Every month, I try to share with you what’s in my overall retirement portfolio (September 2025 post is here). That retirement portfolio is actually distributed over a bunch of accounts held by me and my spouse and includes RRIFs, TFSAs and non-registered accounts. This is what it looks like at the moment:

(My multi-asset tracker is a handy tool to help you quickly create charts that look like the above one).

My current strategy for these three account types looks like this:

• RRIF: This is 100% invested in my ETF all-stars. I’m currently withdrawing RRIF minimum payments for two main reasons:
  • To avoid problems with attribution. I cover that topic over here.
  • To avoid withholding tax. RRIF minimum payments don’t attract withholding tax, but I am setting aside some of my payments to deal with the unavoidable tax bill come April 2026. I talked about that topic over here.
• TFSA: This is mostly invested in the ETF all-stars, but there’s a few stragglers in here¹ that I really ought to get rid of. Nothing wrong with the funds in there, but it’s a needless complexity. The TFSA continues to get new funds since it’s hard to beat tax-free growth, and I only buy all-stars with those funds. It will get drawn down last in my retirement planning.
• Non-registered accounts: Here it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast, with very little invested in the all-stars, mostly because most of the equity found here was bought long ago, and changing what I hold would attract capital gains that I would prefer to take on my own terms. It’s where the majority of my early-retirement decumulation takes place.

Here’s what that breakfast looks like:

Here’s a look at each holding, from highest to lowest percentage.

HXT: This is a Canadian equity ETF that does not pay dividends, instead using some wizardry to bury it all in the per-unit price of the ETF. This simplifies taxes, and I have held this fund for a long time. Due to increasing costs of this ETF, it’s among the first to get liquidated as I need funds.

XIC: Canadian equity fund, very popular. I think I bought it to create a bit of dividend income. It will get liquidated after the Horizons funds go (HXS, HXT, HXDM).

SCHF: A very low-cost international equity² fund in USD that I’ve held for a very long time. It’s funds like SCHF that attracted me to investing in USD, which, at present, adds a lot of complexity.

ICSH: This is one of the all-stars. It is what my VPW cash cushion is invested in³. I use ICSH more than ZMMK in the cash cushion because US interest rates are quite a bit higher than Canadian rates at the moment. I talked about that here.

HXS: Same idea as HXT, except it invests in the S&P 500. This one is held only by my spouse who is still working for a living, so this will just stick around a while, until she stops working and can take on the capital gains.

VSC: A bond fund held by my spouse. I may sell this to harvest some capital gains losses.

HXDM: Same idea as HXT, except international equity. It is on the list to liquidate.

ZMMK: An all-star, held in the same account as ICSH.

The rest (XEQT, TEQT, XGRO) are all new arrivals in the portfolio, purchased using dividends⁴ from the other funds as well as the bonus payments I keep collecting from Questrade for switching to them.

My non-registered accounts are only a small portion of my retirement holdings, but there’s a fair bit of complexity there. Over time, these accounts will go to zero other than the cash cushion portion (ZMMK, ICSH or whatever replacements I discover) which will remain as long as VPW is my decumulation strategy.

1. Mostly pure Canadian equity funds. This is to offset AOA that has next-to-no Canadian equity component. ↩︎
2. 0.03% MER. Cheap! ↩︎
3. VPW = Variable Percentage Withdrawal, an absolutely brilliant strategy for making sure you don’t run out of money in retirement and don’t leave a lot on the table. Read all about it here. ↩︎
4. With all ETF trades being free, I hold very little actual cash in any of my accounts. ↩︎