Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Lotteries Lotteries are big business. Americans for example, spend more on them, than movies, video games, music, sporting events and books combined. Unfortunately, the people who buy tickets are financially struggling and that is probably why lotteries are often referred to as a tax on the poor. The lowest income households spend $412 per year on tickets. It...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Growth is More Than Tech Investors are under the false impression that if they are looking for growth companies, the tech sector is really the only game in town. Certainly tech stocks have done well, but so have a lot of other sectors. If you look at the top ten performing stocks in Canada over the last 20 years, it is quite a diversified list of two gold sto...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Nvidia Nvidia, is a maker of high end computer chips, especially used in Artificial Intelligence applications. It has become the world’s most valuable company, recently cracking 4 trillion dollars in market value. The rise has been relentless. Nvidia achieved a trillion dollar market value in June 2023, and then tripled it a year later. Put in perspective, Nv...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - What Tariffs Really Are Politicians describe tariffs in warm fuzzy terms - how it will rebalance trade, cause domestic businesses to reshore, and motivate foreigners to build domestically to get around the extra costs. What is never talked about, is the damage they cause our wallets. What tariffs really are, is a sales tax that goes into government coffers an...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Boring Is Beautiful Recently a European official was quoted as saying, “If you want a sane, stable, even boring, rules-based order and predictable business environment, Europe is the place for you.” Investors, tired of the chaos US markets have been experiencing lately under Trump’s ever changing tariffs, have been listening. Money has been moving across the...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Death By Regulation The size of Canada’s manufacturing sector has just been overtaken by Ireland. This is pathetic beyond words. Ireland is a country with one eighth our population. The reason we are viewed as an unattractive place to invest is regulation. We are drowning in it. Rules have increased by 42% since 2005 and now total 105,000. The atrophy of our...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Money & Happiness Does money make you happy? This is a question that has been debated for ages. According to the latest research the question has two answers. It seems that if you aren’t happy to begin with, extra money does little or nothing to change your mood. However, if you are happy already, a positive change in finances will even make you happier. The...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - How Alberta Ranks Canada’s wealthiest province is Alberta. If you compare us economically to the 50 states in the US, we would rank 16th, just behind Minnesota. Saskatchewan which has the second highest GDP per capita ranks 21st. On the other end of the scale, are the three maritime provinces. They rank behind Mississippi, which is the poorest state in the US...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Tax Freedom Day For the average Canadian, tax freedom day is June 8th this year - one day earlier than 2024. If Canadians paid all their taxes up front, they would work the first 158 days of this year before bringing any money home for their families. This number represents all Federal, Provincial and Municipal Taxes and indirect fees like GST, PST, health an...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - First Time Homebuyers A recent CMHC Mortgage Survey, uncovered some interesting trends among first time home buyers. 64% of them, rented prior to buying their first home, while 35%, formerly lived with friends or family. Those that rented, did so for 6.3 years before purchasing a home. On average, first timers had to save 3.4 years for their down payment. 35%...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Argentina As A Role Model The headlines are dominated by stories of countries like the US and Japan sinking into a quicksand of unsustainable debt. The US, recently, had the last of the three major credit rating agencies, pull their triple AAA rating. But, in spite of the gloom, there are some encouraging trends. Greece, has reclaimed its investment-grade cre...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Money Printing & Markets People are scratching their heads over the reaction stock markets are having to recent political events. Equities continue to rise, in spite of - trade battles, rising deficits, a 3 year war between Russia and Ukraine, and the bombing of Iran by America. The destabilization of the global economy is simply shrugged off. This weird reac...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - A Life Plan People get pushed out of the workforce before they are ready, often based on cost cutting decisions by the companies they are working for. If an employee is unprepared, or unable to find a similar level of work, the unexpected change can lead to feelings of boredom, regret and loneliness. Therefore it is important, to not only have a financial pla...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - The Triple AAA Club A triple A credit rating is the best you can get. For investors needing sterling quality in their bond portfolios, this is where you want to look. Due to the drunken spending spree most countries have been on, that list has shrunk dramatically over the years. It is down by a 1/3rd since the financial crisis of 2007 and currently has only 1...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - Gasoline Is Cheaper In The US If you are adventurous enough to head south of the border for a driving vacation this summer, the Canadian dollar won’t buy much. However the one area you can actually save some money, is fuel. It is amazing how much cheaper gasoline is below the 49th. Even including the currency differences and the differential in litres verses...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert - China & Profits The massive shift in manufacturing to China wasn’t a globalist conspiracy. Manufacturing moves where it can economically survive, and the problem, is the high cost of western goods, have priced many of them out of the market. There is an old saying, “When the Chinese walk into a room, profits walk out.” Even low cost manufacturers in China, du...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Tariffs Force Change There is a something sadly disturbing about human economic behaviour. It has been my observation that we never change when we see the light. We are only forced to change, when we feel the heat. Canadians have consistently ignored the consequences of running massive deficits, being to dependent on the US for trade, neglecting our defence res...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Confusing Economic Indicators One of the reasons people are so confused about the current state of the markets, is that they are getting many differing signals as to what will happen next. Indicators tracking consumer and business confidence, are very negative in their outlook. Yet stock markets, typically dominated by professional investors, have been spiking...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert The Political Right And The Environment We need to leave politics out of our environmental debates. The spin doctors would have you believe that only left leaning organizations can deliver environmental progress. The numbers prove the opposite. Texas, California, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas were the top five states generating renewable energy. Four of them are R...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Affinity Crimes People let their guard down when dealing with others they know and trust. This is especially true if those people are associated with a charity based institution or faith. Criminals also know this, and often will infiltrate those groups for the sole purpose of networking with people they can maneuver themselves into a position to scam. These hap...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Scammers & AI Artificial intelligence is going to revolutionize the way we work and live over the next 15 years. It is also going to give scammers, very sophisticated new tools to part you from your money. If AI is exposed to a voice recording for a minimum of 3 seconds, it can now imitate the way you talk. Soon, it will be able to animate your facial expressio...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Managed vs Free Trade Free trade allowed goods and money to flow globally with very few restrictions. The upside is that it brought a lot of prosperity and growth to countries that had big cost advantages in manufacturing. The downside, was that it also created losers with massive trade deficits. This imbalance has proved unsustainable. What will replace it, is...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Trump Forces Change I haven’t been this positive about Canada’s future in over a decade. As a nation, we are finally focussed on standing on our own two feet and becoming more than just a second tier branch plant, supplying goods and services to the US. This is no longer just a political talking point, but a deep change in our national resolve. The restructurin...

Making Money Minute with Ron Hiebert Think Like A Sailor When markets get volatile, investors scramble after the fact to get more conservative. Unfortunately, by then, prices are down and the investor gets a financial haircut. When taking a boat on an extended sail, we don’t just plan for nice weather. Before leaving port, we assess the worst weather we would encounter, and then strengthen or make...