Quick links for the long weekend

February 13, 2026 RobHLeave a comment

(Quick aside: as a retiree, I did have to make sure this coming weekend was, in fact, a long weekend 🙂 )

What’s the deal with AOA?: updated

While many Canadians are familiar with all-in-one products that trade on the Canadian exchanges (XEQT/XGRO, VEQT/VGRO, TEQT/TGRO, ZEQT/ZGRO), there is also a USD product that I use quite heavily in my retirement portfolio. That ETF is AOA. In this updated post, I break down what’s inside it. TL/DR: lots of US Equity, lots of International Equity, a tiny slice of Canadian equity, and broad coverage of the US and international bond markets.

Rob Carrick is back in (digital) print

One of my favourite ex-Globe And Mail staffers was Rob Carrick, the keyboard behind such valuable assets as the ETF Buyer’s Guide. He retired last year, but it seems he’s back doing the same job in a different way. He’s now writing on Substack, and you can find his words of wisdom over here: https://substack.com/@robcarrick1.

PWL on Retirement: “Finding and Funding a Good Life”

Not a new publication, but new to me…It’s penned by Ben Felix, a certified Canadian financial rockstar. Looks like a good read over a cup of coffee. Finding and Funding a Good Life.

RRIF Support Showdown: Wealthsimple, Questrade, QTrade

February 2, 2026January 30, 2026 RobHLeave a comment

I’m currently holding RRIF accounts at three different online providers (QTtrade, Questrade and Wealthsimple)¹. So I am perhaps uniquely positioned to comment on the relative goodness and badness of the support of this kind of account at these three brokers. I also have some experience with BMO Investorline in this regard, but that experience is getting a bit long in the tooth now.

So without further ado, let’s take a look:

Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple now provides support for both RRIFs and (relatively recently) Spousal RRIFs. And although Wealthsimple supports USD accounts, they do not (for whatever reason) support USD RRIFs², which, for many readers, isn’t a big deal, but to me it is.

But for all that, I still hold a CAD RRIF with Wealthsimple. It started last year, when I realized my DPSP couldn’t be immediately converted to a RRIF, and Wealthsimple was offering a shiny new Macbook to win the business. How could a certified cheapskate refuse?

Since I only opened the RRIF last year, this year is the first year where I’m obliged to take out RRIF-minimum payments. Wealthsimple makes this stupidly easy on many levels:

They clearly display what your minimum payment for the year is right on the account screen, and they also show how much you have left to go against that minimum
They make it easy to create a “recurring withdrawal” from the RRIF, which is something I do every month, and I can easily change this whenever I want, although I’m not planning on doing that.
And — bonus — they support XGRO fractional shares AND the ability to place a sell trade in dollars and cents rather than # of units. This means I can sell EXACTLY the number of XGRO units I need to every month, with no excess dead-money cash floating around.

You have to set up your bank account for EFT withdrawals before this works, of course.

QTrade

I still hold 3 RRIF accounts at QTrade, although I’ve been trying to move them to Questrade since late November. Seems that there is an industry-wide freeze on moving RRIF accounts in the month of December.

QTrade supports USD and CAD RRIF accounts, and they keep them completely separate — different account numbers, even. They are linked, however, because the TOTAL value of the 2 accounts is used to determine your CAD RRIF minimum payment. I’ve only withdrawn RRIF funds in Canadian dollars, because I couldn’t get a straight answer whether I could withdraw USD funds natively to my USD account.

QTrade also supports Norbert’s Gambit, which is important if you want to convert between USD and CAD cheaply.

With QTrade, you have to send in a form to set up your RRIF withdrawals, either monthly/quarterly/annually. And per their fee schedule, if you deviate from this, you owe them $50³.

Once the schedule is in place, the withdrawals happen automatically. You have to make sure you sell your assets in advance of the withdrawal date. What happens if you don’t have enough funds? Not sure, cannot find any documentation that addresses this. There is also no indication online as to what your RRIF minimum payment is; you have to contact support if you want the exact amount.

Questrade

The majority of my RRIF holdings are here. As mentioned above, I’m trying to move 3 RRIF accounts from QTrade to Questrade. The delay from end of November to beginning of January seems like it’s explainable by the aforementioned industry-wide freeze. But since then, I lay the blame fully on Questrade for dragging their feet on getting the right forms in QTrade’s hands.

