This and That: Expert predictions, take your money and run and more…

In this video clip, Dan Gardner talks about his book Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe Them Anyway.

1. It is unbelievable the length some people will go to save taxes. Jon Chevreau highlighted an author who says that you can save a ton of taxes by cutting residential ties to Canada. It sounds great until you add up all the extra expense of living abroad — the flight tickets to visit family and friends, paying up for private health insurance etc. To all those who have taken their money and run, I say, “Thank you!”. It’s great that you pay 25% taxes and don’t take advantage of our social programs and leave more for the rest of us.
2. The Blunt Bean Counter, quite correctly points out that severing residential ties is a lifestyle and not income tax decision.
3. Kevin Press cites an example to illustrate the usefulness (or lack thereof) of expert market predictions.
4. This being RRSP season and all, Canadians are probably wondering if they are saving enough for retirement. Globe & Mail columnist Rob Carrick rounds up some nifty retirement calculators to help answer that question.
5. Jim Yih has been writing about personal finance for more than a decade now. He has recently launched a new blog called Retire Happy to keep informing Canadians on their finances. Drop by and say hello. To give you a flavour of his writing, a recent post offered tips on how to review your RRSP portfolio.
6. I cringe every time I hear dividend investors boasting about their yield on cost. Canadian Couch Potato explains why the belief that a dividend growth strategy will eventually beat the market on yield alone is flawed.
7. RRSP or TFSA for your retirement funds? Money Smarts Blog offers some thumb rules.
8. Million Dollar Journey featured a guest post on living without the idiot box.
9. Michael James suspects that the main benefits of dividend investing are emotional.
10. I don’t collect Air Miles or Aeroplan points anymore but it is undeniable that loyalty programs are incredibly popular with Canadians. Canadian Financial Stuff points out that you can collect points faster by double dipping.
11. Boomer and Echo point out the ten ways in which women can obtain financial empowerment.

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