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:
Retirement holdings by ETF, July 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.
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.
Monthly retirement savings, as percentage of Jan 2025 value
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.
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:
Retirement holdings by ETF, June 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 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.
Monthly retirement savings, as percentage of Jan 2025 value
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.
As of this morning, this is what the overall portfolio looks like:
Retirement holdings by ETF, May 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 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.
Monthly retirement savings, as percentage of Jan 2025 value
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.
As of this morning, this is what the overall portfolio looks like:
Overall retirement portfolio by holding, April 2025
The portfolio, as always, is dominated by AOA and XGRO which are 80/20 asset allocation funds in USD and CAD, respectively. The rest are primarily either cash-like holdings in two ETFs: ZMMK in CAD and ICSH in USD) or residual ETFs held in non-registered accounts for which I don’t want to create unnecessary capital gains just for the sake of holding AOA or XGRO.
The biggest month over month change was a small decline in AOA and a small uptick in XEQT, about a 1% shift overall. This was because I shifted some of my USD assets to CAD assets in the RRIF using Norbert’s Gambit2. I chose XEQT over XGRO because the contribution of bonds in the portfolio was slightly over my asset allocation target3. XEQT is essentially XGRO, minus the bond holdings (it’s a 100% equity fund).
There was also a noticeable reduction in the contribution of ICSH to the portfolio; this was largely due to the unfavourable change in the USD/CAD exchange rate over the course of the month, and not due to any change in the holdings there.
Plan for the next month
The asset-class split looks like this
Overall retirement portfolio by market, April 2025
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.
Overall
My retirement savings declined 5.75% over the month (down 7% since January) due to the continuing meltdown in the equity markets. It’s not a pretty picture!
Net worth of retirement savings compared to start of retirement
This has not translated to a the same degree of change in my monthly salary. Why? My retirement payouts are calculated by Variable Percentage Withdrawal (VPW), which I cover here. VPW has a built-in cash cushion, which serves to dampen month to month swings in my net worth, either up or down. As you can see in the chart below, my monthly salary has stayed within a 1% band of the first salary I drew in January.
Month over month salary, as compared to start of retirement
Summary: The mechanical details of getting paid in retirement require careful review of how your provider allows cash movements between accounts, a handle on how much money is coming in via a RRIF, and, for bonus points, an annual decumulation plan to minimize household taxes.
I covered how I get paid in retirement previously, but this was nothing more than a restatement of how VPW (Variable Percentage Withdrawal) works. My reality is not quite as simple as the Idealized Monthly Routine I laid out in that post.
The actual work required looks more like this:
Actual monthly work needed to get paid in retirement
The first 3 steps are the ones I covered in the last post, and there’s nothing new to talk about there. In brief, you calculate your retirement savings, enter that number into the VPW spreadsheet, and out pops the monthly VPW suggestion (“v”), which is then added to the current value of your cash cushion (“c”) to calculate your salary (“s”).
It’s probably worth noting what specific accounts I hold at my provider to make things a bit clearer1
There are 4 total RRIF accounts (two for me, two for my spouse)
There are 2 non-registered accounts that hold retirement investments (one for me, one for my spouse)
There is 1 non-registered joint account that serves the role of VPW’s cash cushion, which is invested in DYN6004 so I can earn a bit of risk-free interest.
So ideally, my RRIF payments would flow into the cash cushion account, and I would pay myself out of the cash cushion account to my everyday joint chequing account. That is unfortunately NOT how it works.
Let’s pick up the process starting at step 4.
Do the RRIF minimum payments cover the calculated salary?
When I opened my RRIF accounts (and yes, there’s more than one2), one of the questions asked was “what bank account should the payments go to?” Asking for RRIF payments to go to a non-registered account was not presented as an option, and it’s not possible. So already the simple RRIF to cash cushion transaction outlined in the ideal scenario wasn’t possible.
The other questions asked by my provider was: how much do you want to be paid? (RRIF minimum, some percentage/amount higher than that, gross/net?)
