# Personal Finance Seminars at the Library



## lb71 (Apr 3, 2009)

Just walked past the Toronto Reference Library and noticed a posting for a seminar this evening about recognizing investment fraud. Looking through their website, it looks like they have a series of personal finance seminars. 

Making it to tonight's session may be too late for those interested and living in the area. However, they do have upcoming sessions on retirement (one by Derek Foster too). Looks like they are every second Tuesday. Current available schedule only posts up to March:

Feb 17 - Invest in Early Retirement (Derek Foster)
Mar 3 - Unveiling the Retirement Myth (Jim Otar discusses his book)

I'm pretty sure these are free, and it looks like the reference library is the only library in Toronto with finance seminars. If you live in other centres, you may want to check out what your library system offers.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

Yes...I saw one for Derek Foster at the North York Central Library (on Yonge, North of Sheppard, South of Finch) Thursday Feb. 18th, 6:30-8pm, call 416-395-5613 to register. It was free. And yes I already registered.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

I see...so now our friend Mr. Foster is leveraging social services to promote his books.


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## lb71 (Apr 3, 2009)

HaroldCrump said:


> I see...so now our friend Mr. Foster is leveraging social services to promote his books.




Looks like I was wrong about the reference library being the only location with personal finance sessions. If you go through the program guide and do a search on key words like finance, retirement, tax, etc. you will find other branches offering similar sessions. Not all require registration. The Foster session at North York Central is not in the guide, but is on the main website, so you may want to browse it for more up to date information.

For low income earners, the library also offers free income tax clinics, which can be found in the guide.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Somebody should go crash his party.
I'm hours away from North York else I would have loved to do that.

Such library sessions are usually attended by teenagers, seniors and other folks who do not have basic knowledge and cannot distinguish the grain from the chaff.
They also assume that speakers at these kinds of "information" seminars are qualified in their fields, have years of experience and do not have a conflict of interest - none of which is a correct assumption in the case of Mr. Foster.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

_*SELF-STYLED NEW LUDDITE STORMS LIBRARY SEMINAR*_

North York police yesterday arrested a package-brandishing 46-year-old male who attacked financial writer Derek Foster during a municipal library conference on investment savings.

"Capitalism is dead drunk," shouted virtual citizen Harold Crump. "They got intoxicated and stopped innovating and started producing goods cheaper abroad."

Library staff said Crump suddenly charged Foster on the podium, hitting the speaker with an object in a brown paper bag that turned out to be a bottle of water with the label Made in China.

Police later released Crump, a well-known local personality and internet resident with no fixed address, as he had no record of prior incidents.


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## Berubeland (Sep 6, 2009)

Lmao


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## bean438 (Jul 18, 2009)

Which seminar is Derek presenting, the "Buy high, and then panic and sell low" seminar, or the "You can time the market and make money with options" seminar?


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

humble_pie said:


> _*SELF-STYLED NEW LUDDITE STORMS LIBRARY SEMINAR*_
> 
> North York police yesterday arrested a package-brandishing 46-year-old male who attacked financial writer Derek Foster during a municipal library conference on investment savings.


ROTFL LMAO.
You made me older by more than 10 years.
I am heart-broken, sob sob


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

harold please forgive me.

can i help it if your knowledge, polish & sophistication suggest a slightly older male ?

hum


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

You can also catch Derek Foster in library branches around Ottawa:

http://www.biblioottawalibrary.ca/archive/tcob/tcob_newsletter_e.html

I'm tempted to attend one of these and write about it but I'm not sure if I want to ruin an evening or waste any more ink on the garbage spewed out by the likes of Foster.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

humble_pie said:


> harold please forgive me.
> 
> can i help it if your knowledge, polish & sophistication suggest a slightly older male ?


Thank you.
That's exactly what I keep telling those women older than me....


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

You know it would be a good idea to go to a Derek Foster seminar. This would be a great opportunity to gauge where the market is. If he is still out, the rally still has legs, but I am thinking he is getting back into the market so we may have seen the top. 

I think his saying is buy and hold dividend paying stocks except if they go down a lot and don't sell until even your own dog can smell your fear.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

I thought I would give some feedback as I heard Derek Foster speak the other night.

In all honesty, he is a good speaker. It was more like talking with someone at the water cooler. Except there was about 60 people there.

Yes, his method is to hold dividend paying stocks that people use on a daily basis. (Enb, J&J and such)

He basically reviewed what each book summarized, his dividend theory, drips, writing puts, and capital preservation.

He answered why he sold everything fairly well. In his opinion, the thought the market would go lower, and that he would he able to buy the number of shares that he sold, back, and then some, at a lower price. He said that his market timing wasn't really that good, and that he might as well just kept everything as is. He has since obviously bought back in. But his plan didn't work as he had hoped.

All in all, I am glad I went, I enjoyed his talk.

Two things that caught my attention....he wore the same sweater as in the CTV interview that someone posted here, and I can only wonder if cash paid for the books sold at the end of that talk will ever get claimed...(and I don't mean that as a personal shot against Derek Foster, more of a generalization of cash sales)

This week I will be hearing Garth Turner speak as he recently published a book too.


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## Oldroe (Sep 18, 2009)

To be fair DF didn't sell any were near the bottom. The markets had turned around and were showing good strength.

I give him credit for writing his book and then making the move.

You will fine the longer you are in the markets and the more money you are dealing with the decisions get harder.


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

Oldroe said:


> To be fair DF didn't sell any were near the bottom. The markets had turned around and were showing good strength.


I only have to assume that you have the dates wrong. In February of 2009 the markets were far from turning around and extremely close to the bottom. Now before we call him an idiot, we have to understand that he is only human and made the same mistakes thousands of others probably made. So he is not an idiot, the idiots are the ones who buy his books. Now that is dumb.


