Tag: RRIF

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What’s in my retirement portfolio (October 2026)?

RobHLeave a comment

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

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

  • 5 RRIF accounts
    • 3 for me (Questrade, Wealthsimple)
    • 2 for my spouse (Questrade)
  • 2 TFSA accounts (Questrade)
  • 4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint, all at Questrade)

The view post-payday

I pay myself monthly in retirement, and the charts that follow reflect the view post-payday, which happens around the end of the month. On October 29th after the markets closed, this is what it looked like:

The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, aka the Magnificent Seven ETFs list.

This is pretty much the same chart as last month. I’m sort of expecting that to be the case month-to-month. Every month there are small reductions in my XGRO position1 since that’s what I sell to make my monthly RRIF payments. There are slightly larger reductions in the non-registered part of the portfolio to pay my salary, but their contribution to the overall picture is pretty negligible. HXT is the largest non-registered holding I have now, followed by ZMMK and XIC. Everything else you see on the chart above is either in my RRIF or my TFSA.

My asset allocation targets are unchanged, namely:

  • 5% cash/ultra short term bonds
  • 15% bonds
  • 23% Canadian Equity
  • 37% US Equity
  • 20% International Equity

The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

This chart is an almost-perfect reflection of my asset targets, with all categories within 0.5% of the intended allocation.

Plan for the next month

Nothing looming; no planned changes. My spouse’s RRIF is 0.24% larger than mine, which is a tiny improvement over last month; ideally the values of our RRIFs would be equal so we withdraw the same amount and draw the same RRIF salary. Makes things a bit easier to plan.

I have been looking again at perhaps moving XGRO over to ZGRO.T to take advantage of ZGRO.T’s automated payouts, which would simplify my monthly RRIF routine considerably. Unless I can be reasonably sure ZGRO.T will generate enough income on a monthly basis to fully cover my foreseen monthly payouts, there’s really no compelling reason to do that.

Overall

Part of using VPW as a strategy is the need to calculate your retirement net worth on a monthly basis. My net worth took a small hit this month, but the trend remains positive overall:

My VPW-calculated salary has now increased for 10 straight months; it’s nice getting a monthly raise! I should start to see the salary flatline if the net worth remains flattish (as it has for the past 6 months now).

  1. And 4 times a year, that reduction is VERY small since XGRO pays quarterly dividends which are by default used to purchase more of the same. ↩︎
high angle shot of two people working in the office

Retirement taxes versus paycheque taxes

RobHLeave a comment

I’ve talked about how to think about taxes in retirement before (and I re-read my post, it still holds up) but maybe something that isn’t clear how it differs from when you collected a steady paycheque.

The paycheque withholds tax et al at the source; retirement, maybe not

I think this is well understood. The government likes getting taxes all year round, not just in April. And so part of your paycheque is remitted to the government — taxes, yes, but also CPP/EI contributions and all that stuff that no longer applies when you stop collecting a paycheque.

Withholding tax is an excellent example of the “pay yourself first” principle popularized by The Wealthy Barber. You never see the money, so you sort-of forget it’s yours. Anyway, all things being equal, the withholding amounts should be pretty close to correct, but there are all kinds of things that can throw off the calculation: bonuses, charitable giving, and RRSP contributions are the main ones. I never quite understood people who were happy to get a tax refund. That’s your money you’re getting back, and you’ve given the government an interest free loan.

Anyway, in retirement, this may not be the case:

  • If you pay yourself RRIF minimum (as I do) then there is no tax withheld at source. Of course, you can take MORE than RRIF minimum, in which case you will experience withholding tax, just like the bad old days when you were working.
  • If you pay yourself from non-registered investments (as I do), you’re likely creating taxable income if you’re selling assets that have increased in value. And that taxable income contributes to (surprise, surprise) your tax bill. Now it bears repeating that only half of your capital gains attract the CRA’s attention: the other half, and the money you put in, are all yours to keep, tax-free.
  • And of course T-slip capital gains, interest income and dividend income isn’t taxed at the source either. All of it must be accounted for at tax time.

The implication of all this is that you have to be ready to pay some of your retirement salary back to the CRA. I have a special Wealthsimple savings account1 that I contribute to monthly; I “self-withhold” about 15% of my salary, fully expecting to drain this account come tax time2.

