Right after the final, final deadline of Wealthsimple’s last free money offer, it appears that Wealthsimple is now offering spousal RRIFs as an account type for the DIY investor (they’ve had them for quite a while in their robo-advisor accounts).
This had always struck me as silly, especially since they have offered spousal RRSPs for a while now.
With this development, Wealthsimple is nearly a viable option to host all of my retirement funds1. My needs are pretty simple:
support for all the account types I need (RRIF/Spousal RRIF, TFSA, joint non-registered, individual non-registered)
zero cost ETF buy/sell
support for Norbert’s Gambit (which implies support for USD accounts, naturally)
Norbert’s Gambit is planned in early 2026 for Wealthsimple, per the very limited info found here.
So, if you’ve been on the fence about Wealthsimple, here’s one more reason to consider them. Once Questrade’s free money gravy train ends for me in March 2027, they become a personal serious contender, especially if they are willing to throw free money my way, which, historically, has certainly been a recurring theme. On that note, if any reader wants to give them a whirl, I have referral codes, just shoot me a note at comments@moneyengineer.ca; if you act quickly2, there might be some free Apple gear in it for you too.
QTrade and Questrade both offer all three. There may be others. ↩︎
DIY investing also means DIY decumulation. In 2026, I’ll be paying myself from my various RRIFs as well as from non-registered funds. I’ll refer to the letters in the diagram below so you can follow along1:
A: Calculate Net Worth over all retirement accounts
“Retirement accounts” include 3 non registered accounts, 2 TFSAs and 5 RRIF accounts. All of these are at Questrade except for one RRIF account held at Wealthsimple. My net worth calculation ignores my day-to-day spending accounts, and any other assets (my house, for example). In 2026 I could look up this number using Passiv, but I’m not 100% clear on what the fate of my Passiv account will be once Questrade cuts ties with them (March 2026). I still have a spreadsheet with lots of details and pretty graphs based on my multi-asset tracker.
B: Use VPW Methodology to Calculate Monthly “Suggestion”
VPW stands for “Variable Percentage Withdrawal” and it’s the playbook I use to guide my monthly withdrawals from my retirement accounts. I talk a bit about it here. The suggestion is generated by a VPW spreadsheet, but the inputs are pretty simple:
future pension amounts, and age you’ll be when you take them3
asset allocation breakdown (%stocks versus %bonds)
This “suggestion” represents the maximum value of the assets I am advised to sell this month. You could take more or you could take less. It’s merely a suggestion. For me, I take the suggestion at face value and sell the assets needed to meet the value of the “suggestion”.
C: Calculate the Salary
The “Suggestion” in step B is NOT your salary. The VPW methodology enforces one more step to calculate that. The VPW methodology requires the use of a “cash cushion”, which has the effect of making sure you don’t need to make drastic month-to-month changes in your salary, either upward or downward. The cash cushion is roughly 5x the “suggestion”4 and your salary is 1/6th of “suggestion” plus “cash cushion”. The “salary” represents the amount that will eventually turn up in your chequing account.
To make things easier to track, my “cash cushion” is a totally separate non-registered joint account that holds one of four things: Canadian dollars, US dollars, ZMMK or ICSH. I keep a little cash floating around in this account to avoid having to do monthly trades. It just makes tax reporting and ACB tracking a bit simpler, at a small loss of interest income. Also, Questrade doesn’t support fractional shares of either ZMMK or ICSH, and since they routinely trade at roughly $50/share, mathematically, I’ll always have $25 CAD and $25 USD on average 🙂
D/D’: Compare the Suggestion to the Salary and act accordingly
Since the cash cushion is effectively a 5-month moving average Salary, the Suggestion could be more than or less than the Salary. If my net worth is down (or up) month over month, then it follows that the Suggestion will also be down (or up) month over month. My Salary may or may not be down (or up), depending on how long the downturn has lasted. Just to give you a sense of how the cash cushion smooths out the market gyrations, you can see the comparision of net worth versus salary below. (Taken from my most recent monthly “What’s in my Retirement Portfolio” update.) The net worth moves quite a bit month-to-month (generally upward, which is nice), but my salary is much smoother (but also generally upward).
Anyway, what all this means is that I’m either going to move some of the Suggestion money into the cash cushion (because my Salary is less than the Suggestion), or I’m going to pay myself from the cash cushion because my Salary is higher then the Suggestion5. It’s one or the other; as yet, I haven’t had the Salary be equal to the Suggestion, but it is mathematically possible, of course.
