As previously noted, I’m in the process of closing off my last accounts with QTrade. No particular reason I did that other than to chase free money and to reduce complexity by reducing the number of brokers I deal with.
There were four RRIF accounts to move. I moved my own RRIF account to Wealthsimple in late October to take advantage of (you guessed it) free money, which left 3 other accounts to move to Questrade before the end of the year.
The Wealthsimple transfer was really simple, initiated online in about 5 minutes, requiring no follow-up on my part, and completed inside of 2 weeks. Wealthsimple even went so far as to proactively refund the $150 transfer out fee charged by QTrade. I received my first free money payment 2 weeks ago. Couldn’t have been easier.
For the last three RRIF accounts, I waited until my November RRIF payments had been made from QTrade in the normal way before initiating the transfer to Questrade1 on November 30th. But of course, for these three, there was a problem. Questrade is famously opaque in its transfer out messaging, but I provide the message provided from them verbatim:
Please be advised that RRIF/LIF account transfers are subject to the industry-wide cut-off date, November 28, 2025. This cut-off date is not specific to Questrade, but is arranged and agreed upon by all Canadian financial institutions to ensure yearly payments are made in an orderly and timely manner to all account holders.
After a number of phone calls to both QTrade and Questrade, it seems that the meaning of the above message is that RRIF transfers between brokers are not possible during the month of December. I found a few references to similar problems with different brokers from years gone by.
Anyway, that’s yet another bit of weirdness associated with RRIFs that I’ve encountered:
And now, that transferring out a RRIF cannot be done during the month of December
I could uncover no reason for why this restriction exists3, but I’m guessing it was once a problem in the days of manual calculations and mainframes that has never been changed. I am hoping at this point that the first week of the new year will get my RRIF moving again, but I don’t have any certainty that this will be the case.
Anyway, dear readers, take note: if you’re planning on moving a RRIF, make sure you initiate it by the beginning of November! And if anyone out there can tell me the reason, happy to be educated. Just drop me a line at comments@moneyengineer.ca.
You may wonder why I didn’t just move all my accounts to Wealthsimple. It was because they didn’t (at the time) support spousal RRIFs for DIY investors. They do now. Part of me wonders if Wealthsimple is going to end up with this money. ↩︎
Even if you take monthly payments from your RRIF as I do ↩︎
And, having exceeded the recommended annual exposure to clueless level one support agents, I thought the better of it for my mental health. ↩︎
You can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.
The view post-payday
I pay myself monthly in retirement, so that’s a good trigger to update this post. On December 23, this is what it looks like:
Retirement holdings, December 2025
The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars; anything not on that page is held in a non-registered account and won’t be fiddled with unless it’s part of my monthly decumulation. Otherwise I’ll rack up capital gains for no real benefit.
There aren’t really any notable changes this month — AOA’s contribution was down a bit this month, largely due to an unfavourable change in the USD/CAD exchange rate (down about 3% month over month, back down to a level not seen since around May this year). I recalculate the FX rate every month1 since I track my net worth in CAD so I always have an apples-to-apples comparison. I don’t stress too much about the FX rate as it tends to cut both ways. Sometimes it’s a lift to my numbers, sometimes not. In the end, I suppose it all evens out. I tracked my snapshot FX rates starting in February2, just for illustration:
Monthly USD/CAD rates on payday day
Plan for the next month
The asset-class split looks like this
Retirement portfolio by asset class, December 2025
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 (almost all are buried in XGRO and AOA)
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)
The end of the year will mean more distributions from my holdings; in my RRIF accounts they are set to DRIP since I only hold AOA/XGRO/ICSH in these accounts. The rest I redeploy to the asset classes that are short funds; typically this means investing in one of the *EQT funds since the bond complement of the portfolio frequently moves above the 15% target.
Overall
Net worth overall is down slightly month over month, but up a little over 10% from the start of the year. Hard to be unhappy about that.
My VPW-calculated salary took a slight decline, breaking the 7 month growth streak. It ends the year a shade under 6% larger than my first paycheque. Not bad. I don’t recall many years where I got a 6% raise 😉
Next month will end my relationship with QTrade as I move the final 3 RRIF accounts to Questrade; I had thought December would be the final month, but as you’ll see in my next post, a (hopefully) small wrinkle has delayed this.
February because I only thought to start tracking that a month in. January’s rate will be lost to the sands of time. Or I could add it back using the official FX rates, I suppose. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
You can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.
The view post-payday
I pay myself monthly in retirement, so that’s a good trigger to update this post. On November 25th, this is what it looks like:
ETF Breakdown of retirement investments, November 2025
The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars; anything not on that page is held in a non-registered account and won’t be fiddled with unless it’s part of my monthly decumulation. Otherwise I’ll rack up capital gains for no real benefit.
No notable changes this month; HXT is down slightly because that’s the fund I sold in my non-registered account this month to help pay the bills. I’ve sold quite a few shares of this fund this year and I’m seeing the capital gains mounting, but it’s around where I expected to be. I try to keep taxes owing reasonable; nonetheless I’m guessing I will certainly be moving to quarterly instalments in FY 2026; that’s the downside of having no withholding tax of any kind this year.
Plan for the next month
The asset-class split looks like this
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 (almost all are buried in XGRO and AOA)
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)
All looks to be in order from an asset allocation perspective, no need to do anything here. Cash is slightly elevated as a result of the pending closure of the three remaining QTrade accounts and will drift back to the normal 5% over the coming few weeks, I expect.
Overall
Net worth overall stopped its 6 month winning streak and I’m down slightly month over month. But I will reiterate: my net worth is still growing even though I’m taking a living wage every month. You might think that “decumulation” means “a steady reduction in net worth” but it needn’t be the case. And, in my particular case, my retirement income will include no pensions, so it’s probably a good thing that it keeps increasing overall.
My VPW-calculated salary continues to grow for the 7th straight month in spite of the step back this month in my net worth. That’s a feature of the “cash cushion” that is integral to the VPW withdrawal. It serves as a shock absorber to the monthly ups and downs of the stock market.
Next month will end my relationship with QTrade as I move the final 3 RRIF accounts to Questrade2.
My QTrade one is no more, transferred to Wealthsimple to take advantage of their Summer promotion. ↩︎
I had hoped to move these to Wealthsimple and generate more free money, but alas, they still don’t support self-directed spousal RRIFs, which is very odd indeed. ↩︎
The Money Engineer 