- What the Government giveth, the Government taketh away. Barely two years after allowing amortizations of as long as 40 years, the Finance Department has decided to cut back the longest amortization to 35 years and increased the minimum downpayment to 5%.
- Et, tu President’s Choice? The bank with the popular no-fee, free chequing accounts will start charging for more services. The most significant is a $25 increase to the current charge for transferring out a RRSP account. Fortunately, cheques and banking transactions are still free.
- According to the Wall Street Journal ETFs are getting more expensive — the average ETF MER is now 0.54%, up from 41% just over a year ago. Pretty soon the iShares CDN REIT Index Fund will be one the bargains around!
- With stock markets tumbling relentlessly, The Gazette’s Don MacDonald offers A Simple Plan for Riding out a Bear Market. (Thanks to Bylo for the link.)
- The bloggers in the Ottawa region met to swap finance stories like this. In attendance were Michael James, Larry MacDonald, Average Joe and Big Cajun Man.
- Preet featured a four part series on P/E ratios on the Where Does All My Money Go? blog.
- Jonathan at My Money Blog wrote about one way to track your progress towards Financial Independence from the popular book, Your Money or Your Life.
A fuller version of the blog round up will return next week. Don’t forget to enter your name in the draw for one copy of The Intelligent Portfolio. Entries will be accepted until 8 P.M. EDT on Friday, July 11, 2008. Have a great weekend!
