Homeless and Rich

Myrna and her husband Doug are both
homeless and rich. Despite their six-figure
portfolio they are living out of a car, but living
well. A couple years ago they sold everything,
put a few personal items into storage, and
headed out in their car. “We organized a
mailing address, made certain that we could
access any business and financial matters online,
and have been on the road for the most
part ever since,” Myrna says. “We have no
home, home is where we are on any particular
day.”
Myrna, 65, and a former school viceprincipal
has always shown a willingness to try
something new. So far the two have traveled
Europe, the USA and much of eastern Canada.
How do they make it financially? Myrna
keeps them focused on conservative stocks
and bonds. As she says, “… when you open
that door [to retirement], and you’re going to
live for another thirty years and you’re going
to do that on what you’ve put away, you have
to make sure your nest egg will last, and you
don’t know how long you’ll need it to.”
They match their expenses to their income. At
year-end, they want to make sure they have
not depleted their capital, and adjust their
plans for the coming year according to growth
in their portfolio.
To accomplish their goals, they rely on
conservative dividend-paying stocks. “A
company that’s paying a dividend usually has
the wherewithal to do just that, meaning they
are making enough money to pay it out.”
They like a company that has regularly paid out
its dividends over the years, and has a trend of
increasing its dividend. They’ll also look into a
company’s past revenues and earnings. “I want
to see a slow and steady upward trend.”
They also don’t easily panic over downturns,
but keep an eye on their overall return. “You
have to keep in mind that you’re going to have
losses. Nobody has a perfect crystal ball.”
They also accept that they won’t be making
huge returns, and remain vigilant against being
drawn into buying a stock that is on a wild
upswing, something that is easy to get caught
up in. “You don’t have time for it to fail and to
recover.”
Keeping their portfolio invested in between 15
and 20 stocks is a good idea, “You can only
keep track of so many, plus with too many you
basically end up with the index.”
They use The Globe and Mail’s globeinvestor.
com website to keep an eye out for articles on
specific companies, and uses Yahoo’s finance
site to check out price-earnings and other
financial ratios. What they do look for is trends,
from the state of the housing market to the
potential fallout a flu pandemic.
They think the best thing they’ve done is stay
invested in the big banks for many years,
despite getting advice to sell them along the
way. “Canadian banks pay good dividends
and in Canada we don’t have a lot of good
dividend-paying stocks, and they’ve been
good-performing stocks.”
As advice to others they say, If you’re retired,
“adjust your lifestyle to your investments, not
the other way around.”
Their six figure portfolio is made up of: Bank
of Nova Scotia, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank
of Montreal, Petro-Canada, Diageo PLC,
Royal Dutch Shell, ING, Power Financial.
TransCanada (preferreds), Quebecor
(preferreds). Trusts: Aberdeen Asia Pacific,
ARC Energy.
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