RRIF, TFSA, non-Registered…what do you do with each?

January 13, 2026January 12, 2026 RobH1 Comment

My retirement fund is divided amongst a bunch of different accounts: RRIFs, TFSAs, non-registered. And although I present them as a monolith in my monthly updates (latest one here), I don’t treat them the same way and they have rather different things inside them.

I don’t claim to have a fully optimized portfolio; a thoughtful reader was asking me questions about tax implications of my current holdings, and I admittedly haven’t given a ton of thought to that. But I will in a future post 🙂 .

So, in other words, you’re getting my current thinking for what I hold where. It may not be ideal. But at least you see why things are the way they are.

Below you can see how my retirement funds are divided amongst my various investment vehicles. This one is accurate as of January 8, 2026, and is greatly facilitated by tracking my stuff in Google Sheets. There’s a basic template of what I use over here¹.

*Retirement portfolio, divided by account type, January 2026*

So that’s where it’s at. How do I treat the three main segments of the pie?

RRIF

So the RRIF is clearly the largest piece of the retirement pie and will be around for some time, possibly for the rest of my life. At this point in time, I’m only taking RRIF minimum payments which are recalculated every year and are based on my age and the value of my RRIF on December 31 of the previous year.

I am taking RRIF minimum primarily because I want to avoid the hassle of spousal RRSP/RRIF attribution that I talk about here. RRIF minimum is quite a bit less than the expected return of this account given the holdings therein, mostly AOA and XGRO:

I periodically (once a quarter) shift funds from AOA to XGRO using Norbert’s Gambit². How much? Well, at the beginning of the year, I see how much of my RRIF is in USD. I then multiply that by my RRIF age factor³, divide by four, and presto, I have a quarterly amount I should move.

All of my many RRIF accounts⁴ have XGRO, and on the day I make my payday calculations, I have a spreadsheet that calculates how many shares of XGRO I need to sell in each account given the current price of XGRO and the amount of CAD happens to be kicking around in a given account. In very rare circumstances, I might (as well/instead) sell AOA if I had a need for US cash⁵.

The small contribution of ICSH here is because I have a 5% “cash” asset allocation in my portfolio, and I needed someplace to keep this monthly income. RRIF seems as good a place as any, especially since all those monthly dividends are completely tax-free as a result.

In the coming years, the RRIF will take on more and more of my monthly spending needs. Once the attribution time period has lapsed, I’ll probably take more than RRIF minimum from here in an effort to reduce taxes for older me — once I start collecting CPP/OAS as well as RRIF payments, I could find myself in a taxation world of hurt. Making my RRIF smaller will help, but there is no free lunch. You either pay taxes while you’re alive, or your estate will pay them when you’re not.

Non-Registered Accounts

I really have two kinds of non-registered accounts in my retirement calculations, and they have very distinct usages. Let’s see the difference:

The “legacy” non-registered accounts are long-standing accounts that have grown over the years of accumulation. They are held in my name and my spouse’s name and taxed accordingly. These accounts, specifically the one in my name, account for probably 2/3 of my current income. Every time I withdraw from these accounts, I have to account for capital gains, which is fine, since the taxation treatment of capital gains is generous. You’ll also notice that this account is 100% equity. And as previously noted, the dividends thrown off these investments is not particularly noteworthy (not zero, but nothing a dividend-focused investor would get excited about). That’s why you see funds like HXDM and HXS here, to explicitly avoid dividends. This portion of my non-registered funds is targeted to eventually go to zero in the next few years, probably before I start collecting CPP. That’s a tax avoidance strategy, no idea if it will work out in my favour.

The “cash cushion” non-registered holdings are 100% in ultra-short term bond funds, which to my way of thinking, is equivalent to cash. This account exists because I use VPW as a decumulation strategy, and the cash cushion helps smooth out my monthly salary. Sometimes I add to the cash cushion (directly from my other non-registered account) and sometimes I pay myself from the cash cushion. You can read all about how it works at The Mechanics of Getting Paid in Retirement. Here I keep a bit of uninvested cash floating around in an effort to reduce the number of buys/sells I have to do here. The capital gains are quite minimal in these funds since both ICSH and ZMMK stay close to $50/share⁶ but it’s possible to make minor gains/losses⁷ depending on the exchange rate and day of month I make the purchase/sale.

