Tag Archives: TFSA

4 easy ways to save more this year

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Robb Engen, Boomer & Echo

By Robb Engen, Boomer & Echo

Special to the Financial Independence Hub

I know it’s tough to save money. It’s even more difficult to up the ante and increase your savings year-after-year. But saving is necessary to meet both our short- and-long-term financial goals. Without any savings, and living paycheque-to-paycheque every month, you’ll either work until you die or else retire in extreme poverty.

So what will it take for you to save more this year? Some people start off small, saving two or three per cent of their salary, and that’s fine – every little bit counts. But many of us short-change our retirement by not finding ways to increase that amount every year. Here are four easy ways to save more in 2015:

  1. Take up a challenge

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And your first financial act of 2015 will be …

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Canadian Tax-Free Savings Account concept word cloud… contributing as much as $5,500 to your TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account) if you’re Canadian.  Launched at this time in 2009 and behaving somewhat like America’s “Roth” IRAs, it’s hard to believe this is already the seventh time you can contribute. By my calculations, that means $36,500 of collective contribution room plus any investment growth. That’s four years at $5,000 and now three years at $5,500: the maximum was boosted by $500 as an inflation adjustment for calendar 2013.

So if you’re one half of a couple, that means $73,000 in joint contribution room, even if you left it in interest-bearing investments paying almost zero. If you’ve been investing mostly in equities (either stocks or equity ETFs), it’s likely your TFSA had reached $40,000 or more by year-end, so it’s quite conceivable that some couples now have close to $100,000 invested in TFSAs between them.

Thursday, Jan. 1 was of course a holiday. While Friday, Jan. 2, 2015 is likely to be a quiet day for most, there’s no reason why you can’t contribute the next $5,500 to your TFSA that day, particularly if you use online banking and/or discount brokerages.

Good place for equity ETFs

What to invest in? In retrospect, those who invested in US investments with unhedged exposure to the US dollar would have done best up till now. Our daughter’s TFSA is more than half invested in US tech stocks and broader ETFs and the exposure to the greenback has boosted her TFSA to several thousand more than our own TFSAs with more exposure to the loonie.

Generally, I think a Couch Potato approach to investing in TFSAs makes the most sense, using broadly based ETFs from firms like Vanguard or iShares. Those closer to retirement may want a healthy exposure to Canadian dividends: foreign dividends will lose a bit of withheld tax in a TFSA and are better held in RRSPs for that reason. But for younger investors it may make sense to hold non-dividend paying US tech stocks in a TFSA for both the extra growth potential and the exposure to a strong US dollar that is showing no signs of weakening.

I still say the TFSA and Roths are the best games in an over-taxed town. While it’s true that many had hoped the 2015 limit would be more than $5,500, remember that unlike RRSPs, you can continue to contribute to TFSAs well past age 70 or 71: in fact, if you live that long you could still be contributing if you’re a hundred or more.

The key is to get the money in there as soon as you can and let it grow. And that means early January each and every year. While I think the benefit is particularly powerful for the young, they should balance the growth potential with debt repayment. There’s not much point in paying close to 20% a year in credit-card interest if you’re only earning 2% interest in a GIC or cash equivalent contained in a TFSA.

 

 

Don’t let Taxman’s crackdown stop you from maxing out your TFSA

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My latest post at MoneySense.ca is headlined “CRA TFSA crackdown no cause for alarm.” Click through for the full piece. While you’re at it check out this post from the Hub recapping Tuesday’s one-hour live web chat with myself and Financial Post columnist Garry Marr, who has been breaking the stories about the CRA’s crackdown on excessively traded humungous TFSAs. The crackdown drew plenty of comments and suggestions.

For one-stop shopping purposes and convenience, I reproduce below the original text for my MoneySense blog on how investors should react to this crackdown.

Only minority targeted in CRA crackdown; keep maxing out your TFSA early in January

By Jonathan Chevreau

Woman frightened by taxesTax Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) have come in for a drubbing lately, based on various media reports of a CRA “crackdown” on frequent traders who have racked up excessive gains.

On social media there seem to be a lot of ordinary investors taken aback by this, even though as I have said on Twitter, 99.99% of the almost 10 million Canadians who have a TFSA hardly need to worry about this obscure attack on a few sophisticated frequent traders of speculative stocks in their accounts.

Anyone who holds index funds, ETFs, blue-chip stocks or fixed income and is holding for the proverbial long term should stick with their plans for using their TFSA, including making a full maximum contribution early in January. Frequent online traders making dozens of trades a day are the target, especially if their trading patterns causes the CRA to view them as running businesses inside their TFSAs: if you or I traded that often we’d be losing a lot in trading commissions, even at the $5 or $10 a pop that most online brokerages charge.

As I have also pointed out, TFSAs are the mirror image of the RRSP, which has been around more than half a century. Even if there is a way to define what an “excessive” gain is, does this mean Ottawa would go back through half a century’s worth of deferred RRSP gains? It seems hardly likely.

