How to top up your TFSA is the subject of my first blog of the new year for Motley Fool Canada, which has just been published.

Click on the highlighted text to retrieve the full piece: January is TFSA top-up time — How to contribute the maximum $5,500 even if you don’t have “new” money.

So what’s the “old” money you can use instead? Well, while younger investors probably have most of their money in RRSPs and TFSAs, old-timers who were saving for decades before the 2009 introduction of the Tax-free Savings Account tend to have significant chunks of their net worth in taxable non-registered (aka “Open”) investment accounts. This is particularly the case for those with generous corporate pension plans, which means RRSP room was limited by the so-called “Pension Adjustment” or PA that’s shown on your T-4 slips. (Yes, brace yourself for the annual onslaught!)

Of course, by definition, taxable accounts generate annual tax liability on all the dividends, interest and capital gains you may have enjoyed in the calendar year. In the next few weeks and months you can expect your mailbox to be full of T-3 and T-5 slips that tell you and also the Canada Revenue Agency just how much money you received and will have to pay tax on when you file your taxes late in April for the 2017 calendar year just completed.

Key concept: Transfers-in-Kind

The Motley Fool article goes into the mechanics of “transfers-in-kind,” which means identifying stocks or ETFs (or other securities) in your taxable account that can be transferred into your TFSA. Continue Reading…