Increases Dividends

Great news for Astral Media shareholders. The company has decided to hike the dividends by 33%. Along with this, the company announced its plans to buyback stock which will leave less shares outstanding, giving remaining shareholders a larger slice of the pie. Astral Media has 23 television services and is the largest radio company in Canada, with 83 radio stations. They also do outdoor advertisement and you may have seen the logo on billboards and bus shelters around your city. I'm currently long on Astral Media but I feel that I rushed into it and bought it at too high of a price. The increase in dividends makes me feel a little better though and hopefully this is something they'll continue to do because I plan to hold my shares for a long time.

-the Paperboy

Novmeber Budget 2011 Reivew

I really went overboard with the food and entertainment last month. I didn't realize it was this difficult until I actually wrote down everything I spend. The only reason I didn't go over altogether is because I didn't have to buy a bus pass for December after I realized that I was done school on the 19th. Even though I looked ahead just like what I said should be done, I forgot to taken into account that I need to buy a pass for January, meaning that the amount I allotted for the December transportation won't be enough. I have to buy bus tokens and a bus pass this month, meaning once again, I will be over budget for at least one category. Sigh...

-the Paperboy

Canfor Pulp Products Position

Canfor Pulp  Products is the largest North American and 3rd largest global producer of NBSK pulp and is currently running three mills in Prince George, British Columbia. Today it went below the 52 week low so I took the opportunity to increase my position in it. The company seems to have its debt under control so hopefully this play works out for me.

-the Paperboy

Investing 101: Reading Stock Quotes I

Let's talk about what to do with all that money that you've worked so hard on saving up. In this section titled Investing 101, I'll go over different terms and ideas that every investor should know.* Hopefully the information provided will help give you a general idea of how things work and build a foundation for you to go and further educate yourself. Welcome to class. Today's topic? Reading stock quotes.

December Budget 2011

Hey guys, I'm back with the December budget. Seeing as it's the holiday season, I increased the budget to accommodate for all the gifts and events. Hopefully I stay under the budget this time because I gave myself lots of room to work with! I'll have an update on the November budget up soon.

-the Paperboy

Millionaire Teacher Giveaway At MyOwnAdvisor!

Seems that everybody is giving away prizes this time of year. This time around, over at My Own Advisor is giving away a free copy of Millionaire Teacher. Go and check it out! While you're over there, I suggest reading up on all the great posts about dividend and index investing along with all the articles about DRIPs.
 
-the Paperboy

Corus Entertainment Position

On Monday I grabbed some more shares of Corus Entertainment. Growing up, everybody I knew watched television. At school the next day, we would talk about shows we saw the previous night. Every kid I knew would watch YTV. Even now, 10 years later, my little sister watches it religiously. Not only does Corus own YTV, but it owns Treehouse, a 50% stake in Teletoon and Teletoon Retro, a handful of other channels, 37 radio stations and Nelvana which creates some of the shows on these television channels. I'm trying to increase my position in Corus to get my synthetic DRIP going but I have to invest a lot more because of the monthly distributions instead of the quarterly distributions so this means I need to get more dividends in order to cover the price of one share. However, once it gets started then I'll be receiving one share every month!

-the Paperboy

Tax-Free Saving Accounts

Awhile back I talked about which vehicles I would use for certain investments. One of the key accounts to my plan is the Tax Free Saving Account (TFSA). We all hate paying taxes so today I want to go into a little more detail about TFSAs and why you should take advantage of them.

The DividendGuyBlog giveaway!

Hey you may have noticed that there's a list of blogs that I put up. They're all great resources to further educate yourself in the investing world.

I plan to do a little post about the sites soon, but until then, over at the dividendguyblog.com an iPad giveaway is happening! Go check out the site to learn more about dividend investing and maybe you'll win an iPad (but hopefully I win it ;).

-the Paperboy

Canadian Oil Sands Position: Part II

Remember a couple weeks back when I sold my position in COS.TO by accident? Well the following day, the stock continued to rise and I was a bit disappointed that I was missing out. However, earlier this week, the stock took a dive and was actually lower than my previous entry point. Needless to say I happily picked up some shares for less than the first time around.

To be clear here - I got lucky; there was no way that I would have known what would have happened to the price in such a short period of time. I wasn't planning this move in any way shape or form. I still believe that buying strong companies with solid dividends and holding them to take part in their growth is a great plan which I intend to stick to. Flipping stocks is risky business and you may not even come out ahead of a solid dividend or index approach.

