I'm back
Introducing a new personal finance newsletter from Rob Carrick
After close to 30 years covering personal finance and investing for The Globe and Mail newspaper, I decided to retire and launch a new career phase that starts with this newsletter.
My aim is to connect events in Canada and around the world to your finances. The focus is on strategy - what to do, and not do, with investments, home-buying decisions, mortgages, bank accounts, generational wealth transfers and much more. I am not your financial planner, or your investment adviser. I offer analysis based on experience that includes multiple bull and bear stock markets, raging housing markets, recessions, economic booms and governments running both deficits and surpluses. You take it from there.
Look for a multi-generational perspective that focuses on what I’ve learned in decades of talking to people about their finances. I have a pretty good idea of how to build long-term wealth that lasts, but my mind is wide open to new ideas and products.
Expect to hear from me a few times per month, with the news flow dictating my topics for the most part. A lot of what makes news headlines these days weighs heavy on household finances. Let me share a few issues I’m following right now:
Our America problem: How rough will it get for the economy as we try to negotiate trade terms with the U.S. while attempting to pivot to new opportunities elsewhere?
The stock markets: I’m nervous. Stocks aren’t this generous over the long term.
Interest rates: Would there be net pain or gain for the country if the Bank of Canada lowered its benchmark rate? I’m thinking net pain.
Gen Z: It’s not just expensive housing - young adults are getting pounded in the job market.
Government finances: The fall budget expected from the federal government will have to juggle new spending commitments with potentially sharp cuts in some areas. Are we ready for that?
What caught my eye recently
Want confirmation that boycotting U.S. products has an impact? Check out what’s happening with sales of Kentucky bourbon. I am known to be a bourbon guy, but I won’t buy another bottle until there is regime change in the U.S. There’s plenty of good whisky from Canada and elsewhere.
My ex-Globe colleague Erica Alini wrote something recently that really threw me. It’s about an apparently tech-savvy online investor who lost $70,000 to hackers who got access to her digital investing account. Are the hackers winning?
I like this summary of the state of the housing market because it concludes that lower prices are the most realistic answer to this country’s unaffordability problem. I agree.
What I’m listening to
The tune Yellow Painted Moon by Kevin Robertson has a brisk indie-rock vibe that feels ideal for summer listening.
Check this out
My recent appearance on the CBC Radio show The Cost of Living