You care less about marginal tax rates, and more about overall tax rates

In case you weren’t aware, not every dollar you make is taxed the same way. Canada has tax brackets; each tax bracket has its own tax rate. Thanks to taxtips.ca, you can get a combined federal/provincial look for how your income is taxed:

This table (and most tables like it) are showing marginal rates. The marginal rate is the tax rate charged on the income that sits above the floor of the tax bracket. Lots of people mix up the idea of marginal rates versus overall tax rates. Let’s take a simple example of someone who is drawing a salary or getting their income from a RRIF: both are taxed as “other income” in the table above:

  • Net income: $50,0003. Tax bill: 19.05%*$50000=$9525. In this example, there is no difference between your marginal rate and your overall rate.
  • Net income: $55,000. Tax bill: $9525 on the first $50,0004, and 23.15%*$5000=$1,157.50 on the remainder. Your total tax bill in this case is therefore $9525+$1157.50=$10,682.50. Your marginal rate is 23.15%, but your overall rate is much lower: $10682.50/$55000=19.4%.

My financial advisor I hired pre-retirement suggested I should target a 15% marginal tax rate, blended between my spouse and I. That’s not easy to do on RRIF payments alone, but then of course you have to consider other income sources like capital gains and dividends.

Non-registered investments can pay a salary; but tax treatment is quite different

So I look for my non-registered investments to generous returns — whether those are capital gains or dividends is unimportant. From a tax perspective, capital gains are especially weird because when you’re paying yourself by selling assets, you are typically earning MORE than “just” the capital gain (i.e. the part that is taxable) part. An example may help.

Let’s say you bought $10000 of XEQT in January 2023. As of today (October 22), it would be worth $200005:

And say you sold it all on October 22m — you’d have $20000 in your bank account. Hooray. CRA would say you made a capital gain of $10000. So if that represented your whole taxable 2026 income, that would attract a tax bill of 9.53%*$10000 =$953.00. Thinking about overall rather than marginal tax rates, you’d therefore have an overall tax rate of $953/$20000 = 4.7%! Pretty sweet.

If instead that $20000 was a RRIF withdrawal, and you had no other taxable income, CRA would present you a tax bill of 19.05%*$20000=$3,810.00, an overall tax rate of 19.05%,

Maybe you’re counting on your non-registered investments generating $20,000 of dividends instead. This generates an overall tax credit in this case6!

Retirees are obsessed with how much tax they pay

Since taxes tend to be your single biggest expense in retirement, I understand why. I try to be smart without going to extreme lengths; as I learned managing my parents’ estate, there’s either going to be a tax bill while you’re alive, or a much larger one when you’re dead. Taxes you avoid in the early years of retirement are either going to come due once you start collecting CPP/OAS7, or when you’re dead. RRIFs8 and non-registered accounts are considered liquidated on the day of death, attracting all the income/capital gains in one calendar year, and hence the highest possible tax bracket.

  1. This account does NOT factor into my net-worth calculations. I’ve already, in effect, written it off. ↩︎
  2. And in my case, this I expect will start to be every quarter as I’ll shift to paying tax in instalments. Oh well. ↩︎
  3. Net income is lower than your salary, since everyone has (at least) the personal deduction. ↩︎
  4. using the calculation above ↩︎
  5. And doubling your money in less than 4 years is an excellent argument for holding equities. (Of course, you’ll all be crowing when the floor eventually falls out, but equities do outperform over time…) ↩︎
  6. If you’re in a lower tax bracket, it’s hard to beat dividends. They start to become less efficient as you climb the brackets, especially if you’re collecting OAS since grossed up amount of dividends are use to test eligibility for OAS. ↩︎
  7. OAS clawback is a particular obsession of the retired. ↩︎
  8. Unless you declare your spouse as a successor annuitant; you’ve already done that, right? ↩︎

expressive surprise in black and white portrait

News: Questrade changes how RRIF payments work

RobHLeave a comment

Questrade is my main provider of online brokerage services. They recently (this month) made a change to how periodic RRIF payments work. They unfortunately made no formal announcement about this, and the only reason I know it to be true is thanks to a helpful answer to my Reddit question from (presumably) an employee.

Questrade allows you to set up automatic withdrawals from your RRIF with (sigh) a form that provides options to withdraw monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually. As I’ve mentioned previously, I choose to use monthly withdrawals1 since that more closely approximates how I got paid when I was working.

Anyway, every month, Questrade sends you an email reminding you to make sure you have enough cash in your RRIF to make the payment. (Of course, they don’t actually tell you what that amount may be; they assume you know, probably after calling support early in the year.)

Prior to this month, they advised that cash needed to be in the account three working days before the withdrawal date (a date they never mentioned; I guess you’re supposed to know that too). Why three working days were required I have no idea2. Perhaps there’s an abacus powered RRIF processing centre in some corner of Questrade HQ?

All this to say if you didn’t happen to have enough cash in your account on the appointed RRIF withdrawal day Questrade used to:

  • Take the amount you were supposed to withdraw, let’s call it X
  • Divide X over the number of periods remaining in the year (e.g. you missed your February monthly payment: there’s 10 months left in the calendar year, so X/10, let’s call that Y).
  • Add Y to your old monthly payment amount going forward. Y is the new monthly amount.