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## Oldroe (Sep 18, 2009)

Don't know were you were looking, the bottom was mid dec. and by March it was rocking.

That's not panic, Panic was Oct. Nov. and Dec.

And I think it was late March that DF sold.


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

Oldroe said:


> Don't know were you were looking, the bottom was mid dec. and by March it was rocking.
> 
> That's not panic, Panic was Oct. Nov. and Dec.
> 
> And I think it was late March that DF sold.


The S&P500 hit an intraday low of 666 on March 9, 2009 and closed up about 10 points from there that day. The TSX also bottomed on that same day. Foster announced that he sold everything in February 2009.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Oldroe said:


> Don't know were you were looking, the bottom was mid dec. and by March it was rocking.
> 
> That's not panic, Panic was Oct. Nov. and Dec.
> 
> And I think it was late March that DF sold.


The time DF was going around giving media interviews on how it was going to get a lot worse and other non-sense about Dow Dividend Yields, Corporate Profits as % of GDP etc., the markets were pretty close to the bottom.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

DF did mention that when he retired he had saved approx 450K, had a paid off house in the burbs of Ottawa, and his dividend income was about 35K. Probably equal to earning 70K of taxable income. And his expenses were low b/c he didn't have to drive to work and such.


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## OptsyEagle (Nov 29, 2009)

Cal said:


> DF did mention that when he retired he had saved approx 450K, had a paid off house in the burbs of Ottawa, and his dividend income was about 35K. Probably equal to earning 70K of taxable income. And his expenses were low b/c he didn't have to drive to work and such.


Thank god he never retired and keeps his wife bringing home some bacon.

By the way 35K would never equivilate to $70K and I can assume he lost 30%to market timing and with dividend cuts I peg it now at $25K at best.

I guess the moral of the strategy is: Tell everyone you retired and get them to pay you money to tell them how, and if it works well enough, you can.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Cal said:


> DF did mention that when he retired he had saved approx 450K, had a paid off house in the burbs of Ottawa, and his dividend income was about 35K. Probably equal to earning 70K of taxable income. And his expenses were low b/c he didn't have to drive to work and such.


I did an estimate on the blog and figured DF's portfolio yielded about 5.6% at the time of retirement. I don't know how he can now claim that the yield was actually 7.77% when he retired.

I could never pin down DF on how he could possibly hope to live off a portfolio for 50+ years if he is taking out close to 6% every year. I guess I was too stupid not to realize that that's where the book sales come in and books won't sell if you are not essentially selling a pipe dream.

http://www.canadiancapitalist.com/the-danger-in-chasing-yield/


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## bean438 (Jul 18, 2009)

As I understood, didn't Derek with draw only his dividends? Since he was not "living off the pile", and assuming no dividend cuts, but dividend growth he could live off the nest egg?


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## Sampson (Apr 3, 2009)

bean438 said:


> As I understood, didn't Derek with draw only his dividends? Since he was not "living off the pile", and assuming no dividend cuts, but dividend growth he could live off the nest egg?


Except the majority of his income came from Energy Sector income trusts. His $35k annual income would have been decimated by the distribution cuts.

As CC mentions, the withdrawal rates at retirement and the peak of his portfolio were simply unsustainable.


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## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

I was thinking of buying his book. (The library had copies that went missing). Is it really worth it?


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## Oldroe (Sep 18, 2009)

The first 2 books are simple and strait forward and a must read.

The next one I read and don't want to spend hours on computer so I haven't read the 4th.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Oldroe said:


> The next one I read and don't want to spend hours on computer so I haven't read the 4th.


There's a 4th book now?


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

yes it's called _How I Retired Selling Books and Advice, or How to Enjoy Libraries and Avoid Dodgy Virtual Citizens._


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## FrugalTrader (Oct 13, 2008)

Jungle said:


> I was thinking of buying his book. (The library had copies that went missing). Is it really worth it?


I like DF's first book, it shows the basics of dividend growth investing, tax benefits and how it all works in an easy to understand manner.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

optsy eagle - he mentioned that his wife doesn't work either. thats why they have their 5th kid on the way!


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

...Speaking of personal finance seminars at the public library, I'm planning on attending Jim Otar's talk next week at the Metro Toronto reference library in Toronto.


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## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

MoneyGal said:


> ...Speaking of personal finance seminars at the public library, I'm planning on attending Jim Otar's talk next week at the Metro Toronto reference library in Toronto.


Do they cost any money?


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

I'm pretty sure it's free!


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

Meet me in the Library, Louis,
meet me at the fair.
We will dance the hoochee koochee
I'll be your finance tootsie
if you'll just meet me in the Library.
Louis.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

Last night I heard Garth Turner speak at a Chapters in Scarborough.

I found his speech to contain alot of information (not surprisingly) that was in his most recent book. He does use a laptop and projector screen to show humorous pics to liven up his talk.

Overall he had some good ideas about how to save some tax $ when you start to withdraw your RRSP (take out a loan and invest it in a non registered account, use the withdrawn RRSP $ to pay the interest on the loan), and he gave his opinion about the current market (lots of volatility, sideways market), deficit (expect more taxes), and where he thought commodities (up)/energy (up)/bonds (down) were going. And we all know his opinion of the RE market, my guess is the second half of this year will start to prove him right.

It was not the greatest weather, but I got the impression that he didn't really want to stick around for long after. He did sign books, and answered a few questions while he was doing that. He comes across as very confident when giving his opinion.

I was glad to see that he wore cowboy boots, with his suit...but I thought he would be taller.


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