The Psy-Fi Blog: Depressed Investors Don't Need Feedback. Everyone Else Does.

The Psy-Fi Blog: Depressed Investors Don’t Need Feedback. Everyone Else Does.

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The Psy-Fi Blog: The End of the Age of Retirement

This article is extremely insightful. Few people will be able to retire and most governments will not be able to afford the benefits that they've promised.
The Psy-Fi Blog: The End of the Age of Retirement

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Canadians falling further behind in paying their bills

The Canadian Press

TORONTO -- As the recession causes the financial squeeze to get tighter, a credit monitoring company says Canadians are falling behind on their credit payments at "an ever-increasing rate."

Equifax Canada says the average national delinquency rate at the end of June rose to 1.56 per cent -- a jump of 24 per cent over the same time last year.

Equifax defines a delinquent bill as one that's at least 90 days overdue.

The company says the province with the highest delinquency rate is Nova Scotia at 2.09 per cent, while Saskatchewan has the lowest rate at 1.24 per cent.

It says rates of overdue bills are increasing fastest in Alberta and British Columbia at 32 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.

Equifax says among major Canadian cities, Toronto has the highest delinquency rate of 2.03 per cent.

Personal Finance and Home Purchasing

Something that I haven't quite got my head around is how so many (thousands per month) people can seemingly 'afford' to purchase homes in the Vancouver area considering the prices at which local homes seem to be sold at. Greater Vancouver benchmark for all dwelling types is just about $520,000 as of June 2009.

Let's look at a sample first time home buyer.

Let's imagine John and Jenny want to get started on the property ladder after getting married last year. They have saved $10,000 over the past couple years and they have about $25,000 in their RRSP accounts which they intend to use toward a property purchase under the Home Buyer's Plan. Jenny's parents have offered to help them purchase their first home as well with an extra $20,000 'loan' to be used toward a down payment that may never need to be paid back. They don't have any credit card debt but are making payments of a combined $900 per month on two car loans which have 3 years left on them. Combined down payment = $55,000.

John makes $60,000 per year working in the technology field and his job prospects are very good given his education and work experience. Jenny works in sales and her income has averaged $50,000 per year over the past two years. Although she does okay at work, her job prospects are sketchy as the company she works for has seen business drop off considerably and has laid off a few people in the last few months. Gross Annual Income = $110,000. Net Monthly Cashflow = $6,000.

They are wondering what they are able to afford (apparently they don't have a budget) so they go talk to a mortgage broker about their situation. The mortgage broker punches some numbers into the computer and comes up with a preapproval amount of $430,000. John and Jenny are amazed, they wonder what they have done to make the bank love them so much! This pre-approval emboldens them.

They call up a realtor and begin looking at homes in the $400,000 to $500,000 price range. The realtor shows them several condos and a few townhouses which meet their criteria and they settle on a nice townhouse and make an offer for $450,000 which is accepted and the deal is drawn up.

John and Jenny put $45,000 down by using the parent's money and withdrawing from their RRSP accounts under the Home Buyer's Plan. They have paid CMHC and legal fees of $9,000 which gets added to their mortgage so they owe a total of $414,000 and they have decided to amortize over 35 years (they will be 65 when it is finally paid off if they stick to the original plan with the original rate) with a 5 year term and a rate of 4.5%. They will be making principal and interest payment of $1,950 per month, they have added life insurance to the mortgage ($50) and are paying property tax monthly with their mortgage payment ($200). They now get to pay strata fees of $200 per month as well.

Let's have a look at John and Jenny's monthly budget.

John and Jenny's total monthly obligations are:
Mortgage - $1,950
Life Insurance - $50
Taxes - $200
Strata - $200
Car Payments - $900
Food - $600
Fuel - $400
Home and Auto Insurance - $400
Telephone/Internet/Cable - $300
Clothing/Other/Misc - $300
Entertainment/Vacations - $500
RRSP contributions - $200
Total = $6,000

This couple can have a 'reasonable' lifestyle based on these numbers but let's look a little closer.
Let's test this for several common risks:

Death - The mortgage is life insured, the survivor would be financially okay so long as the life insurance remains in place.

Divorce - They are in bad financial shape if this happens. Neither one of the two could afford the townhouse if they split up and the townhouse would need to be sold quickly.

Children - They are in bad financial shape if they have kids. Not only would they have extra monthly expenses, which they don't have room for in the budget, they would also have less income for a period of time as it is typical for the mother to take some time off work after giving birth. Even if mom went back to work there are daycare costs, which are not small.

Job Loss - They are a financial disaster if one of the two loses employment of any extended period of time. They would be forced to make some significant life changes and likely sell the home.

Interest Rate Rise at Renewal - If interest rates rise by 100-200 basis points they would be extremely rough financial shape. Unless they had an increase in income, they would likely be forced to re-amortize the mortgage and/or make other lifestyle changes. If rates increased more than 200 basis points, they would not be able to maintain their current lifestyle in any shape or form.
1) 100 basis point rise to 5.5%, maintain original amortization, payments rise to $2180 / month
2) 200 basis point rise to 6.5%, maintain original amortization, payments rise to $2420 / month
3) 300 basis point rise to 7.5%, maintain original amortization, payments rise to $2670 / month

Time - This is the most insidious risk of all and the least recognized. As a financial planner, I see many people who have put themselves into this type of scenario and they manage to muddle through life, manage to pay off a modest home by retirement and save a very modest sum of money. They retire at 65 and have a fairly low standard of living since they have no real significant savings and no pensions. If none of the above risks occured and they both managed to work a full career, get regular raises, contribute to CPP, receive OAS and have some modest RRIF withdrawals, they would make it through life without severe financial hardship but as a debt slave. The bank would have made over $400,000 from them in interest payments and they would have never saved much. They would live month to month their entire life and financial freedom would be a mere dream as they play the lottery each week hoping their number is drawn.

