Tag: questrade

The Mechanics of Getting Paid in Retirement: 2026 Edition

RobH6 Comments

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:

  • current net worth
  • current age
  • current pension amounts2
  • 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?

  1. 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! ↩︎
  2. For me, zero. ↩︎
  3. 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. ↩︎
  4. which, in my case, since I withdraw monthly, is about 5x my salary ↩︎
  5. 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 ↩︎
  6. 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. ↩︎
  7. I had set it up as monthly. I could’ve chosen quarterly or annually. I like monthly. ↩︎
  8. Individual and spousal RRIFs for each of us. ↩︎
  9. 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. ↩︎
  10. 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. ↩︎
  11. 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. ↩︎

News: Questrade Contest offers free money

RobHLeave a comment

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.

  • $175k for your TFSA: (Ts and Cs here)
  • $50k for your RESP: (Ts and Cs here)
  • $40k for your FHSA: (Ts and Cs here)

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…

News: Questrade and QTrade changes afoot

RobH1 Comment

I have financial relationships with 4 different brokers, soon to be reducing to 2, if things go according to plan:

  • My long-term relationship with QTrade will come to an end by the end of the year as I move the last of my RRIF accounts out1
  • Questrade holds the vast majority of my retirement savings; they will inherit most of my remaining QTrade holdings this year2
  • Wealthsimple holds a small percentage of my retirement holdings, normally because I’ve been chasing a particularly attractive promotion (free money, or last year, a free MacBook Air)
  • My mother’s estate is held by BMO Investorline and if all goes according to plan (CRA willing), I’ll be done with them early next year as the estate wraps up.

I mention all this because I sometimes get wind of new developments from these providers in near-real-time, if they chose to share those developments with their existing clients. You benefit by hearing about them at the same time I do.

QTrade joins the realm of commission-free brokers

Starting October 28th, QTrade is eliminating trading fees on ALL stocks and ETFs, bringing them in line with Questrade, Wealthsimple, Desjardins, and National Bank. This, combined with their reasonably generous cash back offer3 that runs until the end of the year, makes them a serious contender for your investing dollars. Read more at https://www.qtrade.ca/en/investor/campaign/cashbackoffer.html.

Questrade to ditch Passiv in favour of home-grown tool

One of the things I like about Questrade is their support for Passiv, which I covered here. The main thing I like about Passiv is the integrated dashboard that can span both mine and my spouse’s accounts, especially since Questrade’s native support of Authorized Traders is absolutely abysmal.

This week I received an email from Questrade with subject line “Your Passiv integration will be changing soon”.

Uh-oh.

Anyway, in what I suppose is an effort to make their product “stickier”, Questrade appears to be working on their own Passiv-like “Portfolio Monitoring and Rebalancing Tools”, which are supposed to launch “in 2026”. As a result, the current annual access to Passiv Elite will end at the end of the current renewal date, or on January 30, 2026, whichever is later.

Passiv Elite4 is the tier of Passiv that can do rebalancing trades on your behalf. It’s not a feature I really cared about since Passiv doesn’t model all-in-one ETFs the way I think about them. You might say Passiv is an alternative way of getting the benefits of all-in-one ETFs without actually holding them.

Passiv Elite is $99/year, (which is a bargain compared to the cost of all-in-ones), so I’d expect Questrade’s own tools to be bundled into some tier of their current Questrade Plus offering.

No action required at this juncture, but I’m very curious as to how Questrade’s intended offer will work…and what it will cost.

  1. As mentioned elsewhere, it was mostly because I decided to chase some free money being offered by Questrade at the time. ↩︎
  2. I would have moved everything back in March, but I hit a snag concerning how RRIFs work. In essence, there’s no support offered for changing RRIF providers mid-year. Once the RRIF calculation has been done for the calendar year, your current broker is obligated to pay out the RRIF minimum. If you decide to move RRIF providers mid-year, the current RRIF provider still has to pay you your RRIF minimum for the entire year before allowing the transfer. Read about it here: https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/03/27/cautionary-tale-changing-brokers-when-you-have-a-rrif/ ↩︎
  3. Up to $2000 available for the taking ↩︎
  4. I think this is what I have, currently. I became a Questrade client just before the launch of Questrade Plus and probably got access to the “full” Passiv experience for the current year (March 2026 to be exact) by virtue of the assets Questrade has under their management from me aka “Questrade Elite”. ↩︎

News: Norbert’s Gambit Tracking Update

RobH2 Comments

If you have no idea what Norbert’s Gambit is, it’s a way to cheaply convert USD/CAD in your online brokerage account. Most brokers support it1.

