16 ~ North Shore News — Wednesday, April 12, 2000 YES, faithful readers, there is a “spend and enjoy” after all the “save and invest.” You will be heartened to learn even a pinch-a-penny professional can loosen the purse strings. “The Grenbys are Mr. and Mrs. Cheap, Canada’s most public pennypinchers, a parsi- monious couple who have saved their money ingenious- ly and told the rest of the country exactly how they do it,” wrote Paul Grescoe in a feature that appeared in newspapers across Canada. Financial planners and columns like this always focus on the importance of saving and investing. Rarely do they encourage you to Investors control futures _ IT’S not about technol- ogy- The current frenzy sur- rounding online trading, Internet banking and use of "| SAFETY AND THE - HARD OF HEARING . April 17/ 2600 St. Joha’s Anglican Cherch | 229 West 8th St. “4 North Vancouver Time: 7:00 p.m. Speakers from the North Vancouver Emergency Services and the . Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing will be . speak- -ing to us about sofety and will be focusing on the special needs of the hard of hearing in cop- ing with an emergency situation. : Special devices will be demonstrated that may improve safety for those of us with a hearing loss. No Admission Charge. All members of the .Y. public welcome. . Wheelchair and “hearing accessible. Phone 988-7115 ‘or Fax: 980-6695 Web sites for researching, sell- ing and purchasing invest- ments is actually all about empowering investors. For decades, investing was something that someone else would do for you. Unless you were directly involved in the financial services industry, you would use a broker, a mutual fund company, your bank manager, your financial advi- sor, or maybe even your brother-in-law to find ways to make your moncy work a little er. And that made a lot of sense, particularly since the expertise required for making intelligent investment deci- BUSINESS Cheapskate loosens the purse sirings spend and enjoy, which is the only reason to save and invest. So Lam delighted to address this gap in financial planning although at first I did worry | would never be able to enjoy spending our carefully counted coins and bank notes. But I'm learning. To celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary, we checked into the Park Hyatt Hotel, the boutique hostelry where Princess Di stayed, and while we were there, where Barbra Streisand took over the $5,000 a night sions — as well as the tools and the mechanisms for acting on those decisions — was not easy to come by. The Web, of course, is changing all of that. It is now possible for any- one with a computer, a con- nection to the Internet and a little money to make their own investment decisions and act on them. And they are doing so in record numbers. Cambridge, Massachusetts- based Forrester Research, for example, predicts that by the year 2003, $.7 million U.S. households will manage more than $3 million in assets in 20.4 million on-line accounts. Meanwhile, it further antici- LIGHT: TRUCK. / VAN are Governor Suite for her only visit to Australia (tickets ranged trom $137 to $1,527 for her outdoor show). We lay in bed and clicked the remote to open the cur- tains, revealing a view of the Sydney Opera House. A life- size replica of the Bounty (of Mutiny on the Bounty fame) was tied up outside. Room service brought us breakfast and lunch as we sat on the balcony and watched the jetcats and other harbour ferries pass by, with Circular Quay and the downtown sky- scrapers in the background. pates that the number of households investing online will almost double from 2.4 million at the start of 1999 to 4.6 million by the end of 2000. The reason that so many people are expected to start investing online is quite sim- ple: it empowers them in an unprecedented new way. It’s ifficult to actively play a sig- nificant role in your own investing strategy when you don’t understand the financial products being offered to you (such as stocks, mutual funds and bonds), you don’t have the research tools to be able to tell good opportunities Two Tires From Fires ne] _coonfican I didn’t even ask the price when we arranged with the hotel's executive chef, Ross Lusted, for a seven-course dinner in the city’s “in” har- bourkitchen&bar (though just for old-time’s sake we did share a glass of wine). Still, [ must admit habics die hard. I felt a twinge (or was it a qvitch?) when I called up our account on the room TV and saw our bal- ance pass $1,000, then $1,500... But the four-day weekend ended perfectly. When we checked out (paying with our from bad (whether that opportunity lies in the equity market or real estate) and you don’t know from day to day what your portfolio is worth. The Web changes those facts of life quite fundamental- ly. Any investor in any kind of investment product now has thousands of research sources available to them online for free and can call on the ser- vices of hundreds of compa- nies that will cheaply and effectively handle their trans- actions online. In addition, the ability to track portfolios online and _ carry out online banking means that investors can CIBC Acrogold Visa, of course, to collect a healthy shot of frequent flyer points), the Australian dollar was trading at an all-time low against the Canadian dollar. Mike Grenby is a columnist and personal financial advis- er; he'll answer questions in this column as space allows but cannot reply personally —— can- tact at P.O. Box 50029, South Slope R.P.O., Burnaby, B.C. V3] 5G3; e-mail mike@gren- by.com and see previous columns at Mike’s Web site, . portfolios with Web information always be aware of exactly how much they have invested in which financial product as well as the balances of their bank accounts and credit cards. Being an empowered investor doesn’t necessarily mean that you won't use the services of financial advisors, brokers or other investment professionals. It just means that you will come to those ~ professionals as a much more informed customer. You will know what you want and have a clear idea of where the pro- fessional is adding value to the See Study page 24 Prices include installation, balance, § valve stems, lifetime rotation, an 80,060 km warranty plus a four year road hazard warzanty. Prices include installation, - balance, valve stems, lifetime rotation and 2 four year road hazard warranty. “CARTER CHEVROLET-OLDSMOBILE 987-5931 REGENCY PONTIAC-BUICK-CADILLAC-GMC 985-6333 Snunaesrone ExrGoodriety