What’s in my retirement portfolio (Aug 2025)

August 23, 2025August 22, 2025 RobH1 Comment

This is a monthly look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here. Last month’s is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

7 RRIF accounts (3 for me, 3 for my spouse, 1 at an alternative provider as a test)
2 TFSA accounts
4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint)

The target for the overall portfolio is unchanged:

80% equity, spread across Canadian, US and global markets for maximum diversification
15% Bond funds, from a variety of Canadian, US and global markets
5% cash, held in savings-like ETFs.

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. At market close, August 22, this is what it looks like:

*Retirement holdings by ETF, August 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.

The most noticeable change is a growth in the importance of ICSH to my portfolio at the expense of ZMMK. I did the math to justify performing a Norbert’s Gambit of the CAD generated by selling ZMMK and picking up ICSH. The amount of HXS remaining in the portfolio is dwindling, and may be gone altogether by next month. I choose which assets to sell out of my non-registered accounts by simply determining which asset category needs to be trimmed based on my multi-asset spreadsheet.

I also have a new way to track my AOA splits; since it rebalances itself twice annually, it seems to me wiser to fix its bond contribution at 20% in my multi-asset tracker. The equity splits between US, International, and Canadian are still dynamically calculated at least monthly using a properly weighted formula.

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 60)
36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500, with a small sprinkling of Russell 2000)
24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)

I don’t really see a need to make changes based on what I see here. Cash flowing in to the account (bonus payments, regular TFSA contributions) will be re-invested in one of XEQT or XGRO¹, typically².

Overall

The retirement savings had a great month. Overall, I’m ahead of where I started even though I’ve been drawing a monthly salary since the beginning of the year. This is aligned with what my retirement planner told me to expect, but as you can see, the journey has had some interesting ups and downs already.

*Monthly retirement savings, as percentage of Jan 2025 value*

My VPW-calculated salary has hit a new high this year, 2.41% higher than my first draw in January³. This is also expected, since it tracks the value of the retirement portfolio, albeit in a much more controlled way. The VPW “cash cushion” smooths out the ups and downs of the monthly returns. I suppose I really should see an increase in my salary on par with inflation so that I maintain my spending power. I’ll have to think about how to track that⁴.

*Monthly salary, as percentage of Jan 2025 salary*

I have purchased some TEQT lately since it has a lower MER. I covered TD’s family of all-in-ones here. ↩︎
Since my target is 15% bonds, and XGRO is 20% bonds, I have to offset some of the XGRO purchases with 100% equity purchases. ↩︎
Not a bad raise. ↩︎
Looks like https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/prices_and_price_indexes/consumer_price_indexes is a good place to start. ↩︎

What’s in my retirement portfolio (July 2025)

July 28, 2025July 24, 2025 RobH4 Comments

This is a (hopefully monthly) look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here. Last month’s is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

7 RRIF accounts (3 for me, 3 for my spouse, 1 at an alternative provider as a test)
2 TFSA accounts
4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint)

The target for the overall portfolio is unchanged:

80% equity, spread across Canadian, US and global markets for maximum diversification
15% Bond funds, from a variety of Canadian, US and global markets
5% cash, held in savings-like ETFs.

You can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

The view as of this morning

As of this morning, this is what the overall portfolio looks like:

There weren’t big changes this month. My monthly decumulation from my RRIF accounts involves selling enough XGRO to meet RRIF-minimum payments, and the rest of my retirement paycheque is funded by my non-registered accounts. This month, given the run in the US stock market of late, that involved a sale of some shares of HXS¹.

Plan for the next month

The asset-class split looks like this

The bond portion of the portfolio is a little smaller than I would like. The targets for my portfolio 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 60)
36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500, with a small sprinkling of Russell 2000)
24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)

The change in the bond portion of the portfolio was amplified because I hadn’t updated the asset split of AOA in my multi-asset tracker in a while. AOA has drifted quite a bit since it only rebalances twice a year (next time in October). More on drifting in multi-asset ETFs here.