(If you’re new to the RRIF world, or if you think that RRIFs are just for 71-year-olds, you may want to check out my previous post on debunking this and other myths.)
The amount each of my RRIFs3 pays me monthly is a well-known fact since I opted to collect RRIF minimum from each RRIF — and RRIF minimum is based on my RRIF value and age as of January 1, 2025. It will stay constant throughout 2025. So while simple, the amounts involved aren’t enough to pay my suggested salary. I’m free to ignore the suggested salary and simply (try to) live off my RRIF minimums, but that would be counter to my “you can’t take it with you” ethos. And so, I have to augment my RRIF minimum salary with money from elsewhere.
If your RRIF minimum payments are higher than the salary, then I suppose it makes sense to re-invest those payments somewhere. Or give the money away. Up to you 🙂
Sell required assets in non-registered account and move $ manually
The title is clear enough — sell something in the non-registered portfolio and use it to make up the salary shortfall. But whose holdings4? Which ones?
To help me decide, at the beginning of the year, I played around with tax scenarios using the calculators referenced in Tools I Use to concoct a high level plan on how to best minimize my household’s collective tax bill. (This was a tip my financial advisor gave me; her advice was to try to pay no more than an average tax rate of 15%5).
Capital gains caused by the sale of non-registered assets7
Since the first three items above were already known, there was no decision to make; the tax owing on those was already clear8. The capital gains were the only variable — how much should I take versus my spouse? There was a bit of estimation involved in the actual amounts here (the actual gains would depend on the actual sale price), but it gave me a high level plan for 20259. Any additional income needed would be paid by capital gains realized from MY holdings since my income was forecast to be lower than that of my spouse10.
With the pre-work done, it boils down to making the required sell trade, waiting two days for the cash to settle, and then clicking the right buttons to get the cash out of my investment account and into my chequing account. Should be simple, but if you’ve never done it before, you need to make sure it’s all working as you expect.
Sell required assets in RRIF
Yes, you have to make sure that there’s cash available in your RRIF accounts (and remember, I have 4) BEFORE the monthly payment goes out. My provider would only be too happy to do this on my behalf, charging me their “telephone trading rates” for the trade — something like $30 plus $0.06 a share for XGRO. Compared with “free” if I do the work myself, that’s a pretty decent hourly rate…Do not forget that it takes two days for a trade to settle into cash. Since my provider does not pay interest on cash holdings, I’m highly motivated to keep any cash balance to a strict minimum. I hate not earning money on my money.
Adjust cash cushion up or down by comparing VPW suggestion to calculated salary
In my previous post I talked about moving “v” to the cash cushion and then simply taking 1/6th of it as salary. And that is exactly what I do. But practically, it’s impossible to do this maneuver in exactly the way I describe with my current provider (QTrade). Here are the specific reasons I can’t do what VPW asks me to do:
QTrade RRIF payments must be made to an external bank account. So right away, part of my salary cannot flow through an intermediary cash cushion account.
QTrade does not allow cash transfers between non-registered accounts on their online platform. This means that the asset sales in my non-registered account cannot be moved directly to the cash cushion accounts either11.
I have worked around the limitations imposed by my provider by either
moving money from my chequing account to my cash cushion if the VPW suggestion is higher than my salary (market is moving up)
moving money from the cash cushion to my chequing account if my salary is higher than the VPW suggestion (market is moving down)
I have set up smart-ish spreadsheets to break down all the various movements of money which I will share at some point once I figure out how to make them a bit more generic. I’ve also documented a step-by-step guide for my spouse which she uses as we sit together walking through the monthly tasks12 so that I have confidence she could execute on them if I became incapacitated. There is no substitute for handing over the controls to see where the gaps in knowledge — and documentation — are.
The future
Having witnessed what happens to savvy adults as they get older, I know deep down that this DIY strategy isn’t sustainable forever. There are too many moving parts, and too many opportunities to make mistakes.
At present, I don’t have a future plan mapped out. I have updated my “death binder“, but beyond this, nothing more. I will dedicate more research (and future posts) on that topic.
The Money Engineer 