Tag: wealthsimple

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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. ↩︎
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!

a man with bruised knuckles having a headache

The ongoing struggle to simplify getting paid in retirement

RobHLeave a comment

Last week, I sat with my spouse and let her take the wheel in performing the steps to getting paid in retirement1. And although I’ve built an impressive2 set of tools and spreadsheets in an effort to make the steps easy to follow, it’s clear the process involves too many logins, too many screens, and too many manual steps to make this a true DIY project for my spouse. I’ll list a few of the issues I’m facing here.

RRIF withdrawals are automatic. Cash availability is not.

Problem: Both Questrade and Wealthsimple allow the recurring withdrawal of RRIF payments on a monthly basis. Both assume that I have taken steps to ensure that cash is available to enable that withdrawal.

I initially thought that Questrade’s Flow feature was going to solve this problem for me. And, in theory, it could. There are practical limitations with Flow right now that prevent me from using this in its current state, but at least the product team is listening to feedback.

One other possibility came to the forefront of my crowded mind courtesy of a recent post by one of my favourite bloggers, The Loonie Doctor. BMO’s Target Cash Flow ETFs were discussed last year in ZGRO versus ZGRO.T, and I did mention that ZGRO.t would actually be a pretty good idea in a RRIF. ZGRO.t provides monthly payouts (currently targeting a 6% yield) and it pays them out on the 2nd working day of every month:

From https://bmogam.com/ca-en/products/exchange-traded-fund/bmo-growth-etf-target-cash-flow-units-zgro-t

In order to take advantage of this, I’d have to

  • confirm that the monthly payout from ZGRO.t would cover my RRIF minimum payments in each RRIF account
  • convert my XGRO into ZGRO
  • turn off DRIP for ZGRO in my RRIF account
  • monitor cash in RRIF accounts to deal with excess cash

I did a quick check; unfortunately this wouldn’t work in all my RRIF accounts. The current payout of $0.058/unit wouldn’t be enough to cover RRIF minimums in every RRIF account I have. So unfortunately, this isn’t an option either.

Anthropic’s Claude is another possible pathway but it’s limited to Questrade. Most of my monthly payments use Questrade, but there is that one Wealthsimple RRIF account I still have. I could bring that account to Questrade, but I like keeping an eye on a few brokers to make sure I’m getting a good user experience.

But a bigger problem is the non-registered account portion of my monthly salary

My RRIF is only paying about 35% of my monthly salary. The rest comes from two non-registered accounts held by me and my spouse. These accounts will hang around for at least a few more years; the current decumulation is shown in the chart below:

It’s clear my non-registered accounts will be hanging around for a while yet.

What I choose to sell every month in my non-registered accounts depends on:

  • How far my asset allocations have drifted from their targets: most of my holdings in the non-registered account are a single asset class (Canadian equity, US Equity, International equity) so if any of those asset classes get too large, that’s a factor to consider
  • What my forecast is for my net income versus that of my spouse: this is the more important consideration since it impacts my tax bill. The idea is to keep our net incomes as close as possible. Capital gains are realized every time a sale in made in the non-registered account, but if I’m careful, I can split those capital gains such that our net income becomes pretty close by the end of the year3. Right now, I’m playing catchup — my spouse’s net income is currently forecast to be below mine, so I need to generate capital gains from her investments for the remainder of the year.

And then, there’s the broker UIs

Questrade is terrible when it comes to trying to use one login to do trades. Accounts for which you have trading authority are only visible for trading if you use the Questrade Edge interface, which is a lot less welcoming than the default web interface.

And then there are the infuriating limitations placed on trading authority. This is only a problem when we have to use my spouse’s non-registered accounts to pay our monthly salary.

  • You can’t move money between accounts unless you are the primary owner. For joint accounts on Questrade, that effectively means one spouse (the secondary owner) can’t get money out of a jointly held account. And since my monthly routine generally makes changes to our jointly held cash-cushion, I have to be the one to make those changes, or I have to do weird things like moving money out of Questrade to a bank account, and then moving money back in. It’s so silly.
  • Trading authority does not extend to withdrawing money. So if we need to sell my spouse’s non-registered investments, I can. make the sale, but then my spouse has to login with her own credentials to actually withdraw the money.

Wealthsimple has recently added trading authority support, but I haven’t tested what can and can’t be done from this feature.

I don’t have answers to my issues at this moment in time. I will have to continue experimenting; I will spend some time revisiting passiv.com to see if that makes things better.

  1. The monthly steps are described in detail over at The Mechanics of Getting Paid in Retirement: 2026 Edition ↩︎
  2. To me, at least ↩︎
  3. I use https://moneyengineer.ca/tools-i-use/#:~:text=Canadian%20Tax%20Calculators to help me figure this out ↩︎

vibrant crayola crayons in box on white surface

What’s in my retirement portfolio (August 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 month1. On August 27th before the markets opened, this is what it looked like:

The portfolio is dominated by my ETF all-stars, (and if not an all-star, they are probably on the Magnificent Seven ETFs list).

More progress has been made on my plan to kick USD out of my retirement portfolio; it’s proceeding faster than I originally planned thanks to Questrade’s offer of free Norbert’s Gambit to all Questrade users for a few months. I’m expecting that it’ll all be gone by the end of September.

AOA is largely being replaced by XGRO, but because AOA is so heavily US Equity weighted, I always have to pick up VFV to make up the difference — I’m kicking USD out of my portfolio, not the US market. ZST is my pick for the RRIF to replace ICSH. It’s a similar idea to ICSH, but since Canadian interest rates are lower, I expect I’m sacrificing a bit of return there. I hope this will work itself out in the long run.

And I’m trying to respect my asset allocations at the same time, which remain 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. Every time I get rid of some AOA or ICSH, it gives me an opportunity to make sure I respect the splits. Here’s what it looks like:

Plan for the next month

With the asset class splits under control, next month will see the last vestiges of USD gone from the portfolio. And I expect I’ll do a bit of shifting to bump up the Interational Equity portion of the portfolio, which is a little light. And I plan to celebrate a bit, because the removal of USD from my retirement portfolio should reduce complexity significantly.

Overall

Part of using VPW2 as a strategy is the need to calculate your retirement net worth on a monthly basis. Net worth clawed its way back to June’s levels, but no complaints — it’s still 20% above where it was when I started on my retirement journey 20 months ago.

My VPW-calculated salary has now increased for 8 straight months, it’s nice getting a monthly raise!

  1. The exact day is variable because of the timing of the end of the month. Payday has to fall on a trading day. ↩︎
  2. Variable Percentage Withdrawal, a structured way to decumulate your portfolio. ↩︎