Tag: qtrade

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Battle of the Free Money Offers

RobHLeave a comment

The gravy train that is run by the new account acquisition department of Canada’s online brokers continues to chug along. Here we take a quick peek at free money offers from BMO Investorline, QTrade and Wealthsimple. I’ve summarized them all here, and simplified. Some of the offers have extra contests and that sort of thing but I’ve ignored them for the purposes of the table below:

BrokerDeadlineCashback Max CashbackHold PeriodPayoutLink
BMO InvestorlineAugust 31, 20261%$10,000Until September 30, 2027Lump sum after holdhere
QTradeAugust 31, 20261%1$2000Until September 30, 2027Lump sum after holdhere
WealthsimpleAugust 31, 20261%$20,000+$160022 yearsMonthly for 24 months after funds landhere

As trading platforms go, I’ve used all three in the past few years. For the DIY buy-and-hold investor, they are all good enough. Unlike QTrade and Wealthsimple, BMO Investorline doesn’t offer free trades, but they have a long list of free-to-trade ETFs that are quite complete, and include all-in-ones like ZEQT and VEQT as well as range of ETFs that mirror various indices and bond markets (BMO has good bond funds, nice selection and inexpensive to own).

In my view, Wealthsimple has the best offer since it has the highest cap. You see payouts sooner, too, at the cost of having to keep your money with Wealthsimple a year longer, however.3

In all cases, you have to make your move this month, because you never know when the gravy train will come to an end!

  1. Sort of. It’s $2000 if you shift $200k. It’s $1000 if you shift $199.99k. ↩︎
  2. It’s 1% for the first $2M, dropping to 0.5% up until $10M ↩︎
  3. If you want to give me some free cash if you decide to take up the offer, my Wealthsimple referral code is www.wealthsimple.com/invite/WOWQT1 ↩︎

Cautionary tale: Decumulating RESPs

RobHLeave a comment

Most of the stuff I encounter online talks about how to invest in RESPs, how to maximize the grant allocated, strategies for investing, etc etc. Those days are long gone for me. I opened a family RESP when child number 1 was born, about 25 years ago now (!). Child #1 started post-secondary education in 2018, and child #2 started in 2020. So I’ve been withdrawing from RESPs for quite a while now. They are both still in school, but child #1 exhausted their funds earlier this year. (I know this because I set up a virtual mutual fund for them so they both got the same number of RESP units).

Anyway, an RESP that is no longer being contributed to has 3 components:

  • The money I contributed while the RESP was in accumulation phase
  • The money the government contributed through CESG grants which are “matching” insofar as they give you a percentage of whatever you’re contributing to a maximum annually, and a maximum lifetime. The maximum lifetime any beneficiary can get in grants is $7200. This is an important number, as you will see shortly.
  • The money that is due to growth (price appreciation, dividends, interest, all that)

When you withdraw from an RESP to give your kids (aka RESP beneficiaries), you can do it in one of two ways:

  • You can ask for an EAP, which takes CESG money plus growth money and is taxed in the hands of the student1
  • You can ask for a PSE, which takes money you contributed, and is not taxed since it was your after-tax money in the first place

Now, when you request an EAP (which, as I mentioned earlier, is a mix of CESG money and growth money), there is a formula the provider uses to calculate how much of that money should be from the CESG bucket.

What I didn’t know until lately is that:

  1. The CESG bucket is tracked per beneficiary, even during withdrawal.
  2. It’s not permitted to withdraw more than $7200 in grant money for a given family member.
  3. The amount of CESG each family member brought into the RESP isn’t relevant; it’s possible for a given family member to take out more CESG than was put in on their behalf, as long as the number is less than $7200

How do I now know all these facts? Well, my latest RESP EAP request for child #2 was rejected because in Questrade’s super-clear language:

The Withdrawal request is rejected for the time as the we are not able to process this request due to the transfer made in by QTRADE has beneficiary having $xxx which is , $yyy in CESG over than what a beneficiary can receive. Please provide a statement of account from CESP this would show all CESG grant received at all institutions. As we do not want to correct this information before any withdrawal is made as this can casue penalties for the clients.

My reaction to this was bewilderment. Along with a stream of invective.