That being said... I'll take luck wherever I can get it (especially when it helps cover up my mistakes)!

-the Paperboy

October Budget 2011 Review

It's been a couple days since October has passed so I knew I had to get this done. This was the first month that I tried to keep track of my spending and I don't think I did that bad. I went over the limit on food & entertainment by a little bit. The reason that the item purchases amount was so high was that I had to buy a textbook for school.

I didn't take into account that I kind of need books to learn. This is another situation where a little foresight would have helped with preparation and that's something that can be applied not only to other areas of finance, but to life in general. Oh well, what can you do? If that was factored out then I would actually be under budget!

Since I don't plan to buy another textbook anytime soon, I decided to keep the same numbers for November's budget and hopefully this time I'll be able to do it. I know for a fact that I'll have to adjust the numbers for December because of the holiday season but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

-the Paperboy

Waste Management Position

Some of you may have seen a truck like this rolling around in your city. Progressive Waste Solution owns BFI Canada (which provides services in 6 provinces), IESI (which provides services in 10 states in the U.S.) and Waste Service Inc. which was acquired just last year. Progressive Waste Solution (BIN.TO) is the third largest non-hazardous solid waste management company in North America, serving commercial, residential, and industrial customers.

I picked up some shares earlier this week when BIN got caught up in the free fall that almost every stock took when the Euro crisis resurfaced. BIN seems to be a solid company and I'm happy to add it to my portfolio. Besides, everybody needs to put their garbage somewhere right?

Remember, one man's trash is another man's treasure...or in this case another man's reason to own a waste management company.

-the Paperboy

November 2011 Budget

Hey guys, I know I haven't really been posting lately, but that's due to the crazy workload that school decided to drop on me. I actually have a couple posts I want to do so once midterms are over you can bet I'll be putting up some stuff.  I actually have a midterm on Halloween, and one the following day. Who does that?! How am I going to go Trick-o-Treating to Halloween parties?

Anyways here's November's budget. I'm going to leave it the same as October's because I haven't tallied up everything yet but I'm sure I'm pretty close to the budget (other than one purchase I didn't expect, but I guess I should have). Also because I'm lazy I have no time. Ugh, I keep making typos (hopefully this won't happen on my tests)!

Happy Halloween!

-the Paperboy

Canadian Oil Sands Position

Sigh. I made a mistake on Wednesday. I sold my position in Canadian Oil Sands (COS.TO) for an 11% return (plus one dividend distribution). That may sound like good news to some of you, but I didn't intend to sell! The company still seems like a good play to me; I actually wanted to set a stop-loss to protect the profit but I wasn't paying attention and instead I sold the stock. Goes to show you that when it comes to investing, it's best to be vigilant. Hopefully this doesn't come back to haunt me!

-the Paperboy

How I Plan to Use DRIPs

Last time I talked a little bit about the pros and cons of using DRIPs in your financial plan. Now I would like to talk about how I plan to implement DRIPs to help me achieve my financial goals. Since my main concern with running a DRIP is the fact that I can't choose when to purchase more shares (it's automatically done for me), I decided that I would have some criteria that would have to be met in order for me to DRIP a stock.

Sun Life Financial Position

On Monday Sun Life Financial (TSX: SLF), one of the largest insurance companies in the country announced their estimates for their third quarter. They expect to report a loss of $621 million dollars. For me, that's great news. I took the opportunity to increase my position after the stock tumbled 9%. I now have enough shares to generate one share with the dividends that are distributed every quarter, which sets everything up for a synthetic DRIP. This is especially attractive because Sun Life Financial offers a 2% discount with their DRIP. Now all I have to do is have a little chat with my broker and the compounding machine will be ready to go.

-the Paperboy

Thinking about DRIPing

If you're new to dividend investing, there's no doubt that you'll come across DRIPs when you are doing research. Some people swear by DRIPs while others wouldn't touch them with a 10-foot pole. What exactly are DRIPs and how will you know if they will help you reach your financial goals? Let's take a closer look at Dividend ReInvestment Plans.

My Portfolio Allocation Plan

Last time, I talked a little bit about the different places we can place our investments and the merits of each account. Today I’ll talk about what I believe is the best way I can use them to help me start building up my wealth. 

Investing 101: Dividends

Let's talk about what to do with all that money that you've worked so hard on saving up. In this section titled Investing 101, I'll go over different terms and ideas that every investor should know.* Hopefully the information provided will help give you a general idea of how things work and build a foundation for you to go and further educate yourself. Welcome to class. Today's topic? Dividends.