E/E’: Make sure the 4 Questrade RRIFs have cash to cover the monthly payment
At the end of 2025, I’m expecting some sort of communication6 from Questrade as to what my minimum monthly7 RRIF withdrawal needs to be for 2026 for each of the four RRIF accounts in my household8. This is a standard “feature” of anyone holding a RRIF — your provider makes a calculation based on the value of your RRIF on the last day of the year and your age (or your spouse’s age) at the end of the year. That’s RRIF minimum — the minimum amount you’re obligated to take. This coming year, I’ll stick with RRIF minimum again to avoid having to deal with spousal attribution rules.
So for 2026, I will know exactly how much cash I will need every month in every Questrade RRIF account. And since I’ve done such a good job in simplifying my RRIFs9 (pats back) I can also calculate exactly how many shares of XGRO need to be sold in each RRIF account every month, in real time10.
So generally, this step involves placing 4 sell orders to put cash in the account.
The E’ step — moving cash from the RRIF to the chequing account — I’m expecting to be automatic, but since I haven’t had to do this with Questrade before, I’m not certain.
F/F’: Generate cash equal to RRIF minimum in the Wealthsimple account and move it to the chequing account
Like with Questrade, I’m expecting Wealthsimple to communicate my RRIF minimum. From what I can see from their website, it appears that they actually make it really obvious.
The same good work I did with my Questrade accounts is even better in my Wealthsimple RRIF account since I hold no USD at Wealthsimple. So here, and thanks to fractional shares, 100% of my RRIF is invested in XGRO, with no additional cash.
Their help article makes it sound like both F and F’ are under my control, which is fine. I’ll just do this step at the same time I do the Questrade step. Maybe I only have to do F’ once and pay out in “Installments”? Not sure.
G/G’: Use the non-registered account(s) to generate cash equal to Suggestion minus all the monthly RRIF payments
I already know my five RRIF minimum payments will fall well short of the VPW “Suggestion”, so every month I have to sell assets from the non-registered accounts to make up the shortfall. This cash will either go 100% to my chequing account or some of it may be diverted to the cash cushion.
Normally this comes from my, not my spouse’s, non-registered account. Since my spouse is still working, I leave hers alone to avoid generating capital gains. Unfortunately, my non-registered accounts are a bit of a dog’s breakfast, and although I’ve made efforts to use spreadsheet formulas to make automated suggestions11, it’s proving a bit more difficult.
In the end, this is again a sale of one or more assets. For step G’, I can then immediately use Questrade’s “Withdraw Money” to move the cash into my chequing account, or “Move Money” to move cash into the Cash Cushion account.
Conclusion
And that, my friends, are the steps I take monthly in retirement. I try to perform these steps in the dying days of every month while allowing enough time for trades to settle to ensure cash is well and truly in hand before I move it to my chequing account.
In my household, a very large portion of this process gets spit out as a step-by-step “do this, do that” set of instructions I’ve built into a macro-enabled spreadsheet. The trades required for Step G are still decided on the fly, manually. Of couse, given that Questrade has APIs, I could conceivably make automatic trades based on the work I’ve done, but I’m not sure I want to take that step. Retirement project?
I don’t really know if any of my readers find this particular articl useful, exasperating or confusing. But for me, it’s useful to write down how it works! ↩︎
For me, CPP, OAS and the OAS supplement. The current plan is to defer CPP/OAS until age 70 to maximize my inflation-indexed income. ↩︎
which, in my case, since I withdraw monthly, is about 5x my salary ↩︎
I’ve run this algorithm ten times so far this year: 3 times I had to pay myself out of the cash cushion and 7 times I added to the cash cushion. That’s the general upward trajectory of this year’s market in action ↩︎
My last provider, I actually called them to check. I had of course calculated it myself (and they were very close) but my numbers don’t matter to the CRA. I’m hoping Questrade makes it a bit more obvious, but I’m pessimistic. ↩︎
I had set it up as monthly. I could’ve chosen quarterly or annually. I like monthly. ↩︎
My RRIF accounts hold one of five assets: Canadian and US dollars (because I can’t buy fractional shares), ICSH, AOA, or XGRO. ICSH is held in RRIFs to keep me at 5% cash in my retirement overall, and I routinely convert (quarterly) AOA into XGRO using Norbert’s Gambit. ↩︎
And yes, I have a macro-based spreadsheet that tells you exactly how many shares to sell at that moment based on share price and current cash in the account. ↩︎
The most appropriate thing to sell in any given month is an asset for which I’ve become overweight per my multi-asset tracker. But when you hold all-in-ones in the portfolio, it’s a bit trickier to work that out. I just need to set aside some time to come up with a spreadsheet-based solution. I would much prefer this decision to be made algorithmically. ↩︎
Yup, it’s another promotion. Keep that gravy train going! This time, it’s a contest, so no guarantees, but the rewards are pretty nice if you happen to be so lucky.
