Global X: “Beyond Borders: Why International Equity is Capturing Attention”

This webinar (registration link) takes place on July 28 at 11:30am EDT. I don’t myself make bets on any particular segment of the market, choosing instead to maintain my geographic splits consistent, including international equity (see my latest report on that). But maybe you don’t have any exposure to international Equity at all; this might be worth checking out in that case.

Global X is the newish name of Horizons, a company I’ve been dealing with for a long time thanks to their innovative swap-based ETFs, namely HXT (Canadian Equity), HXS (US Equity) and HXDM (International Equity)¹ . They are useful funds to hold in non-registered accounts because they pay no dividends of any kind; this allows you to defer tax until you need the money and sell them².

Wealthsimple: Five Costly Retirement Spending Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

I listened to the recording of this webinar, and you can too by registering here. Fair warning: this webinar is at least partly a sales pitch for Wealthsimple’s managed portfolios³, and you can expect a follow-up if you do register.

Sales pitch aside, I thought the presenters did a decent job in explaining the common errors associated with

• Asset mix
  • Getting the asset mix wrong based on your needs. I talk about the concept of asset mix here.
• Order of withdrawal (RRIF versus TFSA versus non-registered)
  • This was something my fee-based financial advisor helped me with. Even a DIY investor can benefit from a bit of oversight as you make the preparations for retirement.
• Age to start CPP/OAS
  • Lots of Canadians take the money as soon as they’re eligible (age 60 for CPP, 65 for OAS) but that’s not always the best choice. I used the CPP calculator to figure out what my best option was.
• Underspending
  • My retirement decumulation strategy is a “drain to zero” approach that allows me to spend (or give away) as much of my wealth as is wise.
• Ignoring Estate and Final Tax costs
  • These can be significant. In the case of my mother’s estate, Final Tax (and not Probate) was the expensive one⁴. The easiest way to reduce Final Tax is to give away your money while alive.

1. Full disclosure, I own all three in my non-registered accounts. ↩︎
2. At which point you will have to pay tax on capital gains, naturally. ↩︎
3. And although I like and am more than capable of doing a DIY retirement, I need a plan B in the event I lose the capability to do this sort of thing myself. And so I pay attention to service offerings out there. Wealthsimple’s fees seem less onerous so that’s a vote in their favor. I hate fees of all kinds. ↩︎
4. They would have been horrified at the tax bill and probably would have more aggressively donated their wealth had they known. ↩︎