Portfolio Allocation Primer

We all heard it before. Diversify, diversify, and diversify!  Putting all your eggs in one financial basket is just asking for trouble. By spreading out your money to different sectors of the stock market, you decrease the total risk you take on. As important as asset allocation is, portfolio allocation is just as important and I find it to be a more interesting topic. While asset allocation is used to mitigate risk, portfolio allocation is used to maximize the tax efficiency of your investments. You may know what to buy, but do you know where to put it? 
 

How To Use Credit Cards Properly

Visa, MasterCard, American Express. These little pieces are plastic are the reason why so many people are in debt. However, are they really the reason why personal debt is through the roof, or is it something larger? I've had a credit card since I was 18 (only three years ago so I'm pretty new to this) and I've always paid off every bill without any difficulty. A credit card can be a great tool if used properly but lethal to your financial health if you're unaware of the pitfalls.

October 2011 Budget

Okay, the time has come. By the way, I can't believe it's already been a month since I started blogging.  I honestly don't know how to even start but I assume that's how a lot of university students feel as well. I'm basically going to ballpark everything this first month and then adjust accordingly next month. The plan is to have a realistic budget by the end of the year.

Investing 101: Compounding

Let's talk about what to do with all that money that you've worked so hard on saving up. In this section titled Investing 101, I'll go over different terms and ideas that every investor should know.* Hopefully the information provided will help give you a general idea of how things work and build a foundation for you to go and further educate yourself. Welcome to class. Today's topic? Compounding.

Paid to Play

Along with saving money and spending wisely, another way to reach your goals is to increase income. One way to do this is to get an additional job, however it may be quite exhausting juggling two jobs, family, a social life, and school (if applicable...if not applicable then I envy you). So today we are going to talk about other ways to make a little side money while doing things that you enjoy.

Riding the Rocket: Part 2

The cost of commuting is a huge expense for me and this is what I had to say about it last time.

So we talked about determining whether a monthly pass was a better option than paying for bus tokens. Unfortunately we're not done for the year. We actually have to calculate it for each month. Some months have holidays and February is short a couple days as well (this could make a difference depending on which days the month falls on). This requires good foresight in terms of what you have to do in the coming month.

Investing 101: Interest

Let's talk about what to do with all that money that you've worked so hard on saving up. In this section titled Investing 101, I'll go over different terms and ideas that every investor should know.* Hopefully the information provided will help give you a general idea of how things work and build a foundation for you to go and further educate yourself. Welcome to class. Today's topic? Interest.

Brand Name Threads

Back in high school, everybody was into brand name clothing. We would buy shirts with huge logos on them letting the world know where we bought our garments from. It would let people know how well off we were and indicated status. If you had the right threads then you were the coolest. I remember buying 4 t-shirts for about $100 when they were on sale. I made out like a bandit.

Riding the Rocket: Part 1

When I first started this blog, I wanted to keep where I was from a secret. I've come to the realization that it would be pretty difficult to keep that under wraps. Besides, I wanted to talk about our transit system. So guess where I'm located. I'll give you a hint if the huge picture of one of our streetcars didn't give it away. I'm a Leafs fan. Okay, now that that intriguing mystery is solved, let's talk about the Rocket, also known as the Toronto Transit Commission.

Jobs

Admit it, some of you thought of the guy above first and going to work second. Understandable. The man put my iPod and phone into one device - he's a technological god. But seriously. Go get a job. If you want to pay down debt you'll need money. Where does that money come from? There's no money fairy (but imagine if there was!) so you're going to have to work for your dough. I started working when I was 15 and ever since, not only do I pay for everything I want on my own and I feel that I'm in control which is a great feeling. I realized how hard it is to make money so I've become more responsible financially; I try not to blow it all away and I make better choices in terms of what to purchase and when to purchase it.

Feed the Piggy

Alright so let's get started. There's a couple ways to accomplish the goal of graduating without debt. Method one is to make more money. Method two is to spend less money. The latter is sometimes known as "saving". I know that term is unfamiliar to some of you but that's okay, I never really understood it either.

What's This About?

Hey guys, so this is going to be a personal finance blog! Yay like we don't have enough of those floating around the blogsphere. So a little about myself. I'm 21 and living in a large Canadian city. I go to university and I'm taking on a lot of student debt with 3 years until a graduate and head off into the real world.