Personal Finance Canada

I hope this is the right place to post this!

I'm leaving Canada permanently next weekend, with a PGWP status which ends next year. I'm all done with tax returns, and I'm about to close my bank account.

My question is if I have to do anything else regarding CRA. Like report something or update? I did a search, but in the gov site mentions Canadian residents only.

TIA

Now that I have to file my T2 electronically I went looking for the most affordable way to do that and found T2Express. Not only was it the cheapest at ~$40 but it actually has had a native Linux version since 2020!

I wish I'd found this sooner because they also have a version for doing personal taxes called "myTaxExpress". The main reason I keep a Windows VM kicking around is to file our personal taxes every year with StudioTax and I'd way rather have something I could just run directly and not have to bother with that.

Their T2 software worked well enough for my purposes but a nil return is pretty straightforward. Anyone used their stuff to do their personal taxes and have an opinion on it? Are there any other options out there for Linux native software for filing a T1?

Author: Omar H. Fares | Assistant Professor, Faculty of Business, University of New Brunswick

Hey, maybe y'all can give some unbiased advice. My wife co-owns a €1.4 million villa in Spain with her grandma. The property has been on the market for 2 years. I'm inclined to believe that the realtors are incompetent and that something is being done wrong. Am I crazy, or is something wrong here?

There's an older lady who's a family friend who currently manages the property and deals with the realtors on my wife's behalf. She's lovely, but not an expert in this, by any means. We are told by her that an appraisal late last year upheld the €1.4 million valuation, but to be fair, neither of us have seen that appraisal.

The property is currently listed by several realtors in the area – namely, Villa Iberia, Inmo Palafrugell, La Clau Brava, Espigul, and Cala Maset. My understanding is whoever manages to sell the house, gets the commission.

The house is in the Platja d'Aro region and is ~350 m2 in size, with 4 bedrooms and a large outdoor pool, a short drive away from the beach.

Is the price way off, or is something else wrong? Surely 2 years is too long for selling this! Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to give some advice.

The past few weeks have been wild for Wall Street. So wild, in fact, that we decided to devote this entire issue of TLDR to unpacking what happened, and where it leaves us. Because there are lots of questions about the latter right now. We’ve got a pre-election issue in the works for next week, then we’ll return to our regular programming. —The Editors

From my reading so far I'm looking at ETFs with WS, and that I should start with the TFSA. Am I on the right track and what do you recommend?

😬 Stocks always go up…right?

THE WEEK IN MARKETS Everything But America The markets were mostly flat last week, but the storyline of 2025 has come into clear focus: the resurgence of EBA — Everything But America. Since January 1, U.S. stocks are down 5%, Canadian stocks are up a smidge, and global stocks outside the U.S. are up 9%. During the tech-driven rally of the past few years, investors were so smitten with U.S. tech companies, and so cool on everyone else, that TINA — “there is no alternative” to U.S. tech — became something of a mantra. Now market analysts are hyping up new global tech super-groups with names like the Terrific Ten that stand to rival the Not-So-Magnificent Seven.

What changed? For one, Trump 2.0 mayhem — his tariff barrage, his plans to gut civil services, his shift away from NATO — alongside cresting fears that U.S. tech stocks have become overvalued. Or, maybe this whole EBA storyline will end up being wrong. We’re only three months into the year, after all, and this is far from the first time global observers have clucked about the end of U.S. dominance.

THE WEEK IN ONE NUMBER $25 If every household spent this much on Canadian, rather than American, goods every week, our economy would grow by 0.7% and support 60,000 new jobs.

I've just heard of someone doing that and it ended badly, but that was because the person over contributed. I wonder if it would be legal/smart for me to do that? I don't make enough to max out my TFSA and don't take risks investing (only invest in global ETFs and bonds).

