Eight times a year, the Bank of Canada and the US Federal Reserve have meetings to set and announce their key interest rates. In what I’m sure is a total coincidence, they often happen on the same day. Per the Bank of Canada and the US Fed, here are the dates for 2026:
Wednesday, January 28
Wednesday, March 18
Wednesday, April 29
Wednesday, June 10 / June 17th for the Fed
Wednesday, July 15 / July 28th for the Fed
Wednesday, September 2 / September 15th for the Fed
Wednesday, October 28
Wednesday, December 9
Normally I don’t really pay too much attention to financial headlines. But since interest rates have a direct impact on the monthly income I can expect from the cash holdings in my portfolio (and by “cash” I mean ultra short-term bond funds1), and since I try to keep my HISA and short-term bond table (Canada & US) accurate, I do pay attention to that particular piece of market intel.
ZMMK in CAD, ICSH in USD, both members of the ETF All-Stars club ↩︎
And here you see why most of my “cash” is in ICSH instead of ZMMK. US interest rates are higher in Canada, and although there is of course foreign exchange risk involved, I’m ok with that. ↩︎
This is a monthly look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here.
Portfolio Construction
The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:
6 RRIF accounts
3 for me (Questrade, QTrade, Wealthsimple)
3 for my spouse (Questrade, QTrade)
2 TFSA accounts (Questrade)
4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint, all at Questrade)
The view post-payday
I pay myself monthly in retirement, so that’s a good trigger to update this post. On January 26, this is what it looks like:
The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, but if you’ve been following along, you’ll see a few changes.
As mentioned in a previous post, I did some shifting around and you now see XAW and XIC increasing their contribution to the portfolio at the expense of XGRO.
I also tidied up some extra funds that aren’t needed — VCN was replaced with XIC1, and I turfed some small holdings.
I sold more HXT than I needed to for my monthly paycheque, and when I discovered the mistake2, I just bought XIC instead.
And, I did my quarterly Norbert’s Gambit to shift some AOA to XGRO. And again, I came out ahead!
Plan for the next month
The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.
It’s looking pretty close to the targets I have, which are unchanged:
5% cash or cash-like holdings like ICSH and ZMMK
15% bonds (most are buried in XGRO and AOA, some are in XCB)
20% Canadian equity (mostly based on ETFs that mirror the S&P/TSX)
36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500)
24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)
Overall
Net worth overall is up month over month, reversing a 2 month losing streak and hitting a new all-time-high:
I had to do some quick manual calculations because I had already updated my auto-calculating spreadsheet to reflect fewer RRIF accounts. My RRIF transfers are 2 months in progress and counting. I guess trying to move a RRIF near the end of the year was a bad idea. ↩︎
New year, new promotions! QTrade (different from Questrade, don’t mix them up) is offering free money to new clients. It’s featured prominently here.
Detailed terms and conditions are here, but it’s pretty straightforward: register for the promotion with promo code CASHBACK26 and fund your account by April 30th. Keep it there for a year, and this is what you can expect your payout to be in May 2027:
The higher tier amounts aren’t particularly noteworthy as compared to others out there. But you’d be hard pressed to find a better ROI than $250 for a $1000 investment.
My retirement portfolio is spread across multiple brokers and multiple accounts. And although I treat the portfolio as a unified entity when it comes to asset allocation (the concept is discussed here), different accounts have different allocations. The reasons are varied, but I would rank inertia as one of the big contributors — sticking with what’s there seems like a lot less effort than the other options.
What I think in important to point out is that the portfolio is still dealing with inflows and outflows every single month:
I pay myself RRIF minimum from my RRIF accounts, and this usually means selling some shares of XGRO
If RRIF minimum isn’t sufficient for my expenses (and it hasn’t been), then I have to liquidate shares from my non-registered account.
I contribute to our TFSAs every month
Questrade gives me free money every month as a reward for shifting assets their way (see how I did it here). This money shows up in my non-registered accounts1.
Dividends show up every month2; every quarter there is an even bigger distribution
And quarterly I convert some of my AOA holdings to XGRO within my RRIF using Norbert’s Gambit3. When I do this, it reduces my US and international equity holdings and replaces it with Canadian equity4.
So given all these ins and outs, there are always opportunities to tweak the asset allocations so that they remain close to my targets.
But this study did make me realize that the small allocation I had of bonds in my TFSA was wrong-headed. Since in my planning the TFSA is the LAST place I’ll head to fund my retirement, it follows that it should have the longest-timeline investments. So, for me, that means 100% equity is the correct allocation for the TFSA accounts. So what did I do?
I sold the bonds in my TFSA (XSH was the ETF), and put them in my RRIF (choosing instead to use XCB, a longer-duration corporate bond fund)
Of course, since you can’t add money to a RRIF, something had to be sold there. XGRO was plentiful, so that’s how I funded the bond purchase. From an asset allocation perspective, selling XGRO meant that I reduced my Canadian, International and US Equity exposure at the same time.
To compensate, the cash I generated in my TFSA by selling XSH was used to buy a combination of XIC (Canadian Equity) and XAW (US and International equity combined). XIC was already in the TFSA6. XAW is new but gives back the US Equity and International Equity I lost by selling XGRO7.
This is how the two accounts break down now, both from an ETF and an asset-allocation perspective. (In the asset allocation charts “Income” is the nomenclature I use for “bonds” and “Cash” means actual money as well as ultra-short-term bond funds like ICSH and ZMMK).
The result is my TFSA is now 100% equity, and the lower-growth cash-generating bonds are now all in my RRIF accounts. More efficient all around!
Leaving the free money as part of the retirement portfolio was a conscious decision. I could have just as easily decided to withdraw the money every month. ↩︎
Both ZMMK and ICSH pay monthly. They are both featured in my ETF all-stars. ↩︎
AOA is 50% US equity, 28% International equity. XGRO is 36% US Equity, 24% International Equity. ↩︎
It’s not a straightforward topic. In the end, the foreign withholding tax isn’t huge but as a cheapskate, it’s noticeable and can be higher than MERs of the ETFs you hold. ↩︎
XIC helps tilt the overall Canadian equity allocations in the right direction. AOA tilts it in the wrong direction. ↩︎
The current numbers don’t allow me to use an XEQT/XIC combination. Over time, this will change. ↩︎
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 ↩︎
The Money Engineer 