Overall

The retirement savings look quite healthy; even though I’ve been drawing a monthly salary for 7 months, I’m now ahead of where I was when I started my retirement journey. This is aligned with what my retirement planner told me to expect, but as you can see, the journey has had some interesting ups and downs already.

My VPW-calculated salary has hit a new high this year, a dizzying 0.77% higher than my first draw in January. This stability is thanks to the built-in shock-absorber of the VPW model (a 6-month cash cushion which smooths out the market gyrations considerably). I also think it’s an endorsement of my choice to take retirement payments monthly; my exposure to short-term market hiccups is greatly reduced since I’m not making big sales of ETFs to fund a year of spending all at once.

Which particular ETF I sell from my non-registered portfolio is based on what asset class is the most overweight at that point in time. If it’s US Equity, then I sell US Equity. If it’s Canadian Equity, then I sell Canadian Equity. ↩︎

What’s in my retirement portfolio (June 2025)

July 7, 2025 RobH4 Comments

This is a (hopefully¹ monthly) look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here. Last month’s is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts²:

7 RRIF accounts (3 for me, 3 for my spouse, 1 at an alternative provider as a test)
2 TFSA accounts
4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint)

The target for the overall portfolio is unchanged:

80% equity, spread across Canadian, US and global markets for maximum diversification
15% Bond funds, from a variety of Canadian, US and global markets
5% cash, held in savings-like ETFs.

You can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

The view as of this morning

As of this morning, this is what the overall portfolio looks like:

The biggest changes over the last 30 days was due to a small rebalancing exercise I executed. I sold off some AOA in order to pick up more ICSH. The stock market has been roaring lately, and it caused my target allocations to become a bit cash-poor; ICSH is not, strictly speaking, “cash”, but for my purposes, it’s close enough. (You can read about my cash thoughts here). I could have instead sold XGRO to pick up more ZMMK, but US interest rates are a lot better than Canadian ones at the moment, so I figured I’d enjoy the extra few percentage points of return on my cash holdings.

Plan for the next month

The asset-class split looks like this

This looks to be pretty close to my target percentages which haven’t changed:

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 60)
36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500, with a small sprinkling of Russell 2000)
24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)

The pie is looking almost perfect at the moment. I don’t see any near-term need for fiddling with what’s there.

Overall

The retirement savings look quite healthy; even though I’ve been drawing a monthly salary for 6 months, I’m now ahead of where I was³ when I started my retirement journey. This is aligned with what my retirement planner told me to expect, but as you can see, the journey has had some interesting ups and downs aready.

My VPW-calculated salary has gone back to more or less where I started at the beginning of the year. And even with the crazy market swings we’ve seen, it’s stayed remarkably stable⁴. That’s thanks to the built-in shock-absorber of the VPW model (a 6-month cash cushion which smooths out the market gyrations considerably). I also think it’s an endorsement of my choice to take retirement payments monthly; my exposure to short-term market hiccups is greatly reduced since I’m not making big sales of ETFs to fund a year of spending all at once.

I know it’s July 7, but the numbers are accurate for June, more or less. ↩︎
I treat retirement savings as firewalled from my day to day chequing account. ↩︎
Just barely, but I’ll take it ↩︎
I changed the vertical axis of this chart to align with the other chart; it makes its stability much clearer. ↩︎

What’s in my retirement portfolio (May 2025)

May 26, 2025June 10, 2025 RobH3 Comments

This is a (hopefully monthly) look at what’s in my retirement portfolio. The original post is here. Last month’s is here.

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

7 RRIF accounts (3 for me, 3 for my spouse, 1 at an alternative provider as a test)
2 TFSA accounts
4 non-registered accounts¹, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint)

The target for the overall portfolio is unchanged:

80% equity, spread across Canadian, US and global markets for maximum diversification
15% Bond funds, from a variety of Canadian, US and global markets
5% cash, held in savings-like ETFs.

