Index Investing ~ Canadian Couch Potato

Canadian Couch Potato
Couch Potato Investing is this easy!

At heart I’m a dividend investor.  Nothing is more exciting to me than to buy a quality stock at its lows, watch it go up in value, and then sit back and collect my dividend income. To me the reward of patience, persistence, and the desire to invest for myself is the ultimate reward.  Since I’m into good quality stocks that pay me for owning them, I’m not overly concerned with market movements.  When the market goes down, that gives me the chance to buy a quality stock for a bargain price.  And ultimately the choices I make in my portfolio are my own – not some fund manager who may or may not outperform some benchmark.  And let’s face it most mutual fund managers have poor performance, and people pay lots of fees and commissions to buy their so called “expertise”.

But not everyone is comfortable with making their own investment decisions, or wants to take on the risk. If you don’t feel comfortable with investing for yourself, then consider Couch Potato Investing!  Made popular by  Money Sense Magazine, Couch Potato Investing assumes that you cannot beat the market, so just invest in the market itself.  The point being you will not do any worse than most mutual fund managers, and the stats easily prove that benchmark investing excels the majority of fund managers. Index Investors look for ETF’s that follow an index, or No-Load Index Funds with low MER’s, which is also a key point. People really need to stop getting hosed with commissions, fees, and management expense ratios, for relatively poor performance.

If you’re paying fees and commissions to a Mutual Fund Dealer or “Investment Advisor”, then take a look at Couch Potato Investing. It would serve you well and save you a lot in fees (that’s money out of your pocket).  There is a bit of work to transfer and setup the portfolio, but once it’s done you just sit back and rebalance once a year – no investment expertise or time on your part required.  And most importantly no big fees or commissions!

All this brings to me to a gem of a website I discovered yesterday, which is all about Index Investing here in Canada: the Canadian Couch Potato. The blog’s author is a journalist who has written about personal finance for many Canadian magazines, including Money Sense Magazine. If Index Investing appeals to you, this is an excellent resource:

www.canadiancouchpotato.com


2 thoughts on “Index Investing ~ Canadian Couch Potato”

  1. Thanks for the mention, and congrats on the recent launch of your blog!

    For active dividend investors like yourself, it is quite possible to use a “core and explore” approach, where you keep most of your serious money in an index portfolio and then have a smaller account on the side where you pick dividend-paying stocks.

    This allows you to indulge the urge to be an active investor while limiting the risk that a couple of poor choices will damage your overall portfolio.

    Best of luck with the blog!

  2. Hi

    I would like to combine the couch potato with dividend investing. Any guidance on the % split that should be used.

    Thanks

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