Which, although a bit unexpected, has some logic to it.

Last week, I got another one of these reminder mails from Questrade, except the wording had totally changed. Now the notion of missing a payment was addressed directly:

If cash is unavailable:
We may still process your required payment on the scheduled date. If your cash balance is insufficient, your account will go into a debit cash balance. If you don’t take action to satisfy the debit balance, we may close positions in your account. If we need to close positions for you, we will charge a $45 fee for each trade we make.

— Questrade email from October 2026.

This is, I would venture, a rather significant change, yes? And the weaselly wording “may close positions….if we need” gives me zero information as to what rules are being applied here and when or if they would ever apply to me. The response to my Reddit post “the payment goes to our risk team for approval” means nothing to me. Will I get paid or won’t I? Will I get charged for my misstep or won’t I?

Anyway, I consider this another black mark for Questrade in the ever-evolving RRIF Support Showdown universe. It’s not the policy itself which annoys me; it seems fair enough, assuming “may” means “we will”. It’s the means in which it was communicated (or more accurately, not communicated) that leaves me cold.

With so many brokers throwing money at you to move funds, it’s hard to justify loyalty to ANY online broker, especially one whose loyalty bonus is coming to an end!

  1. I like monthly withdrawals; it allows me to keep a pretty manual process top of mind since I’m doing it every 30-odd days or so. The other benefit of going monthly is there’s not a huge number of shares being liquidated, so if the market is the midst of some temporary meltdown, I’m not risking a large amount of my net worth at any one time. . ↩︎
  2. When you’re comparing a hipster online broker’s SLA to be less attractive than that of one of Canada’s big banks, you know your bar is awfully low. ↩︎
black and white wrenches on asphalt surface

Recent DIY Investing tools I’ve heard about

RobHLeave a comment

Lately, I’ve been exposed to a flood of new1 tools that target the DIY investor. Some I read about in the media (the Globe and Mail’s On Money newsletter is a good read), and some I get wind of through mails I get to comments@moneyengineer.ca (I do read all my mail).

I figured I’d summarize what I’ve seen; appearance here means I know they exist; I don’t use any of them at the moment.

I have taken (relatively) recent closer looks at tools like MyACB/AdjustedCostBase, Portfolio Pilot, Snowball Analytics and Portfolio Tracker should you be looking for a more in-depth review. I may at some point spend more time with some of tools below — let me know if you’ve got a favourite you’ve got in mind at comments@moneyengineer.ca, or tell me about your own experience with any of them!

ActiveACB: An ACB Tracker

Their website: www.activeacb.ca

Their pitch: Canada’s most complete ACB calculator for every investor. ActiveACB reads the trade history your broker already exports, rebuilds the ACB of every security you have held across all of your accounts, and turns the result into the proceeds, adjusted cost base, outlays, and gain or loss that Schedule 3 asks for on each disposition.

My quick take: Everyone who owns assets in a non-registered account should be tracking their ACB themselves, as brokers are notoriously bad at it2. ActiveACB has explicit support for options trading, and for assets held across multiple non-registered accounts, which might be of interest if that reflects your own situation. I can say from firsthand experience that the development team is VERY responsive to feedback.

Gilded: A financial planner/advisor

Their website: https://www.gildedfinancial.com

Their pitch: “Gilded is a future-focused financial planning app for a new generation of wealth builders. Through accurate projections, easy data tracking, and seamless simulations, we empower you to take control of your money and be your own best advisor. You don’t have to guess your financial future. You can know.”

My quick take: Canadian fintech. Projections, what-if scenarios. Includes retirement planning, too. I paid for a personal financial plan when I was getting ready for retirement to give me a sense of ease that I actually had enough to retire. I recommend some sort of oversight for everyone. Gilded isn’t just for retirement, it looks like it can also help people saving for that future, too.

Greenline: A portfolio tracker

Their website: https://usegreenline.com/en-ca

Their pitch: “See everything you own. In one place. You’re probably checking a few different apps just to see what you own. Greenline brings every account into one view.”

My quick take: Currently (October 2026) in free public beta. “Canadian focused, and Canadian built”. Lots of nice looking charts to take a closer look at what’s inside your portfolio. If you want a dashboard view of your overall portfolio across multiple accounts and providers and don’t like using spreadsheets, this is worth a look. I track my portfolio performance using my Google Sheets template. I’m ok with that.

Looniee: A portfolio tracker

Their website: https://looniee.ca

Their pitch: “Track your net worth and your TFSA/RESP/RRSP/FHSA room. If you invest in Canada, your money probably sits in more than one place: a TFSA at one app, an RRSP at the bank, maybe a pension and a home. Each one shows you a piece. None of them show you the whole thing. Looniee puts it on one screen, in Canadian dollars, with the room you have left in each account.”

