What's in my RRSP?

Starting Out

Like most people my first foray into opening an RRSP to save for retirement came in the form of a mutual fund. Unfortunately, that mutual fund did not seem to perform well and I simply let it ride. That account was active for around 4 years until I closed it in 2021.

DIY

My first step into DIY investing was through a robo-advisor using the TFSA account type. I started out with an 8 out of 10 risk rating. A few months later I learned that during my 20s is the time to go as equity heavy as possible. In robo-advisor terms that meant to up the risk rating to 10 out of 10. Side note most robo-advisor offerings have the ability to go 100% equities if you reach out to support (typically the 10 out of 10 risk tolerance rating still leaves you with some bonds, gold and/or treasuries).

Approximately 6 months after opening the robo TFSA and being un-impressed by the performance of my mutual fund based RRSP I decided to pick a few stocks in a Self Directed TFSA. The tickers I accumulated over the first 3 months were:

• RY
• TD
• ENB
• ZWB
• PPL
• ZWC
• CU

note: I review the registered account types in this post

Pre House

Fast forward into the future, I am in a steady relationship (with my now wife) and the year is 2020, specifically February of 2020. The news is all doom and gloom and both the Canadian and American governments are talking about shutting the country down. People are hogging toilet paper and canned goods. I am just about to be out of probation at my new job and living in a spacious 2 bedroom with a great friend all in for about $1300 a month. Little did I know that in a few short weeks my portfolio would plummet with the stock market crash of February 20, 2020.

At first I was shocked but after the initial hit I thought to myself this is what happens sometimes. This currently has little to no effect as you are investing for the future. Being tax season I submitted mine and a few weeks later received a sizeable amount which I invested in two chunks mid March. Unfortunately the markets continued to drop until April 7th 2020. S&P 500 down about 32% since the February highs at that time. But hey time in the market beats timing the market, right?

Although my nice lump sum had already been deployed and continued to drop I stuck with the plan and dollar cost averaged with every pay cheque. Now comfortable with self directed investing and the stock market starting to recover I decide to open a Self Directed RRSP at the end of April 2020.

The tickers I started with were:

• RY
• TD
• ZWC
• CU
• XIC

Roughly equally weighted I now had 3 individual stocks, 1 covered call ETF (ZWC) and 1 index ETF (XIC). Honestly I could have done much worse, but, there is one glaring hole in my picks. Do you see it?

The issue is that I had little to no exposure to US markets, which, have provided much higher average returns in the past. Another benefit is that there are also zero tax implications in your RRSP (thank you tax treaty signed in September 26, 1980!).

• My first direct exposure to the US markets would come later in September of 2020. The two stocks I would purchase are APPL and NOW.

Little did I know that a mere 6 months later the markets would rally an incredible 63%. I didn’t know it at the time, but, that wasn’t going to be the biggest change in my life during that time.

In August of 2020 my partner and I decided to take the next step in our relationship and I moved into her 650 square foot 1 bedroom apartment. She had already been living there for a few years and due to this our rent, in the city of Toronto, was an astonishingly low $1450 + electricity. We were splitting everything 50:50 so my portion was $750. I didn’t know it at the time but this was the start of the second leg of my financial journey.

• Holdings end of August 2020:
  • RY
  • TD
  • ZWC
  • CU
  • XIC
  • REI-UN
    • new

Socially the world was still in a weird place, some things were locked down and you were supposed to stay within the a defined social circle of 8 people. If you looked at any social media people with careers unaffected by the lock downs are thriving and the hospitality and travel industries are struggling. Luckily I fell into the former category and I have been able to secure a decent sized raise a work. The increased salary paired with the lower living expenses has my savings rate around 70%. At this point I finally felt that I had made it and I was rocketing closer to the first of 5 steps to financial freedom

In the spring of 2021 we made the decision to move out of our apartment into a place that we would buy and thus the great hunt began. Before liquidating under the RRSP home buyers plan I had the following stocks:

• RY
• TD
• ZWC
• CU
• XIC
• REI-UN
• NOW
• APPL
• QYLD
• RYLD
• TXF

I won’t go through all the details but we saw over 60 units. These units were all over the Greater Toronto Area, only condition being “close” to downtown for work. We made five bids were laughed at for two of them and ended up having to increase our final bid by $10,000 even though we were already the highest bid.

Post House

We moved into our new place at the end of May 2021 with a mortgage locked in for 3 years @1.78%. We were ecstatic our savings accounts were not. Both of our savings accounts were nearly wiped out and we had maybe 2 months of emergency fund left. Financially speaking if everything stayed the same we would be fine first topping up the emergency fund and then re-building the investments accounts.

Personally I was excited for the rebuild. My dog of a Mutual fund RRSP had been cleared and closed in favour of self directed. I also decided I was confident enough in my knowledge to close the robo-advisor and take my TFSA to be purely self directed as well. Main reason behind this is I could also simply buy what it bought in the same ratios and save the 0.5% management fee.

Part of the reason I was so excited to be rebuilding was my discovery of the FIRE movement and covered call ETFs. Specifically, I invested heavily in the OGs QYLD, RYLD and XYLD. My holdings at the end of 2021 were:

• XIC
• QYLD
• RYLD
• XYLD
• XAW
• VTI

Today

Present day I have chosen to take a nice streamlined dollar cost averaging approach to my retirement savings. I have removed all covered call etfs out of my RRSP unfortunately a few were at a good sized loss. Yes this was after factoring dividends in. My current holdings are split into straight indices and blue chip dividend payors. The tickers of my 4 Fund RRSP are:

• VDY.TO
• XAW.TO
• SCHD
• VTI

My RRSP through work (with matching) is in a robo-advisor 90% equities 10% gold and fixed income. This is my smallest account by far as I only add enough to take full advantage of the matching program. Something you should absolutely take advantage of!

I can’t see myself changing any of these holdings for the forseeable future and they have done well. I believe in the upcoming months it will be SCHDs turn to rapidly rise.

Fun Stats

Biggest Winner

• VTI, up 25%, all unrealized

Biggest Loser

• RYLD, down 18%, realized

Purchases / Sells / Contribution / Dividend Counts

Note: These counts apply only to my Self Directed Accounts.

• I have made 76 purchases across all of the tickers in my SD RRSP
• 14 Sells have been made
• I have received a dividend or distribution a total of 128 times throughout the lives of my SD RRSP account