The view as of this morning

As of this morning, this is what the overall portfolio looks like:

The biggest changes were caused by two events that happened over the past 30 days:

I did a small rebalancing exercise to reduce my exposure to the Canadian equity market, selling VCN in favor of XEQT. (XEQT is only 23% Canadian equity per dollar invested; VCN was 100%). This sort of rebalancing happens whenever I drift more than 1% off of my target allocations.
I took some cash from a HISA and invested it in ZMMK; for reasons too boring to report here, that money was effectively not being tracked in these pages until this month — that anomaly won’t be repeated in subsequent months since ZMMK and ICSH are where I park the “cash” position of my portfolio.

Plan for the next month

The asset-class split looks like this

This looks to be pretty close to my target percentages which haven’t changed:

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 60)
36% US equity (dominated by ETFs that mirror the S&P 500, with a small sprinkling of Russell 2000)
24% International equity (mostly, but not exclusively, developed markets)

So, the plan for next month is, do nothing out of the ordinary. Reinvest cash (dividends, TFSA contributions) in one of AOA, XEQT/XGRO, ICSH or ZMMK depending on the asset category most in need on the day of the reinvestment. All these ETFs are covered on my ETF All-Stars page.

One thing I may do is to try to make shifts² to get a little more return out of my cash position. US interest rates are quite a bit higher than Canadian rates, and so if my cash position is held in USD, I stand to eke a few more points of return there. TBD.

Overall

My retirement savings had a nice bounce-back this month, looks like I can cancel the mega-pack of pot noodles I had on order.

The salary I collect month to month recovered a bit, too, although not as quickly. That’s the magic of using VPW’s cash cushion — neither boom nor bust months translate into large changes in the take-home pay.

That’s up one from the previous month. In order to collect on Questrade’s transfer bonus, (which they have yet to pay me, they are apparently in a world of hurt on the IT front) you have to have a non-registered account to get paid into. The other 3 are “normal” — one non-registered account for me, one for my spouse, and jointly held one that serves as a cash cushion to smooth out month to month variations in my retirement salary. Read more about that over at https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/01/31/im-retired-now-how-do-i-get-paid/ ↩︎
With Questrade, all ETF trades are free to make, so I don’t have any real reason not to make such changes. ↩︎

Taxes in Retirement

May 22, 2025May 21, 2025 RobH1 Comment

There’s really no avoiding paying taxes, even in retirement. You probably have to do some budgeting to make sure you aren’t being caught unaware, though.

My retirement today is funded from a combination of my spouse’s part-time salary, my/my spouse’s RRIF, selling off assets from my non-registered account, and interest/dividend income from non-registered accounts.

The big difference, as I’m slowly becoming aware, is that aside from my spouse’s paycheque (which has the usual tax deductions / CPP contributions / EI contributions), there is nothing being set aside to pay my tax bill come April 2026. So it goes without saying that I had better make sure there’s a nugget somewhere that I set aside for the upcoming tax bill.

How much should that be? Enter a tool I use to help figure out that sort of thing, referenced in the “Tools I Use” section of this blog: namely, the Basic Canadian Income Tax Calculator¹.

*The Basic Canadian Income Tax Calculator, from TaxTips.ca*

The basic tool, as implied, is pretty basic. It doesn’t include any sorts of deductions aside from the basic personal deduction and dividend tax credits. There’s an advanced calculator that has a bunch more inputs, but for the purposes of this article, the basic tool is good enough.

For the purposes of this tool, your income is in 4 buckets:

Other income: This is how 100% of RRIF payments are treated, as well as interest from non-registered assets (e.g. interest from a GIC, bank account, HISA, some ETFs)
Capital gains: This is only applicable to non-registered accounts. Note that many ETFs actually generate capital gains and a corresponding T3/T5 slip even if you don’t touch the fund at all². Larger capital gains are typically generated when you sell an ETF that you’ve held for a while, which includes everything I hold in my non-registered accounts.
Canadian eligible dividends: This includes dividends paid by all public companies in Canada.
Canadian non-eligible dividends: I don’t have any of those, but if you own shares in a private corporation, you might.