TFSA remains best game in a highly taxed town

This is really a tempest in a teapot and I’d hate to think anyone scared off by this would fail to top up their TFSA early in January. As I’ve also said more than once, the TFSA is just about the best game in an otherwise highly taxed town. And as I said in this blog a few weeks ago, the uncovering of an end run that lets the wealthy contort their finances so as to collect for three years the Guaranteed Income Supplement (intended for the elderly poor) suggests that either GIS or TFSA rules or both may get tinkered with sometime in the next few years. So it’s best to fill up TFSAs while you can, just in case Ottawa starts to curtail their use for whatever reason. And that includes maximizing your children’s TFSAs if you’re able.

To be safe, check the CRA’s 8-point audit list

The Canada Revenue Agency has rolled out an 8-point list for a TFSA “audit” but a quick scan of the items should reassure ordinary investors that there’s little cause for alarm. I can see how some knowledgeable do-it-yourself investors who love to research stocks and spend time at their trading terminals might feel a bit uncomfortable but it’s pretty clear the CRA is more worried about those who make many (10 or 15 a day) trades and who quickly liquidate their positions. Also on the list are speculative non-dividend paying stocks, people who use margin or debt to leverage their positions, and those who advertise their willingness to purchase certain securities: again, well outside the realm of the ordinary investor trying to create a little tax-free dividend or interest income.
For most TFSA holders, danger is lack of capital gains not excessive ones

 

The irony about all this attention to a handful of professional speculators gaming the system for spectacular capital gains is that far too many TFSA users are doing the precise opposite. If all you do is go with a default GIC or low interest-bearing investment in your TFSA, then you’re not doing this vehicle justice. Chris Cottier, a Vancouver-based investment adviser with Richardson GMP, says any young investor with large debts – especially high-interest credit-card debt – should forget about TFSAs until they’ve eliminated that debt.

Very few investments can create gains greater than those accruing to those who pay off credit-card debt that approaches 20% per year.
But when are debt-free (except the mortgage), you’ll be better off holding equities in your TFSA than fixed-income investments sporting today’s minuscule interest rates.

MoneySense has long espoused a passive “Couch Potato” approach to investing in broadly diversified portfolios spread over geographies and multiple asset classes. That approach is particularly apt for TFSAs and is clearly the polar opposite of the type of investor the CRA is looking for.

So when January rolls around, do not hesitate to max out your TFSA contribution for the year 2015 and if it’s a quality ETF from a well-established manufacturer, I wouldn’t waste a minute’s thought on the CRA.

Jonathan Chevreau is Chief Findependence Officer for FinancialIndependenceHub.com.

GIS for the wealthy? TFSA is key so maximize it while you still can

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Fred Vettese, Morneau Shepell

My latest MoneySense blog is a followup to an interesting piece by actuary Fred Vettese about the curious phenomenon of wealthy couples being able to contort their finances between ages 67 and 70, by which they can receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement or GIS.

Considering that the GIS is aimed at seniors with no savings and minimal pensions, the idea of putting such a gambit in place offends some, although as the blog points out, most of the readers who contacted Vettese just wanted more details on how they could benefit from the strategy themselves.

Hypothetical now but expect eventual crackdown

I’ll be doing more on this but it seems that the strategy is not so much likely to become widespread as it is an example of the inherent contradictions and unintended consequences that accompany such a proliferation of government programs. This one is based on suspending most sources of income from 67 to 70, except Old Age Security (OAS) and the GIS, plus taking tax-free income from the Tax Free Savings Account or TFSA. TFSA withdrawals are neither taxed nor trigger clawbacks of OAS and GIS. In fact, it’s arguable TFSAs were created expressly to motivate low-income workers to save without being penalized by the taxes and clawbacks that accompany RRSPs and employer-sponsored pensions plans.

Will Ottawa move to crack down on this theoretical loophole? Who knows but the TFSA was the Conservative administration’s creation and if they lose the next election, it’s quite possible the Liberals or NDP would move to tweak either the TFSA rules or the GIS qualifying rules. Best advice? Max out the TFSA while you still can!

Affluent may qualify for GIS: key is large TFSAs

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Good piece in Wednesday’s Financial Post by Morneau Shepell’s Fred Vettese about how even higher-income Canadians may be able to qualify for the Guaranteed Income Supplement to Old Age Security. Normally, those with big RRSPs fret about having OAS benefits clawed back and they don’t even think about the GIS.

But, as writers have been pointing out ever since the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA, the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Roth plans) started up in January 2009, a big benefit of the TFSA is that when you pull money out it’ s not only tax-free but also doesn’t result in clawbacks of either OAS or the GIS. Today, it’s common to see TFSAs with balances of $40,000 and in some cases much more. (See the annual MoneySense Great TFSA contest, where some of the “winners” have hundreds of thousands in them. Similar tales have been told in recent issues of the Financial Post.)

Consider that a dual-income couple could by now easily have between $80,000 and $100,000 in a TFSA, even if conservatively invested. Add another $11,000 between them in January 2015 and we’re talking real money.

Vettese’s article is the best I’ve seen even pointing this out. Put this into your “Decumulation” file!