My quick take: Looniee has some unique features that would be of interest to those who are still in the accumulation phase of their financial journey. For instance, tracking remaining contribution limits for Canada’s various savings vehicles can be challenging, at least based on my reading of the community of savers out there. Unlike some other tools, they work off of your statements, so there’s no need to trust Looniee with brokerage login information. I’ll probably take a closer look at this one.

Manticore: A portfolio tracker

Their website: https://manticorefinance.com

Their pitch: “Your entire financial life, in one place. A premium desktop app that tracks stocks, ETFs and crypto with auto-updating prices, plus your bonds, your net worth, budgets and a full suite of institutional-grade analytics: private by design, encrypted at rest.”

My quick take: It’s Windows software and I have nothing to run it on. It doesn’t support Canadian taxes, but may someday. And, like I said earlier, I’ve already got a portfolio tracker that suits my needs. If you’re Windows user and you want to do deep analysis on your portfolio, then this might be for you.

TextPhi: A finance companion

Their website: https://www.textphi.com

Their pitch: “The future of investing is in your contacts. Research. Watch. Test. In your texts. Whatever you want to understand, track, or test, just text Phi. Research that runs 24/7. Filings, earnings, markets, news, social, and more. Phi keeps digging even when you’re not. Phi remembers everything that matters. Over time, Phi builds a model of you as an investor, not just a record of your portfolio.”

My quick take: Built by UW students3, this product is still in invitation-only beta. Its innovation is relying on text messages to inform you about things you might want to know about your portfolio. You can ask it questions and get answers, all from the comfort of your phone. If you like to buy individual stocks, this might be for you. Given that I’m a boring asset-allocation passive index investor, I don’t trade on news, quarterly earnings or the latest social media post. I just stick to my asset allocation targets.

ValuEdge: an investor terminal

Their website: https://valuedge.app

Their pitch: For long term investors who want clarity, not noise. Know what you own, what it’s worth, & what changed. ValuEdge brings your brokers, valuations, watchlists, dividends, and alerts into one investor terminal — so you can track business value instead of just price.

My quick take: Although ETF tracking is supported, the focus of the tool and the included analytics would be more useful to the stock picker. I don’t buy individual stocks, preferring to buy the market through the use of all-in-one ETFs, primarily.

  1. Well, new to me ↩︎
  2. I use adjustedcostbase.ca myself. ↩︎
  3. Gotta support the alma mater ↩︎
colorful assortment of french macarons in box

What’s in my retirement portfolio (September 2026)?

RobH3 Comments

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

Portfolio Construction

The retirement portfolio is spread across a bunch of accounts:

  • 5 RRIF accounts
    • 3 for me (Questrade, Wealthsimple)
    • 2 for my spouse (Questrade)
  • 2 TFSA accounts (Questrade)
  • 4 non-registered accounts, (1 for me, 1 for my spouse, 2 joint, all at Questrade)

The view post-payday

I pay myself monthly in retirement, and the charts that follow reflect the view post-payday, which happens around the end of the month. On September 30th before the markets opened, this is what it looked like:

The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, aka the Magnificent Seven ETFs list.

As you can see, I’ve now successfully kicked USD out of my retirement portfolio; it’s completed faster than I originally planned thanks to Questrade’s offer of free Norbert’s Gambit to all Questrade users for a few months. The demise of USD-denominated assets does not mean a demise in the holding of US assets, in case you were wondering. The portfolio is still well exposed to the US equity market, since my asset allocation targets have remained unchanged:

  • 5% cash/ultra short term bonds
  • 15% bonds
  • 23% Canadian Equity
  • 37% US Equity
  • 20% International Equity

The asset-class split looks like this; you can read about my asset-allocation approach to investing over here.

This chart is an almost-perfect reflection of my asset targets, with all categories within 0.5% of the intended allocation.

Plan for the next month

Nothing looming, which given the time I’ve had to spend moving USD out of the portfolio, is a welcome change.

The only thing I’m keeping an eye on is the relative size of my RRIF holdings compared to that of my spouse. From a planning and tax perspective, it’s much easier to manage if the size of our RRIF holdings is equal. At present, my spouse’s RRIF is 0.25% larger than mine, so probably that’s close enough. All I can really do to control this (since one cannot add to a RRIF) is to allocate more equity to one over the other, and cross fingers that the equity portion outperforms the bond/cash portion. Historically this has been the case, but one never knows when the timelines are measured in months!

Overall

Part of using VPW as a strategy is the need to calculate your retirement net worth on a monthly basis. My net worth stayed stagnant month over month but it’s still 20% above when I started on my retirement journey.

My VPW-calculated salary has now increased for 9 straight months; it’s nice getting a monthly raise!