Since my 2025 strategy is to simply collect RRIF minimum payments, I already know what that dollar amount is. I also execute non-registered asset sales monthly to fund my retirement, as I mentioned here. This generates capital gains every month; the exact amount this will sum up to in 2025 is unknowable in advance since it depends on factors like:

what specific asset I choose to sell
the price of the asset at the time I choose to sell
how many shares of the asset I sell at that price

I do track a metric I call “capital gain dollars per dollar of asset sold³” so I can compare the capital gain impact of generating (say) $1000 cash for every asset I own in my non-registered account. So I have a bit of control over the capital gain metric for a given year, but not a lot. My spouse also has non-registered assets in her name, but since she’s earning a salary, I’ll let that be for now.

Some examples might help illustrate the different tax impacts of different withdrawal strategies.

Let’s consider 4 examples, all of which give you 100k gross salary, before taxes:

The “RRIF and interest only” strategy: All income for the year is generated by either RRIF payments or interest payments from non-registered accounts.
The “non-registered asset sale only” strategy: All income for the year is generated by selling assets in non-registered accounts that create 70 cents of capital gain for every dollar of income thus generated⁴.
The “Dividends only” strategy: All income for the year is in the form of dividends. You’d need a pretty large portfolio to generate 100k of dividend income, just sayin’.
The “Blended Approach” strategy: Income comes from a mix of RRIF payments, non-registered asset sales, and dividends. You could play with the percentages yourself; this is an excellent way to see how different liquidation strategies generate (in some cases) very different tax bills.

The table below uses the basic tax calculator to generate the tax bill of the different payment strategies.

Withdrawal strategy	RRIF + Interest income	Income from asset sales	Actual Capital Gain	Dividends	Total Gross Income	Total Tax Bill (ON)	Avg Tax Rate
RRIF and Interest only	100k	0	0	0	100k	21.4k	21.4%
Non Registered asset sales only	0	100k	70k	0	100k	3.9k	5.6%
Dividends only	0	0		100k	100k	3.3k	3.3%
A blended approach	50k	25k	17.5k	25k	100k	10.6k	11.5%

Fair warning: don’t try to use this table to estimate your own situation. I chose 100k to keep the math easy, but since Canadian tax brackets have different tax rates, the overall gross salary chosen makes a huge difference in the tax bill — enter the numbers yourself!

My retirement planner advised me to target an average tax rate of no more than 15%, and besides the “RRIF and interest only” approach, all of the withdrawal strategies in the table accomplish that. The other takeaway is that on an income of $100k, all of the approaches generate a tax bill in excess of $3k — which happens to be the magic number CRA uses to determine whether or not you have to pay tax in installments.

As a result of doing this exercise, I’ve started a monthly automated contribution to a separate “tax” account⁵ so that I have money at the ready to pay my tax bill next year. All DIY retirees may want to do the same!

You will probably have to close a bunch of ads before ultimately getting to the page that matters. It’s a forgivable tax to for this useful site, IMHO. ↩︎
If you prefer to avoid annual capital gains, dividends and interest payments, then Global X has ETFs that are designed to do just that. I hold HXT (for Canadian Equity) and HXS (for US Equity) in my non-registered accounts for this reason. ↩︎
This is just the per share capital gain divided by the current share price. I use Adjusted Cost Base to keep track of my capital gains. ↩︎
This is a bit higher than the average of my portfolio, which is about 60 cents for long-held assets. You could choose a different number based on your own holdings. You only pay tax on half of your capital gains, and the calculator knows this. ↩︎
I used Wealthsimple for this since it’s stupidly easy to create a new investment account. And they pay a reasonable amount of interest. ↩︎

The Money Engineer

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

Category: RRIF

What’s in my retirement portfolio (Aug 2025)

Portfolio Construction

The view post-payday

Plan for the next month

Overall

What’s in my retirement portfolio (July 2025)

Portfolio Construction

The view as of this morning

Plan for the next month

Overall

What’s in my retirement portfolio (June 2025)

Portfolio Construction

The view as of this morning

Plan for the next month

Overall

What’s in my retirement portfolio (May 2025)

Portfolio Construction

The view as of this morning

Plan for the next month

Overall

Taxes in Retirement