Questrade supports USD RRIFs, and combines them with CAD holdings. Same account for both, and they do a nice job of providing you with multiple views so you can see your portfolio in either currency.

Questrade also supports Norbert’s Gambit, and I’ve used it multiple times already to convert USD holdings into CAD holdings.

Questrade requires a form to set up RRIF payments, and like anything involving a form at Questrade, you have to sit on top of support to make sure someone actually reads the form.

Like QTrade, Questrade treats RRIF minimum payments as some sort of secret, forcing you to contact support if you don’t know what the value is.

You can also exceptionally get “extra” payments using the “Move Money” menu. I am not sure how withholding tax would work if you did this. It appears that you could also withdraw USD from this menu. The “Move Money” menu is one that seems to be rather fragile — bank accounts previously linked have a habit of disappearing from this screen.

As I write this, Questrade is only batting .500 in delivering the first RRIF payment. I got mine, but my spouse did not. Unclear why this may be, the support person I spoke to also seemed perplexed.

The Verdict

If you have USD in your RRIF, I would probably pick Questrade over QTrade. Questrade’s support of “on demand” payments is a nice flexibility. The one downside is that Questrade charges a flat fee to execute Norbert’s Gambit, whereas QTrade, as far as I can tell, does not.

But once Wealthsimple supports USD in RRIFs and Norbert’s Gambit⁴, they would be my #1 pick for managing the RRIF payments. High degree of automation, high degree of flexibility, high degree of transparency. If you don’t have USD in your RRIF, then I could recommend Wealthsimple over the other two.

Mishaps and greed have contributed to this current situation. I don’t condone it. ↩︎
Proof: https://help.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/17933575404315-Open-a-RRIF#h_01H8Y8853951RYHHA80S11T5Y9:~:text=Can%20I%20hold%20USD%20cash%20in%20my%20self%2Ddirected%C2%A0RRIF%3F ↩︎
I’ve never had the need, but be forewarned! ↩︎
Coming this quarter per this PR. ↩︎

Questrade and RRIFs: Annoying

January 21, 2026 RobH4 Comments

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…

QTrade would’ve sold things on my behalf and charged me for the privilege, so I suppose this is a better option ↩︎
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. ↩︎
Word to the wise: avoid talking to Questrade support when they have a promotion running, it will seriously test your patience… ↩︎
I note that Wealthsimple and BMO Investorline both do ↩︎

CPP and OAS as part of a retirement plan

January 19, 2026 RobHLeave a comment

One of the confusing questions I got from my international colleagues when I announced my retirement was “what’s the retirement age in Canada”? And, after thinking about it, said, “There isn’t one that I know of”, which is, strictly speaking, correct.

However, for many Canadians (and, I suppose, for many people around the world), “retirement age” equates to “the age where I can collect my pension”. For me, the equivalent statement was “the time when my retirement savings were sufficient¹” (you can read about the steps I took here). I don’t have a private pension through my employer, so CPP, OAS and my own savings are all I have to sustain my needs throughout retirement.

CPP (Canadian Pension Plan) and (possibly²) OAS (Old Age Supplement) are two sources of income that will eventually make up part of my retirement income, but not for a while. For the time being, my retirement income comes from a mix of non-registered asset sales (about 2/3 of my 2025 household income) and RRIF payments (about 1/3 of my 2025 household income)³. My advisor suggested waiting as long as possible to collect on CPP/OAS, which is age 70 for both.

But maybe, if you haven’t retired yet, you haven’t really thought too much about these things⁴? Here’s a quick primer.

What’s CPP and what’s it worth to me?

CPP applies to anybody who has contributed to the plan; how much you contribute annually is captured on your T4 slips. You can see your lifetime contributions⁵ by logging into your My Service Canada Account. It is the history of these contributions⁶ that ultimately determine what your annual pension will be in the year you first start taking it.

The first year you are eligible to receive CPP is the year you turn 60⁷; every month you wait after turning 60 increases your monthly payment. The absolute maximum CPP you could collect would be waiting until you turn 70⁸. The Feds lay it all out here.

The absolute maximum monthly CPP you could possibly get as a 65 year old is $1507.65 in January 2026 per the Feds⁹. Since I retired early, and 18 year-old me worked a part-time minimum wage job, my CPP will be less than that. (The CPP calculation takes your best 32 years of earnings into account).

