Weekend Reading: Canadian Financial Summit Edition
This week I want to highlight the upcoming Canadian Financial Summit, taking place October 22–25. This annual online event brings together some of the top personal finance experts in the country – and the speaker lineup this year is incredible.
You’ll hear new insights from David Chilton, Canada’s Wealthy Barber himself, along with Dr. Preet Banerjee, Shannon Lee Simmons, Rob Carrick, and many more.
I’ll also be presenting a session on pensions versus commuted values – a topic that comes up often in my work with public sector employees trying to decide whether to stay in their plan or take the cash value and invest on their own.
If you’re looking to sharpen your financial knowledge, here’s a taste of what you can expect from this year’s summit:
- How to plan your own retirement at any age
- Maximizing your corporate investing accounts
- Saving on taxes by optimizing your RRSP-to-RRIF transition
- Combining a DIY portfolio with an annuity for customized income
- Getting the most from your dividends vs. salary strategy as a small business owner
- How tariffs could impact your investments
- Transitioning from saving to spending in retirement
- Managing risk when you first retire
- Spousal RRSP and income-splitting strategies
- Optimizing your pension plan as you approach retirement
It’s free to attend, and you can register at CanadianFinancialSummit.com.
Now, on to this week’s links…
This Week’s Recap:
No posts from me since my last weekend reading update on why “alts” or alternative investments are growing in popularity for all the wrong reasons.
Last week I attended the Institute of Advanced Financial Planners (IAFP) Symposium in Nanaimo, BC. The event brought together 150 of the top financial planners in the country – the ones who truly look out for their clients’ best interests and want to consistently level up their own knowledge and skills to better serve their clients.
One highlight was the presentation by Tanya Staples on the retirement realities in Canada today – in particular the challenges facing women. She discussed how the motivators and barriers to financial planning differ significantly for men and women, driven by factors such as financial knowledge, risk tolerance, and life circumstances.
Indeed, women are often systematically sidelined in wealth-building, even though their life trajectories demand otherwise. Too often, women play second fiddle in financial decision-making, deferring to male partners in investing, budgeting, or planning. Yet women generally live longer, and frequently are left to manage large sums of money solo in later life. Add to this the hurdles of lower lifetime earnings, stereotypes, bias in financial services, and perceptions that women “don’t understand money” – and you’ve got a mountain to climb.
Promo of the Week:
I opened up my Wealthsimple app on Wednesday and was delighted to see that they now support multi-owner self-directed corporate accounts. That means we can begin the transfer of our corporate investing account from Questrade to Wealthsimple so all of our accounts are finally in one place.
The other good news is that we can also finally take advantage of the current “Summer” match program that is still ongoing until October 15th. We’ve now registered for the 1% matching promotion and can expect to receive about $5,600 in cash back paid over the next 12 months thanks to the ~$560,000 account transfer.
Here’s one more nudge for those of you on the fence.
I’ve already spoken with dozens of readers and clients who have taken advantage of this promotion and are on their way to receiving thousands of dollars in cash back:
- Open a Wealthsimple account (here, use my referral link and get an extra $25: http://wealthsimple.com/invite/FWWPDW), and;
- Once you’ve opened an account, or if you already have an existing account, you’ll want to register for the Summer Match offer: http://wsim.co/Summer-Margin-Match-2025
- Initiate an account transfer from your Wealthsimple platform – it’s easy – within 30 days of registration.
One note: make sure to also open a Wealthsimple chequing account – that’s where the cash back bonus will be deposited.
Someone from Wealthsimple’s transfer support team will reach out via email offering to help. Take advantage of the support if you’ve never transferred accounts between institutions.
Weekend Reading:
It’s official – the annual TFSA contribution limit will remain at $7,000 in 2026. That takes the lifetime limit of to $109,000 for those who were at least 18 as of January 1, 2009. Look for the next $500 hike to the annual limit to be in 2027.
There are online financial influencers who give good advice, and then there’s stuff like this: Alberta ‘finfluencer’ who had no formal education in finance slapped with a $40,000 fine and a two-year ban from offering advice.
If you are investing through one of the big Canadian banks, you will want to watch this video:
Tanya Staples is studying what drives good retirement planning outcomes and her focus on women could make a real difference.
Retirement researcher David Blanchett explains how to use longevity protection and guarantees to create better retirement outcomes.
Defined Benefit pension plans are widely considered the gold standard in retirement income security, however, the many decisions throughout the member’s lifetime can have a significant impact on the amount of pension they ultimately receive.