The reality is that the risks noted above are very real and for John and Jenny's situation to work out they need everything to work perfect, with no hitches, glitches or problems. This seems unlikely to me. It would be far better for them financially to leave themselves more room in their monthly budget so that they could:
1) Live / survive with only one income
2) Maintain mortgage amortization if interest rates rise
3) Speed up mortgage pay down by making extra payments as they receive raises if things work out well.
4) Increase their personal savings to RRSP and/or TFSA to ensure they have money for the unexpected and for retirement.

There are only two ways for John and Jenny to make the above work in a sustainable manner:
1) Continue renting and saving aggressively
2) Buy a much cheaper home and aggressively pay down the mortgage

What are your thoughts? Do you know John and Jenny? I do.

Human frailty caused this crisis

By Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Published: November 11 2008 19:46 Last updated: November 11 2008 19:46

Mea culpas are rare these days. In a debate with John Kerry in 2004, President George W. Bush fa­mously could not name a single mistake he had made in his first term. So it is both noteworthy and commend­able that Alan Greenspan, the former US Federal Reserve chairman, fessed up that he had failed to anticipate the financial crisis.

“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he said. Mr Greenspan had faith that banks were prudent enough to make sure they were not lending money cheaply to people who could not pay it back. Yet that is what happened. As Mr Greenspan says of securities based on subprime mortgages: “To the most sophisticated investors in the world, they were wrongly viewed as a ‘steal’.”

Why did Mr Greenspan, along with the rest of the world’s regulators, fail to foresee that this could happen? We think their mistake was to neglect the role of human nature. To prevent future catastrophes, regulators should focus explicitly on how to provide safeguards against two all-too-human frailties explored by decades of work in behavioural economics: bounded rationality and limited self-control.

The standard (non-behavioural) econ­omic model has greatly influenced regulators. In that model, economic agents (econs for short) choose optimally, no matter how hard a problem they face. They play chess as well as they play tic-tac-toe. The problem with this approach is that the world is populated by humans, not econs. Humans are not stupid, but when things get complicated they flounder: they suffer from bounded rationality.

This brings us to an aspect of the financial crisis that has not received the attention it deserves: the financial world has become more complex in the past two decades. Not so long ago, most mortgages were of the 30-year fixed-rate variety. Shopping was simple: find the lowest monthly payment. Now they come in countless forms. Even experts have trouble comparing them and a low initial monthly payment can be a misleading guide to total costs (and risks). A main cause of the mortgage crisis is that borrowers did not understand the terms of their loans. Even those who tried to read the fine print felt their eyes glazing over, especially after their mortgage broker assured them that they had an amazing deal.

Yet growing complexity on the borrowers’ side was trivial compared with what was going on at the banks. Mortgages used to be held by the banks that initiated the loans. Now they are sliced into mortgage-backed securities, which include arcane derivative products.

Many economists have argued that even if individual consumers suffer from bounded rationality, markets will be set right by specialists who can figure out even the most complex problem. But, as Mr Greenspan now ­concedes, even these sophisticated investors got things badly wrong.
The second problem involves self-control. Econs do not suffer from self-control problems and so “temptation” is not a word that exists in the economists’ lexicon. As a result, regulators have not thought much about the problem. But when the dessert cart comes by, we humans often cave in. The next thing we know, we are fat. This crisis was fuelled by the seemingly irresistible temptation to refinance the mortgage rather than pay it off. Falling interest rates, rising home prices and aggressive mortgage brokers made re­financing (and second mortgages) seem like the apple in the Garden of Eden. When home prices fell and interest rates increased, the party ended.

Regulators therefore need to help people manage complexity and resist temptation. A potential response to complexity would be to require simplicity – for example, by allowing only the standard 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. This would be a big mistake. Eliminating complexity would stifle innovation. A TiVo is a more complicated product than a VCR, but it is also better.
A superior approach is to improve disclosure. One reason a TiVo is better than a VCR is that it is easier to use. Regulators can reduce the chances of a future meltdown by making it easier to understand financial products. Agg­ressive steps should be taken to imp­rove disclosure – for example, with mortgages, fine-print disclosure should be supplemented by machine-readable files enabling third-party websites to translate hidden details of the terms. Mandatory transparency for investment banks and hedge funds would also help.

The government and the market should try to deal with temptation. We hope that lenders will ask families to have done some saving in order to qualify to buy a home. Conscientious lenders could also nudge people to get off the refinancing merry-go-round, by suggesting that the term of the loan be shortened when a loan is refinanced. More ambitiously, private and public institutions could try to reintroduce an old social norm: try to pay off the mortgage sooner rather than later, and at the latest by the time you retire.

Greed and corruption helped create the crisis, but simple human frailty played a vital role. We will not be able to protect against future crises if we rail against greed and wrongdoers without looking in the mirror and understanding the potentially devastating effects of bounded rationality and limited self-control.

Richard Thaler is professor of behavioural science and economics at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago. Cass Sunstein is Felix Frankfurter professor of law at the Harvard Law School. They are the co-authors of ‘Nudge’ (Yale University Press)

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Bill Gross

First-timer home buyers like low rates | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com

This is an outrageous story of massive risk taking by a first time home buyer. I shudder to think what the consequences of these actions might be for them - bankruptcy, divorce, depression?

If this is representative of most first time buyers right now then this market is doomed.

First-timer home buyers like low rates | Vancouver, Canada | Straight.com

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