What’s OAS and what is it worth to me?

OAS (“Old Age Security”) applies to anybody who has lived in the country long enough¹⁰. OAS can start at age 65, and be delayed until as late as age 70. Like CPP, OAS rewards those who start payments later than age 65¹¹. You get an OAS supplement of 10% when you hit 75.

The absolute maximum monthly OAS payment in the first quarter of 2026 is $742.31 if you’re under 75 and $816.54¹² if you’re over per the Feds. (These amounts are adjusted every quarter in accordance with inflation rates.)

The wrinkle with OAS is that it’s income-tested. If you make too much money, you’re going to have to pay some of it back. If you really make too much money, you’ll have to give it all back. This is commonly known as “OAS Clawback”¹³.

The magic of CPP and OAS

CPP and OAS payments are both indexed to inflation, for as long as you collect it. This is key for me personally — none of my other income sources are inflation-proof, so the more I can get that is inflation-protected, the better. That’s part of the reason I’m planning on delaying collecting CPP and OAS until I’m 70 — that way, I can maximize the inflation-protected income. The other reason I’m delaying these payments is to try to avoid OAS clawback. The earlier I take RRIF money out, the lower my RRIF income will be later in retirement, when I have to start adding CPP to my income. I have no idea if I will avoid the clawback because it depends on the performance of specific elements of my portfolio. But try I will.

Estimating CPP and OAS for VPW

My decumulation strategy is based on VPW (Variable Percentage Withdrawal). I’ve talked about it previously over here and here. VPW requires, as an input, the value of a future pension. So how do I go about estimating that? Any reasonable estimate might want to ignore what the feds put on the periodic CPP summaries they send out because those estimates are assuming you’re retiring at 65, and working at a similar salary level (of course, if that’s your plan, then it’s perfectly fine — but it wasn’t mine :-))

All good estimates start from the lifetime contributions table you can find at My Service Canada. From there I’ve given a few tools a spin:

PWL Capital Tool

https://research-tools.pwlcapital.com/research/cpp

This tool has a lot of neat features, but be careful. The model bakes in both inflation estimates and wage inflation estimates that are changeable, but not immediately obvious.

CPP Calculator

https://www.cppcalculator.com/

This is one I recommended previously in Tools I Use, but the upload feature has been broken for a while now. It still works by entering it manually, but I now prefer the tool below….

Finiki CPP and QPP Calculator

https://www.finiki.org/wiki/CPP_and_QPP_calculator

The Finiki tool is now my favourite because it’s available as a worksheet (Google Sheets, Excel and Libre Office all supported), and all you need to do is enter in your pension contributions. The current version (2.3) hasn’t been updated with the latest YMPE values, but it’s a trivial exercise to update them.

“sufficient” means different things for different people. You have to have a budget, and you have to have an idea what sort of estate, if any, you’re intending to leave behind. ↩︎
I figure my odds are 50/50 that my combined CPP+RRIF income when I hit 70 will render me ineligible for OAS. ↩︎
I am not planning on actually working for a living anymore; there are all kinds of rules concerning the interplay of CPP and employment income, but I’m not talking about them here because that scenario doesn’t apply to me. ↩︎
Or, if you were a cynic like me, figured that it wouldn’t exist by the time I got to an age where I’d be collecting it. Seems like the pension plan is currently in pretty good shape. ↩︎
Starting at age 18. ↩︎
Mostly. If you took a leave from employment to raise a family, there is special treatment which could increase your pension. ↩︎
You get 36% less of a monthly payout by starting at age 60 compared to age 65. ↩︎
You get 42% more monthly compared to age 65. ↩︎
You would have to be at maximum pensionable earnings for 39 years between the ages of 18 and 65 to get this amount. (47 years less the 8 worst years of earnings). ↩︎
OAS can be estimated by using the Canada.ca calculator which is down at the moment: ↩︎
Details at https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/old-age-security/when-start.html ↩︎
Which, if you’ve been paying attention, is 10% more than the benefit for someone under age 75. ↩︎
OAS is progressively reduced if you make more than $95k in 2026. You get no OAS at all if you make more than ~$155k at ages 65-74, $160.5k for ages 75+. These numbers are modified 4 times a year based on inflation. ↩︎

The Money Engineer

A GenX-authored guide to investing, retiring and saving money

Category: Planning to Retire Soon