TFSA

The TFSA, per the plan prepared for me by my fee-based advisor, (part of the steps I took to figure out that I had enough to retire) is the last account to decumulate. I continue to contribute to my TFSA monthly, like I have ever since TFSAs were a thing. That would be an “expense” I could cut if needed, I suppose. It tilts heavily towards equities⁸:

Besides XEQT, you currently see XSH, a bond fund⁹. This exists in order to keep my target asset allocations in line, and because I don’t really want the monthly distributions landing in a taxable account. Perhaps that holding would be better in my RRIF? There’s also XIC here, which is a Canadian equity fund, necessary to offset the heavy US equity contribution made by AOA.

Over the holidays I’ve started on a new template that makes heavy use of pivot tables, which I do like quite a bit. ↩︎
You can track my progress over at Tracking Norbert’s Gambit Costs with Questrade ↩︎
Per https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/completing-slips-summaries/t4rsp-t4rif-information-returns/payments/chart-prescribed-factors.html, it’s “1 divided by (90 minus my age)” until I turn 70. ↩︎
Hopefully in a week or two it will be down to five. ↩︎
I do have a USD bank account (via CIBC) and a US credit card (ditto) to avoid FX charges, but my shiny new Rogers Red card also provides sufficient cashback on USD transactions to wipe out the extortionate FX rates charged by credit card companies. ↩︎
Reverts to around $50 on its ex-dividend date, late in the calendar month. Except January, where ICSH doesn’t distribute at all, instead distributing twice in December. ↩︎
Losses are unlikely because I trade frequently enough to fall under superficial loss rules. Best explanation of how this works at https://www.adjustedcostbase.ca/blog/what-is-the-superficial-loss-rule/ ↩︎
Longer timeframe = higher risk acceptable = more equities ↩︎
Here is a bit of problem. XSH is a short term bond fund; by rights, this should be a long term bond fund since the timeline of the investment is longer. Sigh. I picked this one because (a) it had corporate bonds and (b) it had a very low MER. ↩︎

Retirement Portfolio Annual Review

January 1, 2026 RobHLeave a comment

Happy New Year! A new year means it’s a good time to take a look at what went on in the retirement portfolio.

Let’s start by comparing the makeup of my portfolio at the beginning of the year versus my last update:

Position	January 2025	December 2025	Notes
AOA: USD 80/20	52.2%	51.3%	Used for RRIF payments¹
XGRO: CAD 80/20	20.2%	18.6%	Used for RRIF payments
ICSH: USD short term bond	0%	4.4%	Cash cushion, plus additional “cash” inside RRIF²
ZMMK: CAD short term bond	0%	0.6%	Cash cushion CAD funds
SCHF: International Equity	2.8%	1.9%	Used for monthly salary; held only in non-registered
XEQT: CAD 100% Equity	0%	6.5%	Mostly in TFSA
HXT: CAD Equity	7.4%	6.3%	Used for monthly salary; held only in non-registered
XIC: CAD Equity	5.3%	6.1%	Did not add or subtract from this holding this year
DYN6005: USD HISA	3.7%	0%	Replaced by ICSH
DYN6004: CAD HISA	2.6%	0%	Replaced by ZMMK
HXS: USD Equity	2%	0%	Sold off from non-registered accounts to fund monthly expenses
VCN: CAD Equity	1.8%	1.1%	In TFSA; reduced in favour of XEQT

What didn’t change much

The portfolio is still dominated by XGRO and AOA (not coincidentally, these are two of my ETF All-Stars) and they both had excellent years, as shown by this tool:

What also didn’t change is my overall approach: decisions for shifting funds is totally dependent on maintaining my asset allocations that haven’t changed either:

5% in cash or “cash like” holdings
15% in bonds
20% in Canadian Equity
36% in US Equity
24% in International Equity

This approach meant that what I sold off in my non-registered portfolio to fund my day to day expenses changed throughout the year; as the year progressed I sold HXDM, then HXS (reducing this to zero), and then finally HXT, all in the service of keeping my assets in line with my targets.