You might think that access to more data than ever should make us better investors. Well, new data says no:
“The authors of the research suggest that more data leads to more overconfidence, which has long been associated with investor underperformance.”
Finally, check out Rob Carrick’s latest Substack where he shares a dozen thoughts on investing based on 30 years of experience.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Thought heard that Wealthsimple is in trouble!! Any truth to it Rob?
Hi Douglas, they had a security breach that they claimed affected less than 1% of users (https://help.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/40752002620571-An-Important-Security-Update-For-Our-Clients).
A class action lawsuit has been filed this week for those affected.
Hi rob- can you speak more to stablecoin adoption in Canada? Given USD and Tether and Circle and Coinbase… etc.
What are the Canadian banks responding to that level of digital currency such as stablecoins ? (Not the crypto stuff)
Ru, I have no idea. Wasn’t Tether a fraud? Seems like a space to avoid.
Haha ok. Fair. The one that failed was Terra. I get your point.
So the Canadian government website published a report in Sep 2025 about this https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/programs/research/stablecoins.html… and perhaps the demographic it gathered findings from are not those who read your blog.
I’m genuinely curious how risky is a stablecoin if it’s designed to be “stable” vs other crypto assets.
If you google OSFI setting regulation framework for Canadian stablecoin issuance, it must be big enough that regulation is meant to protect someone’s money.
Hi Robb
What are your thoughts on the below situation?
– sold a substantive (70%) portion of our family holdings in VXC, VEQT early September across all registered accounts given the September ‘negative’ trend most markets have experienced for the last 15 years.. until 2025! And we know how Sep’s been for the markets – wild!
– luckily 30% of portfolio is untouched ie within corp account (luckily! to avoid triggering cap gains)
– we put in the 70% liquid cash in a 30 day 3.20% annualized GIC so not all is lost but those funds have now come available.
What are your thoughts on getting back into the market now? DCA or go lump? Our retirement horizon is still 7-10 years away.
FOMO is starting to creep in given as an eg. VXC went up from 70.50 when we sold to touching 74.00 on Friday! Talk about missing out lol.
Thanks
Hi Rick, this is the classic market-timer’s dilemma. You’ve got to be right twice (selling and then buying back in). Both are nearly impossible to predict, so you generally shouldn’t try.
If these are long-term funds, I see no reason why you wouldn’t just invest back into your global equity portfolio immediately.
You are the first person I’ve ever met to make financial planning fun (or make sense!).
The IAFP sounds like a great way to connect and grow – good for you for going!
Can’t wait to see your class at the online summit.
Thanks again for the Wealthsimple promo. We’ve moved all our stuff over and have never looked back.
We have also moved our accounts to Wealthsimple with the exception of a spousal RRIF. That has been a very frustrating/confusing experience. We were told they could not accept a transfer of a spousal RRIF account on the self directed side but they could on the managed side. Then we were told they couldn’t do that either. So no spousal RRIF at Wealthsimple. I don’t really understand why. After being told they could accept my account I sold USD etfs and converted to CADs using Norbert’s Gambit, unavailable at Wealthsimple. Had I known they wouldn’t let me transfer the account I would have left it as is. I’m hoping they approve spousal RRIF account transfers in the future. They do allow Spousal RRSP accounts and allow them to tranfer to Spousal RRIF accounts but they won’t accept a transfer in of existing Spousal RRIF accounts. Just venting. Hopefully you can understand my frustration!
Can you summarize the advantage of wealthsimple over questrade? I just have registered accounts currently (no margin yet) and put in lumps of money once or twice a year (few individual stocks, mostly etfs of individual swaths of the market rather than veqt 1 bucket solution). Thanks!
Hi Mark, they’re pretty similar. I’d say if you use multiple ETFs, including US-listed ETFs, then Questrade is probably the better platform thanks to the ability to use Norbert’s Gambit and to use a service like Passiv to automate your trades and rebalancing.
I’m just holding VEQT in our corporate account (and every account type) so Questrade doesn’t offer any special advantages for me.
Wealthsimple will give me $5,600 to move my $560k corporate account in-kind so it’s kind of a no-brainer to make the move.
I also like the ease of use at the Wealthsimple platform. Automatic dividend reinvestment with a tap of button on the app, set up recurring contributions AND purchases within the app, plus some perks like a higher interest rate on their chequing/savings account hybrid, airline lounge passes, free G&M subscription, free Uber One membership, etc.
Much appreciated! Thanks from SK.
Hopefully your evaluation on commuted choice considers whether the pension is indexed or not. i think there is a stronger case for taking the commuted value when the pension is not indexed to inflation.