Because I hold a lot of USD assets in my retirement savings, and since I live and spend most of my money in Canada, I need a way cheaply convert to Canadian funds in my RRIF. So last week, I had to convert some of my AOA holdings into XGRO holdings and so I updated the log I’m keeping. So far, I’ve done the Gambit three times this year, and twice I’ve lucked out on the FX rate changes and actually made money2 on the transaction.

  1. And many people expect Wealthsimple to join this club soon. ↩︎
  2. What I mean: if the funds had converted instantaneously with no fees rather than waiting around for the 3-5 business days for the Gambit to complete, I would have received LESS money than by using the Gambit. Over time, I expect this will even out, but right now I’m about $55 CAD ahead. ↩︎

Online brokerage promos: when does the gravy train end?

RobH5 Comments

Online brokers are busily throwing money around to attract new customers; a quick search reveals many active promotions as I write this from Webull Canada, RBC, TD, QTrade, Wealthsimple….All of it has a bit of “if this seems too good to be true, it probably is” flavour to it.

I asked this same question on Reddit and the consensus seemed to be that this is the new normal in the online brokerage world, just like it’s normal for telcos/cablecos/ISPs to throw around big discounts in order to steal customers from one another.

But yet, I feel a little uneasy how money for nothing has become the norm. For DIY investors like me, it’s hard to see how my providers make any money off of me. I did a bit of research into the best proxy I could think of…Robinhood.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Robinhood is now part of the S&P 500 lineup; this is no fly-by-night company. Their quarterly results are public, and it was quite illuminating. Robinhood’s most recent quarter’s results are shown below.

Robinhood revenue sources: Source Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation

So it looks pretty straightforward; revenue is coming from three sources, and their average revenue per user (ARPU) is a pretty healthy $151 dollars. Let’s look a bit further:

  • Transactions: Options trading and Crypto trading make up the bulk of the revenues here, but roughly 15% of their transaction revenue comes from basic equity trades ($66M in Q2’25).
  • Interest: a large chunk of this is interest made from margin ($114M in Q2’25), but a growing percentage comes from credit card interest charges.
  • “Other”: not elaborated further, but it’s small, so we can ignore it. Perhaps this accounts for the revenue from their 3.5M “Robinhood Gold” subscribers1

The transaction revenue was surprising to me since equity trades are free on Robinhood, yet they are still finding a way to make money. Further reading indicates that the exchanges are sharing some of their bid/ask spread revenue with Robinhood, which seems like a win/win/win: Robinhood makes a tiny bit of revenue on each trade, the exchange gets more volume which allows them to make more spread revenue, and the customer gets free trades2.

Robinhood transaction revenue: Source Robinhood Q2 2025 Earnings Presentation

So, assuming the Wealthsimples and Questrades of the world are following Robinhood’s lead, they are making money off of me every time I place a trade. (Sorry, I don’t trade options, I don’t trade crypto, I don’t trade on margin, and I don’t run a balance on any credit card I use). Since switching to Questrade (and getting free trades) I can tell you that my own behaviour has changed; I have always hated seeing non-productive cash in any of my accounts, and so with free trades, I can freely buy one share of something to clean up the last dribs of cash I may have in any given account. My “getting paid in retirement” strategy also requires a monthly flurry of trades (see the details here).

All this to say I feel less uneasy about the free money being thrown around; Canada’s online brokerage community seems to be following a successful playbook:

  • Get lots of customers, even if you have to pay them to get on board
  • Expand your offers, especially profitable offers, and entice as many of your army of fans to use them (crypto, margin trading, options trading, credit cards, subscription offers)
  • Invest just enough in your platform to not lose too many clients; switching online providers can take a lot of work (I know, I did it: read more here)

So my advice is to absolutely take advantage of the free money out there and enjoy the gravy!

  1. Perhaps serving as the inspiration for Questrade Plus? ↩︎
  2. Not everyone thinks this is a great idea ↩︎