The CESP, in case it’s not obvious2, stands for “Canadian Education Savings Programs” and is the federal program responsible for RESPs. After a few phone calls to Questrade support3 and the folks over at CESP, I think I have a handle on the problem at hand. Somehow, my EAP request would result in child #2 exceeding the lifetime CESG withdrawal limit of $7200. This I found a bit hard to understand because it would imply that child #2 had a far greater amount of EAP money than child #1. Now, while I didn’t track that maniacally, I did try to make EAP withdrawals somewhat even4.

I constructed a theory as to what happened.

When I moved my RESP from QTrade to Questrade in the great move of March 2025, somehow the CESG balances for each child had been communicated incorrectly. I vaguely remember a question on one of the many Questrade forms I filled out asking me what percentage of the RESP was attributable to each family member. The question didn’t make sense to me, so I probably just made it 50/50. I wasn’t really sure what the question was supposed to mean and how it might be used. Perhaps that 50/50 number was being used to track CESG already taken out? If so, it would underestimate the amount of CESG actually taken out by child #1.

Anyway, Questrade is wrong about my most recent withdrawal request, but now I’m stuck trying to convince them of that fact.

“Stuck” because:

  • Although the folks over at CESP are very nice, they won’t release a CESG statement to me because the beneficiaries are both adults. It’s their information, not mine.
  • Getting my busy young adults to prioritize sitting on hold with a government agency is, um, challenging. Neither of them live in the same city as I do.
  • And Questrade of course won’t take my word for it. They not-so-helpfully suggested that the agency could call them directly, to which I laughed out loud.

Anyway, I changed the most recent EAP request into a PSE request but there will be no more EAPs until such time as CESP produces a written CESG statement for both of my adult children and Questrade updates their math.

My advice?

  • Don’t move RESPs between providers 🙂
  • Track the CESG component of EAP payments if you have a family plan. Every EAP withdrawal generates a statement that shows how much CESG is in the mix, but of course there’s no tracking of the overall amount per recipient unless you track it yourself. This is easier said than done because the statement usually goes to the recipient of the funds; trying to get young adults to deal with paperwork is, um, challenging.
  • Get a CESG report from CESP before your kids turn 18

  1. There’s rules of all kinds that I won’t repeat regarding how much you’re allowed to take in the first few weeks of higher education. These don’t apply to me anymore since the kids have been enrolled continuously. ↩︎
  2. Of course it’s not obvious, but clearly Questrade thinks it ought to be. ↩︎
  3. Questrade knows the size of the 3 components of the RESP. ↩︎
  4. I vaguely remember QTrade showing a negative CESG balance for child #1 which made me concerned. Apparently, it’s ok for one family member to “steal” grant money from another as long as they don’t go over $7200… ↩︎

News: Wealthsimple Norbert’s Gambit in Beta

RobHLeave a comment

Norbert’s Gambit is a way to save money on USD/CAD conversions. (Want to learn more? I’ve written about it here). Most brokers take extra margin points on these conversions, hidden in the relatively crappy exchange rate you actually get. Since a lot of my retirement holdings are in USD, and since I am a cheapskate, I’ve used Norbert’s Gambit at three different brokerages (BMO Investorline, QTrade and Questrade1) over the years.

And now, Wealthsimple has joined the fray. It’s not open to the general public quite yet, but I did get a notification that I can now perform the Gambit on this platform. This brings Wealthsimple agonizingly close to being a contender for my retirement savings business. They only lack (puzzlingly) USD support in RRIF accounts. Otherwise, they check the other boxes in my “need to have” list for any broker:

  • $0 trading commissions
  • Support for USD accounts in non-registered, RRIF, and spousal RRIF2
  • Norbert’s Gambit3

Wealthsimple’s implementation of the Gambit seems to mirror that of Questrade insofar as they charge a $9.95 plus tax fee for journaling shares, a necessary step of performing the Gambit. There are a few oddball wrinkles documented on their website, none of them show-stoppers in my view:

  • Not available on the Wealthsimple app
  • You can only journal DLR/DLR.U. Other cross-listed shares aren’t supported4.
  • The journaling fee is always charged in Canadian dollars, and by the language used on the website, it sounds like you are blocked from doing the journaling unless you have the cash in your account at the time of the request5

Normally I’d give the feature a whirl to see if it’s comparable to the Questrade/QTrade experience, but I only hold CAD assets at Wealthsimple at the moment. It’s not really a complicated thing to do, the only way Wealthsimple could make the experience better is to do the journaling faster. I’ve documented the timelines involved with doing the Gambit at Questrade here.

