Exciting Book and Podcast Updates
November 5th, 2015 by PotatoFirst off, I had two recent podcast appearances:
Over at Because Money, we talked about who should be a do-it-yourself investor, related to this post. Interestingly, after we recorded this we got to hear more about the importance of behaviour at the Canadian Personal Finance Conference, where the final talk by Dan Bortolotti indicated that because of self-defeating behaviour he doesn’t think many investors should be do-it-yourselfers. I tried to emphasize behaviour and processes in the book to make sure that people didn’t fall into those traps, and I plan to focus my efforts for the rest of the year on solving that problem so that more DIYers will be successful.
Then, I was on the Mo’ Money Podcast, talking about the book and my history with money.
If this is your first time finding out about the book, or if you have someone you think should pick up a copy to learn about investing, then be sure to head on over to Amazon — it’s on sale at the moment for an incredible price. I’m not sure if it’s a financial literacy month thing (aka “November”), or if it’s a flash sale that will be over tomorrow.
I also want to excitedly say that my October sales numbers are in and the Value of Simple now sits at 956 sales. It’s totally feasible to get 44 sales in November (the financial literacy-est month of the year!) to manage to roll over 1000 the sales mark by the 1-year anniversary of the book’s release in December! Totally feasible with your help that is. Remember that most people you know and love likely don’t know anything about investing or a lot of other financial topics — Kyle called it the “Canadian emperor has no clothes” phenomenon in the podcast, where everyone assumes everyone else has this all figured out and doesn’t want to talk about it. So be sure to whisper it in their ear, or send them a link to buy the book (or at least check out the reading guide), or just buy a copy for them now for Christmas to help me reach my completely arbitrary goal!
Finally, if you’re interested in a bulk order (for instance if you want to get your clients or employees something awesome and educational for the holidays), the printer has reminded me of the various ordering cut-offs for shipping in time for Christmas, as well as an extra discount for orders (over 10) placed before Nov 22. Contact me for details about bulk orders.
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November 6th, 2015 at 11:20 am
Congrats! :)
November 14th, 2015 at 10:12 am
Nice little book. Helpful, common sense guidance. Covers a broad range of relevant topics; not in a great depth, but well enough. Nothing I didn’t know, but still a great overview.
One little passage I found very disappointing was the “tax the rich” paragraph. This is something that has proven time and again to be an obvious economic fallacy. Over 50% taxes have not worked anywhere in the world. Crucially, this had no relevance to the subject and looked like a weird infusion of ideology. Don’t think I would buy another book on financial advice from someone who likes taxes.
November 14th, 2015 at 9:52 pm
For everyone else, the “tax the rich” paragraph:
Canada has a progressive taxation system, which means that we tax a higher proportion of every dollar earned when someone makes more money. Without getting too political, this makes a lot of sense: life puts a “tax†on earnings through the cost of basic necessities. As people make more, they have more income to spend on disposable items, so they also have the capacity to shoulder more of the tax burden.
The calculation behind progressive taxation is that there are tiers with different tax rates, or several “tax brackets.†The details on the amount of tax and income thresholds for each tax bracket are available from the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) website[67]. I find that in books or websites explaining them, they are often presented in the same way the government does for calculation purposes:
15% on the first $43,953 of taxable income, +
22% on the next $43,954 of taxable income (on the portion of taxable income over $43,953 up to $87,907), +
26% on the next $48,363 of taxable income (on the portion of taxable income over $87,907 up to $136,270), +
29% of taxable income over $136,270.
These are just the income taxes sent to the federal government, so a similar table usually follows with different rates and income thresholds for your provincial income tax. This approach is both too complicated and too simple to capture the idea of tax brackets, so instead I would like to try to explain it graphically.
[…]
November 15th, 2015 at 9:51 am
… which when combined with provincial taxes in Ontario amounts to some of the highest tax brackets in the world.
Furthermore, as you say on this blog “I have been a proponent for a higher marginal tax rate beyond the current top bracket, and I was glad to see the Liberals include that in the election platform”.
November 16th, 2015 at 9:30 am
Potato said: “As people make more, they have more income to spend on disposable items, so they also have the capacity to shoulder more of the tax burden.”
And that’s the part that’s ideology not science. Just because higher income earners have the capacity to pay higher taxes doesn’t mean you or the gov’t should have the ability to take more money from them.
Frankly, I don’t completely disagree. IMO part of the problem is where the ‘higher income earner’ part starts. When a couple of married teachers (or electricians) can bring home almost $200K in income, the bar for ‘higher income earners’ needs to be set a lot higher than it is now. I’d be real happy with the system taxing people making high 6 low 7 figures a lot more, and perhaps eliminating the capital gains taxes – and raise the bar on what’s considered middle/upper-middle class to families earning up to $300K+.
November 19th, 2015 at 12:08 am
I wanted to include a brief, not-too-dry explanation of progressive taxation. It’s the system we have now, the system readers of the book need to understand and navigate, and that’s the two-sentence explanation for why it exists as it does.
I know taxation can be triggery for some people (the same way real estate can be for me), so if those two sentences ended up ruining the experience of the book and all future books, well, I’m sorry, but I still think explaining the logic of the tax system (where there is any) helps a lot in understanding it.