2019 Investment Portfolio Update

One of the main reasons for my blog and investment update hiatus over the last few months, was that I was in the process of both selling my condo, and purchasing a townhouse with my partner. This purchase had a major impact on my investments, as I sold a large amount of my investments to contribute to my new down payment. Today I do a recap of my investments, savings and equity, to see where I’m at after the (most likely) biggest purchase of my life.

Overview

Here is an overall look at my net worth, broken up into 3 main categories:

My investments mainly consist of different version of index funds, my savings consist of my emergency funds, and the “others” consist of things like my home equity and “fun” (AKA risky) investments.

Index Investments

TFSA TD e-Series

A major change in my TFSA TD e-Series portfolio is that I sold off some of my assets to contribute to the down payment of my new townhouse. Now that the townhouse purchase is complete, it’s time to start rebuilding my TFSA TD e-Series index portfolio.  Here is what remains of my assets, with the market value (what they’re currently worth) and their book value (what I paid for them)*.

*I used the book value provided by TD WebBroker, but it should be noted that TD WebBroker includes dividend re-purchases in the book value (where I see them as profit, not cash contributions).

I continue to target the following allocations for my TD e-Series portfolio:

• Canadian Index Fund – 23%
• US Index Fund – 23%
• International Index Fund – 23%
• Canadian Bond Index Fund – 31%

RRSP TD e-Series

Since my last investment update, I have not made any contributions or withdrawals from my RRSP account. I’ll continue to focus contributions in my TFSA accounts, but look to add to my RRSP throughout the year as part of the Home Buyers Plan repayment.

As I don’t plan to touch the funds in this RRSP until many many years down the line, I have taken a fairly risky approach, with the following target allocations:

• Canadian Index Fund – 33%
• US Index Fund – 33%
• International Index Fund – 33%
• Canadian Bond Index Fund – 0%

TFSA Questrade ETFs

I’ve recently entered the world of Questrade and the index ETF’s that they offer. The main reason for this is to get experience with their platform, and see how the ETF portfolio performs compared to the TD e-Series Index portfolio.

I’m looking at the following allocation targets for this ETF portfolio:

• Canadian ETF (VCN) – 25%
• US/International ETF (XAW) – 50%
• Canadian Bond ETF (ZAG) – 25%

Other Index Funds

I’ve also dipped my toes into other index portfolios and robo advisors portfolios, as you can see below:

Again, I’m not looking to focus my contributions in these areas, but have invested so I can become familiar with their platforms, and compare their performances with my other index portfolios. I currently add $50 a month to my WealthSimple Growth portfolio.

Savings

As with every smart, I have an amount set aside for any immediate or emergency needs. There is no reason not to maximize your interest on this amount though, and I transfer my savings between a Tangerine savings account and my EQ Bank High Interest Savings account, depending on who has the better rate.

At the moment, you can see that all of my short-term savings is in my Tangerine High Interest Savings Account, as they are currently offering me a promotional rate of 2.70% interest, which beats the 2.30% interest that EQ Bank consistently offers.

Once my promotional rate runs out, I will switch my funds back to EQ Bank.

Other

Crypto

For my “fun” investing, I bought a variety of crypto currencies over a year ago. They currently make up a small portion of my net worth.

I’ve said it before, but it should be repeated, this is a fun investment, as well as an incredibly risky investment. It makes up a very small portion of my overall investment strategy, and should this asset go to $0 (which it very well could), it will have a very small effect on my overall investment portfolio. If you are going to go into any risky hobby investing, you should only put in what you are willing to lose.

Ownership

The biggest change from my previous investing updates is the selling of my condo and purchase of a townhouse with my partner!  I’m counting the value of our home equity as the purchase price minus the amount left on our mortgage. To avoid having to pay the CMHC insurance fees, we put 20% down, so our down payment is our current equity.

I’ve also included my car as an asset (even though it’s a depreciating asset). I’ve calculated the value as the Canadian Black Book resale estimate minus the amount I continue to owe (interest free) on the vehicle.

Retirement

As part of my employment at a university, my employer and I both add monthly to a union pension plan. I get yearly updates for the value of my pension plan, and you can see the latest update in value below:

Having a pension plan allows me to be a little riskier with the rest of my investments, as it is a bit of a guaranteed fall-back (although that’s not to say that it won’t lose value in a stock market crash as well).

Round-up

From here, I’ll continue with bi-monthly updates to track how I rebuild my investment portfolio after a major purchase, and to monitor how each of the different investment funds performs. Until next time, thanks for reading!