What did change

As a result of changing brokers (QTrade to Questrade), I lost the ability to cheaply hold HISAs. And so I had to change tactics and hold “HISA-like” ETFs instead. (which, on Questrade, like all ETFs, can be bought and sold at no charge). At the same time, I realized that I could increase my returns by shifting more to the US market. Significantly higher interest rates in the US means that I can get more for my “safe” funds, with the small annoyance that I have to deal with USD. You can see the latest rates on my frequently updated page.

As I sold off “pure” equity funds from my non-registered accounts, I had to make changes to keep my bond percentages aligned with my targets³. This is the reason XEQT (a global 100% equity fund) now makes an appearance in the overall picture. The nice side-effect of adding XEQT is that my portfolio is now 76% held in all-in-one funds, up about 4% from the beginning of the year. All-in-ones do the rebalancing for you, which is a good way to avoid bad behaviours.

Behind the scenes I also tried to better focus each of the account types to make things simpler and clearer:

TFSAs are now 90% equity, with the rest held in bonds. The rationale here is that TFSAs will be the last things I touch to fund retirement, and hence have the longest time horizon. There are still too many individual ETFs here, and my January resolution is to simplify this further.
RRIFs now have only three funds: AOA, XGRO and ICSH.
Investment accounts will remain a bit chaotic as most of my retirement expenses are coming out of these. It also happens to be the place where my “free money” payments end up and so there is a small amount of inbound cash to purchase things with. The 2026 plan is to continue to draw down my non-registered funds since my spouse is still working and would be taxed higher on her capital gains.

What’s ahead in 2026: RRIF

My own calculations⁴ show that my household RRIF-minimum income will be up 19% YoY, a result of good returns in the RRIF (roughly 11% YoY by my calculation) and being a year older. Selling XGRO every month will cover the required payments, and quarterly I will shift a portion of AOA into XGRO, converting the USD to CAD using Norbert’s Gambit.

What’s ahead in 2026: TFSA

January will see an effort to reduce the number of ETFs here. There are multiple CAD equity ETFs which I should consolidate into one, for instance.

We continue to contribute monthly to the TFSAs. The goal is to maximize equity percentage while minimizing the number of funds held. Once the cleanup is done, I expect to purchase XEQT monthly. Questrade introduced automated investing which I’ll likely set up to accomplish this.

What’s ahead in 2026: Non-Registered Accounts

The same strategy as 2025 will continue. Shortfalls in my monthly salary will be covered by selling assets in the non-registered accounts. I ended last year up 2% YoY in my non-registered accounts; I don’t really expect a repeat there. All things being equal, I should be down in my non-registered accounts at this time next year.

Indirectly. I haven’t tried to do a USD withdrawal for a RRIF payment, but in theory it should be possible. Instead I convert my AOA into XGRO a little at a time using Norbert’s Gambit. ↩︎
My VPW cash cushion is about 50% of my cash position in the retirement portfolio. The other 50% of my cash position is inside the RRIF in order to avoid taxation on those monthly distributions. ↩︎
AOA and XGRO are both 20% bonds, not 15%, and so mathematically this has to be offset with 100% equity somewhere in the portfolio. ↩︎
My providers will give me the real numbers sometime in the coming weeks. How much hassle this will be is TBD. ↩︎

RRIF transfers at year-end: Cautionary Tale

December 26, 2025December 22, 2025 RobH4 Comments

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:

That you should not expect a DPSP to move to a RRIF immediately
That transferring out a RRIF requires the sending institution to pay out the RRIF minimum payment for the year in full²
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. ↩︎

What’s in my retirement portfolio (Dec 2025)?

December 23, 2025 RobH5 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:

6 RRIF accounts (2 for me, 3 for my spouse, 1 for me 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. On December 23, this is what it looks like:

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.

Using =googlefinance(“USDCAD”) of course ↩︎
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. ↩︎

The Money Engineer

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

Tag: RRIF

Top Five Money Engineer posts of 2025

5th-ranked post of 2025: ZGRO versus ZGRO.T

4th-ranked post of 2025: Spousal RRIF Attribution Rules

3rd-ranked post of 2025: Norbert’s Gambit with Questrade

2nd-ranked post of 2025: TD versus iShares all-in-ones

Top ranked post of 2025: Mini-Review of Optiml.ca