IN THIS ISSUE 8 min read 🏦 Bank bluster 😮‍💨 E-cig empire 😟 Tariff talk

One bad week is a blip. Two in a row could be just a minor reversal. But three straight is hard to sugarcoat. Last week the TSX and S&P were both down 3%, the NASDAQ dropped 4%, and the formerly high-flying Magnificent 7 sank more than 5%. Trump has backed off on some tariffs (for now, anyway), but investors are clearly spooked. So is it time to join the sell-off party? We can’t answer that for you! But, as we unpack below, you can always find a reason to sell, and it’s worth noting that stocks have slumped this much 30 times since March 2009. In every case the end felt nigh, and in every case you were better off buying the dip.

(see link for full newsletter)

Disclaimer: The newsletters are put out by an investment management company. I'm sharing as the content may be helpful, but note the potential bias. More links:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealthsimple
• Newsletter homepage: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/tldr-newsletter-signup

I always liked these threads on the reddit community, so wonder if we should try them out here

I don’t know if we have critical mass here for weekly threads, but maybe it could help keep this community bubbling up and gaining members.

Disclaimer: The newsletters are put out by an investment management company. I'm sharing as the content may be helpful, but note the potential bias. More links:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealthsimple
• Newsletter homepage: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/tldr-newsletter-signup

Disclaimer: The newsletters are put out by an investment management company. While the content may be helpful in some ways, there is a potential bias:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealthsimple
• Newsletter homepage: https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/learn/tldr-newsletter-signup

I wont ever advise for timing the market, yet the current imminent US-Canada trade war and political storm inspired me to reassess my investing strategy.

Context : Mid 30, kids, mortgage, stable job but no retirement plan with the job.

I favour a diversified mix of low cost index fund but being a nerd i enjoy the Rational Reminder podcast and understanding the smallest details. An evidence based approach to risk and expected returns will guide my choices.

I started with 20 % bond and 80 % stock. The problem with bond : can exhibit volatility if interest rate change especially over longer time horizon, will limit growth if too high %, uncorrelated to stock but sometimes move in the same direction than stocks in recent downturn… I can put some extra payments on my mortgage and consider this a bond for a few years.

I want home country bias : no withholding taxes on dividend and at the opposite i get a tax credit for taxes already paid in Canada. In a conflict i can’t ever be expropriated from my own country stocks and use the Canadian currency for my spending. Let’s make Canada 25%.

Next is the US allocation. It’s two thirds of the investable world by market weight (see the VT etf if you want references) it’s had incredible returns in the last decade with p/e multitude going higher. Currency and country are uncompensated risk (random) and i won’t put myself in a place where 2/3 of my retirement is subject to random results. I choose 35 %.

That leaves 20 % for International developped market. I would like this to be higher than US but i will wait for the actual market weight to tell me that International merits a higher than US %. I leave developing market alone : i want an efficient market with free flow of information snd rules of law properly enforced.

Total 100% (20-25-35-20) close to VGRO.to No single stock, no gold, no crypto. What are your asset allocation plans and most importantly why?

If there is enough engagement here, i will make a future post about asset location, favourite etf to achieve my goal, small cap value and insured US allocation with deep itm options on SPY.

This is my scenario:

TFSA is maxed and has the emergency fund in CBIL. I have roughly equal money in RRSP (maxed) and my non-registered account.

I like to keep my overall portfolio at 50% stock ETFs (primarily VFV) and 50% low duration bond ETFs (primarily CBIL). I understand that this is a sub-optimal allocation, and I'm okay with that. This is thanks to childhood trauma from growing up too broke, and I'll make up for the lower returns by spending less and investing more.

So far, I've kept VFV in my RRSP and CBIL in the non-registered account.

However, I've been wondering if it'd be better to switch the two around: Buy CBIL in the RRSP account and buy VFV in the non-registered account.

PROs:

• CBIL-RRSP will grow less than VFV-RRSP -> lower "income" in retirement -> lower tax consequence.
• VFV-non-reg profits will be taxed at the 50% (maybe higher in the future) inclusion rate.

CONs:

• Can't think of any at the moment. Help?

I'm also considering switching the TFSA to hold stocks instead of bonds, and have the emergency fund in the non-reg account. This makes sense too, right?