In each case, all you need to do is to open and fund a new TFSA/RESP/FHSA account ($250), or contribute more than $250 to an existing account, or send a postcard with an essay (yes, really) before the end of the year. One entry per client, per investment vehicle. But you can only win ONE of the three prizes (shucks).
I wonder which contest will actually have the best odds? I contribute to my TFSA every month, so I guess I have a shot, too…
I know Apple devices have a reputation as being premium/pricey devices and so seeing “iPhone” and “cheapskate” in the same sentence is probably controversial, but if you’re a long time owner of Apple devices (4 Mac computers1, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, one old iPod still ticking), there is a strong ecosystem factor that makes it hard to break free2. Addtionally, the hardware3 is really quite rock solid (if nearly impossible to repair nowadays), so you do get a bit of longevity when you spring for an iDevice.
But let me share with you a new thing I discovered yesterday that may save you from an upgrade that isn’t necessary.
I’ve been struggling with “out of storage” warnings on my iPhone4 for a number of months now. Every time I got one, I checked for the usual culprits:
Too many photos/videos on my phone. I try to keep the number very small (often zero) since I use Google Photos to back up any image to the Google cloud. No need for local copies, since I can grab them on demand from the cloud5.
Too many photos/videos sent via messaging apps (and I use a bunch: Messenger, WhatsApp, Messages, Slack)
Too many downloaded podcasts (listening to podcasts while on road trips or runs is a favorite habit of mine; the offerings of Pushkin are generally very high quality)
Too many apps that I used once and then moved on from
And after going through the list, I would normally clear up enough space to quiet the warnings for a while. The last time I got one, i got a little infuriated and deleted 95% of the music I keep on my iPhone because I don’t listen to music on it all that often.
But less than 2 weeks after the extreme purge, I got yet another “storage low” warning. I was a bit exasperated at this…what’s the point of having a phone if I’m spending hours every week reducing its capabilities? No photos, no music, no podcasts? No way!
So I took a much closer look at the “storage” report on the iPhone, and it looked something like this6:
“System Data”, the light grey bar (not to be confused with iOS, the dark grey bar) had grown to take up an ENORMOUS amount (~30GB) of data on my phone. What, exactly is “System Data”, you may ask?
That, it would seem, is a rather accurate description. Once I determined that this stuff was probably expendable, I set out researching how to get rid of it. I’ll save you sifting through dozens of bad videos and terrible advice and cut to the chase. Here’s what my iPhone storage looks like this morning:
You’re seeing that right — 38GB free, up from 1GB free. “System Data” reduced from around 30GB to 5.75GB. So what did I do?
Rather than spend hours trialing and erroring deleting apps and re-installing them, I went nuclear. I backed up the phone to iCloud and completely erased it7, then restored it. This is an extreme measure that isn’t for everyone but the results are quite clear.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of why you should be very careful before doing this to prevent loss of data — don’t say I didn’t warn you!
you don’t back up your photos/videos anywhere
you haven’t backed up your iPhone to iCloud
you don’t have your music backed up somewhere (if purchased in iTunes, all can be re-downloaded; if synced from a computer, that can be redone)
Anyway, for me, having migrated phones more than once, I was pretty confident I wouldn’t have much in the way of downsides in doing this. Some things you have to re-do
rescan your fingerprint for TouchID
retrain Siri to respond to your voice
Re-enter your payment cards for Apple Pay
Re-authenticate into some/all of applications that require it
Resync your music
Anyway, all this to say that before you think you need to upgrade your phone because you’re out of space, maybe take a closer look…
One running Linux MX because it’s over 10 years old, one gifted to me from Wealthsimple, one in the upstairs office that I should probably sell, and one that I’m typing this from (another ancient laptop with a “battery” in name only that should probably get the Linux MX or Chrome OS treatment at some point). ↩︎
Most lately, Apple’s Passwords app is so so good ↩︎
The collection of still-functioning and largely functional hardware is a testament to that. ↩︎
A 64GB iPhone SE gen 3, if you’re wondering. Yes, it’s old. I’m a cheapskate, remember? ↩︎
Of course my free Google storage is beginning to get squeezed, but a small time investment can usually generate pretty big gains; a lot of what I take pictures of nowadays is stuff I’m trying to get rid of. ↩︎
Not from my phone, just a nice image with the correct attributes I found; enormous System Data contribution, and less than 1GB of free space on my phone. ↩︎
Except for my Airolo eSIMs, that was something iOS offered to keep around after selecting “Erase Content and Settings”. ↩︎
XGRO is one of my ETF all stars. I updated my What’s the deal with XGRO? post today, and here I show you how I break down the various stocks and funds within it using the ETF fact sheets:
The Money Engineer 