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Most people will never be rich. Why? Because most people (the middle class) are investing the same way as everyone else, and everyone else is not rich. The middle class are not wealthy, and if you are going to invest like the middle class then statistically speaking you will never be wealthy. You have to change the way you think and act about investing in order to achieve financial success.

You were probably told by your parents/friends/peers to go to school, get a good education, get a good jo…

It’s that time of year again. Tax time! Everybody’s doing their taxes or thinking about taxes ….so, this reminded me of something I read in Berkshire Hathaway’s 2006 annual report where Warren Buffett talked about zero taxes for all.

On page 19 of Berkshire Hathaway’s 2006 annual report Warren Buffett wrote:

“Berkshire will pay about $4.4 billion in federal income tax on its 2006 earnings. In its last fiscal year the U.S. Government spent $2.6 trillion, or about $7 billion per day. Thus, for m…

Cisco recently announced its first ever cash dividend. But I won’t be rushing to buy Cisco shares, here’s why:

1. I look at a company’s history of paying dividends, at least 10 years or more of uninterrupted dividends.
2. I look for a long history of increasing dividends at least 5-10 years, the more the better.
3. I generally don’t invest in technology companies.

Let’s take a look at all 3 reasons….

Company’s history of paying dividends

Whenever I consider shares for investment, one of the thi…

Canadian Capitalist recently posted a great article about a recent Morningstar report that shows how bad mutual fund fees in Canada are when compared to other nations.

“The report found the median asset-weighted expense ratio to be 1.31% for fixed-income funds, 2.31% for equity funds and 0.80% for money market funds. These fees were the highest among the 22 countries in the survey for equity funds, third highest for fixed-income funds and tied for highest for money market funds. Morningstar fou…

275.97% return since I first purchased shares in TransCanada Corporation (TRP) in 2000. The return includes dividends, which I discussed in an earlier post. 275.97% return sounds like a really big number, but aside from the dividends I have not received a penny of profits yet. Why? Because I haven’t sold my shares in TRP yet, perhaps I never will. Why? Because my dividend yield based on the original purchase price is now 11.94% which is better than what I can earn in a savings account, term depo…

The following four paragraphs come from Kelly Wright and I could not have said it better myself:

"From our perspective and experience, the cash dividend is the more attractive profit path when investing in the stock market. In the first instance the cash dividend is just that, cash in hand; a tangible return on investment. Unless a company is committing outright fraud, a practice that will typically be short-lived, the cash dividend is evidence that the company is indeed generating profits; a c…

Actually there are a number of important factors, 12 to be exact. I call them the 12 Rules of Simply Investing and I cover them in great detail in my online Simply Investing course. Today I am going to describe one of the 12 important factors the P/E Ratio. Understand this ratio, and you will save yourself from making poor investment decisions and save thousands of dollars in the process.

Before I knew what the P/E Ratio was all about, I did indeed waste thousands of dollars on lousy investment…

This week I say good-bye to two stocks in our portfolio. It’s been a great number of years, but it was time to part our ways. The split wasn’t accidental, in fact this week the Dow closed over 12,000 points for the first time in 2 ½ half years. When this happens I typically use the time to consider selling stocks which have in my opinion not performed well.

I sold Weis Markets (WMK) and Southern Company (SO) this week. I bought WMK back in 2003 when the company was undervalued and had an amazin…

This is a follow up to my previous post about dividends. When talking about dividends I always get the same two comments from people:

• Dividends are insignificant, a few cents here and there is not going to make me wealthy.
• Dividends are not guaranteed, companies can stop paying dividends at any time.

The first comment was addressed in my previous post; I showed how increasing dividends can actually result in double-digit returns. I showed my personal example of earning over 11% annually w…

Most people dismiss dividends; most people don’t even know what dividends are. In today’s blog I’m going to share with you my personal story of how I’m earning double digit returns and without risk with one of my investments.

Dividends are cash payments made out to shareholders. Basically the company is sharing profits with the owners, the shareholders like yourself. For example if you own shares in company XVY and they pay a dividend of $0.85 per share and you own 1000 shares, you will receive…