Envelope / Develope

Photo by Michael Longmire on Unsplash This post is a convergence of my thoughts after re-reading a few books I always recommended for novice investors: The little book of common sense investing by John Bogle Where are the customer's yachts by Fred Schwed Thieves of Bay Street by Bruce Livesey (for Canadian investors) The Four pillars of investing by Michael Bernstein and also the continuous reading of web sites posting ideas and analysis for the investing community: Seeking Alpha Morningstar Bogleheads Investing  I am writing because I have friends who don't have the time/inclination and maybe curiosity to look a little bit deeper than the Yahoo financial articles and Motley Fool articles about investing (where people are goaded to consider different companies just because arguments are presented with catchy pseudo-reasons). They are at an age where planning for retirement should be a priority but, for some reason, the basic education of how to do ...

As it happens with any traveler, I am using the big four trip booking companies - Booking, Expedia, Trip Advisor, AirBnB or Canadian equivalents. Over the years, I discussed with many hotel/lodging owners and everyone is saying they are not happy with the way they are represented and the cut the brokers are getting for only providing an interface and a common entry point for travelers. The broker companies offer convenience and service aggregation, a unique marketing platform and convenience for the user. It is a warehouse for a service (lodging), but many of the reviews are fake, misrepresenting the  reality. I realized there is competition about reviews, many companies are trying to get more and also veto the ones outside "reality". It is better to read the more recent ones. Companies like Google, Yelp (with many question marks), Trip Advisor are vying for people posting their last impressions or even their vacation photos. The reality is that the algorithms to promote t...

It's a well known fact the price for basic services is high in Canada. You can ask yourself why the prices for basic phone line, TV subscription or basic mobile phones is outrageously high and the only explanation is the low number of incumbents in each industry, their commodity of crying foul to regulators when other big players try to invade their territory, invoking "social aspects" of their services for all Canadians and the "complacency" of the political parties. My frustration covered the well known facts in the "competitive" industries in Canada - telecommunications, banks, transportation, wireless telecom, media distribution. Here I want to tell about a personal history, our family switching to VoIP. I knew about VoIP telephony and used NetMessenger, then Yahoo and lastly Skype, but at home I continued to pay $34 for almost nothing. So after a few investigations I bought the services of Vbuzzer, a Canadian company which for $60 per year will pr...