It’s January 2026 and so I’m about to undertake my first withdrawals from my Questrade RRIFs. For the entirety of 2025, I’ve only had to deal with QTrade’s methodology for RRIF payout, which looked something like this:

• Determine what my monthly RRIF-minimum amount would be. (For QTrade, I had to call support to get this number…why, I don’t know). Once this was established, it didn’t change for the year, so that was easy.
• Before the end of the month, I had to sell assets to make sure I could cover the monthly payment
• The minimum payment was taken from available cash and deposited into my linked chequing account without any action on my part on the last business day of the month.

So for Questrade, I’m trying to do the same thing, but so far, no joy.

• Determine what my monthly payment is. When I talked to an agent on January 2, they could not tell me as they claimed that it wasn’t available yet. Or they didn’t understand my question.
• Today, I got an email from Questrade, reminding me that my payment was due shortly and to make sure I had enough cash to cover the payment. And if I didn’t know what the payment was, I had to call support.
• I also learned that if I don’t have the cash to cover the payment, they’ll just skip it.¹

Now, of course I know how to work out what my RRIF payment for any RRIF account will be — all you have to do is know the RRIF value at the start of the year and know how old you are², and presto. But because my Questrade RRIFs have USD components, knowing the exact exchange rate is also necessary, and that’s where uncertainty creeps in.

Anyway, I have a pretty good idea what the minimums will be, but I’m not going to hang out for an hour waiting to talk to an agent³ to get it penny-accurate. I’ll have a little extra cash for the first month, at which point it should be clear enough what my monthly payments will be.

This is yet another example of small, but rather irritating shortcoming from the provider of my choice. One that you wouldn’t know about until you experienced it firsthand. Would it really be so hard to report the amount on my account screen⁴? Anyway, something to ponder if you’re nearing retirement or are starting a RRIF with a new provider…

1. QTrade would’ve sold things on my behalf and charged me for the privilege, so I suppose this is a better option ↩︎
2. What the CRA refers to as a “prescribed factor”. You can’t make this stuff up. Their charts only show the factors starting at age 71, but believe me, you can take payments from a RRIF well before that age. ↩︎
3. Word to the wise: avoid talking to Questrade support when they have a promotion running, it will seriously test your patience… ↩︎
4. I note that Wealthsimple and BMO Investorline both do ↩︎