  1. Other brokers also support it, but I just have no personal experience with it. ↩︎
  2. Wealthsimple doesn’t support this per their website ↩︎
  3. People (especially on Reddit) frequently cite Interactive Brokers as the best game in town to do currency conversions. I did at one time have an IB account, and I can confirm that their currency conversion rates across the board are a pittance, and in most cases will be cheaper (and faster) than even Norbert’s Gambit. HOWEVER, if you want to actually get hold of the cash you’re converting, then you can expect VERY long delays before you are allowed to withdraw the funds. ↩︎
  4. Most people use DLR/DLR.U to do the Gambit but it isn’t obligatory. At BMO Investorline, if you didn’t want to place a phone call, you had to use some other share combination (I usually chose a Canadian bank stock like RY). Not sure this is still true. ↩︎
  5. Questrade lets you carry a negative balance, but of course they will charge interest on that. ↩︎

Achievement: Down to two providers

RobHLeave a comment

I am trying to keep my retirement investments as simple as possible, really I am. And this week, I finally reduced the number of providers I use from three to two. Most of my retirement investments (RRIFs, TFSAs, non-registered) are now held with Questrade, excepting one RRIF account I hold with Wealthsimple.

I had intended to be down to two providers back in March 2025, but then I uncovered a wrinkle in how providers deal with RRIFs and I ended up keeping 4 RRIF accounts over at QTrade during 2025. These 4 accounts funded my RRIF minimum payments in 2025.

One RRIF was moved to Wealthsimple in early November 2025 and this was an altogether painless experience, and I’ve been enjoying free money every month from Wealthsimple for my troubles. A good deal.

I waited until late November 2025 (November 26th, to be exact) before starting the transfer exercise from QTrade to Questrade for the remaining three RRIFs. And it took until this week (February 6th, 2026) before the assets finally showed up. That’s 72 days, a little over 10 weeks. Here’s a timeline:

  • November 26th: Submitted paperwork electronically to Questrade
  • On December 2nd, QTrade charged me the $150 transfer out fee on each account (plus tax).
  • On December 8th, I got the following message from Questrade: “Please be advised that RRIF/LIF account transfers are subject to the industry-wide cut-off date, November 28, 2025. f you would like to proceed with your transfer request, we require a document showing that the RRIF/LIF minimum payment was made for the year 2025.”
  • I submitted this proof (which, as I mentioned previously, was more than a little annoying) but nothing happened. After many calls to both Questrade and QTrade, I gathered that transfers at this point in the year were impossible. Of course, QTrade had already charged me the $150 plus tax transfer out fee.
  • In the new year, I resumed hassling Questrade and QTrade support for updates. This was made more complicated by a free money promotion offered by Questrade, which meant their support desk, shaky at the best of times, became completely overwhelmed. I saw a series of cryptic messages in my transfer update that indicated somebody wasn’t responding to a followup. These cryptic messages disappeared from my status update last week, which I either took to mean progress or an attempt to cover up inept practices, I haven’t decided which yet.
  • Anyway, without much fanfare, the assets appeared in my RRIF accounts on Friday, February 6th. My transfer status still shows “in progress”, for what it’s worth.

Anyway, I’m happy this latest transfer is done, but there’s still some tidying up I have to do:

  • I have to make sure I know what Questrade will use for RRIF minimum for the newly moved accounts. That’s another call to support, regrettably. And since I missed a month of payments, I have to figure out how to catch up.
  • I have to make sure Questrade refunds me the transfer out fees. I uploaded the documentation (which, I note, Wealthsimple does not require) to “prove” I was charged $1501.
  • I will check (again) to ensure all these RRIF accounts have a properly documented successor. That’s really important.

This last go-round was especially unsatisfactory since I got no free money out of it, which is really quite galling given how much is being thrown around these days2.

Anyway, it’s nice to have a simpler view of my portfolio; Passiv gives me a unified view across Wealthsimple and Questrade, but since the relationship between Questrade and Passiv has come to an end, I’m not sure what that will entail once my free “elite” subscription ends in March.

  1. Since every broker does this, this is 100% an exercise to prevent refunds to the unwary. . ↩︎
  2. Just search this site for “free money” if you don’t believe me. ↩︎