Welcome
Cashflows & Portfolios is a free resource providing a beginning-to-end guide for Do-It-Yourself investors. The journey begins with how to budget and generate cash flow; how best to invest that cashflow; onto using the nest egg to fund the next phase of life – retirement).
We (Mark and Joe) are personal finance bloggers with a combined experience of over 25 years in helping Canadians with their finances. Using this experience, we created this site to provide you with actionable steps towards your financial goals. Both of us are in our 40’s, and like many of you, we started from scratch. Using the steps and strategies outlined in this site has allowed us to build significant 7-figure portfolios that are leading the way to financial independence (more about us here).
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DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO RETIRE?
If financial projections and retirement readiness are what you are after, we using some professional financial software (software that we are using for our own plans in fact), and making it available to you in our affordable and value-packed membership options. With this powerful software, we provide a detailed report(s) that answers questions specific to your financial situation and assumptions such as:
- Do I have enough to retire?
- When can I retire?
- Will I run out of money in retirement?
- What is the most I can spend in retirement?
- How much of a financial legacy can I leave behind?
- Should I take CPP at age 65 or 70?
- How do I minimize OAS clawback?
- Which account (and when) should I withdraw from for the highest tax efficiency and estate value?
Featured articles
How Your Side Hustle Can Help You Retire Earlier
As you well know from this site, we love case studies! We enjoy posting case studies since we believe any retirement related drawdown case studies can help people see themselves in such examples. During the pandemic, that caused so many impacts to so many people on various levels, many folks decided to take income matters into their own hands and develop a side-hustle. This provided…
Is Living Off Dividends a Mistake?
Passionate readers of this site and fellow DIY investors in Canada will know both of us here at Cashflows & Portfolios (along with many site subscribers and members as well!), have some form of plan to “live off dividends” during some semi-retirement or retirement years. However, we wanted to explore this question: is living off dividends a mistake? Read on for some thoughts and risks…
Is now the time to change your investing plan?
2022 was a wild investing year. Stocks and bonds both crashed. This year, so far at least, things are on the upswing with stocks year to date but Mr. Market is always a very fickle guy! Last year: Anyone with “diamond hands” (holding some crypto assets) might have had their hands turned to stone – these assets tanked. (Bitcoin lost about 60% of its value!)…
Latest articles
How Your Side Hustle Can Help You Retire Earlier
As you well know from this site, we love case studies! We enjoy posting case studies since we believe any retirement related drawdown case studies can help people see themselves in such examples. During the pandemic, that caused so many impacts to so many people on various levels, many folks decided to take income matters into their own hands and develop a side-hustle. This provided…
Is Living Off Dividends a Mistake?
Passionate readers of this site and fellow DIY investors in Canada will know both of us here at Cashflows & Portfolios (along with many site subscribers and members as well!), have some form of plan to “live off dividends” during some semi-retirement or retirement years. However, we wanted to explore this question: is living off dividends a mistake? Read on for some thoughts and risks…
Is now the time to change your investing plan?
2022 was a wild investing year. Stocks and bonds both crashed. This year, so far at least, things are on the upswing with stocks year to date but Mr. Market is always a very fickle guy! Last year: Anyone with “diamond hands” (holding some crypto assets) might have had their hands turned to stone – these assets tanked. (Bitcoin lost about 60% of its value!)…
Our Top-5 Stocks and Holdings
Over the years of running various sites, and including this new venture here at Cashflows & Portfolios in the last two years, the founders (Mark and Joe) have received many requests to share what our portfolios looks like, why, how we’re investing and what companies we are thinking about buying more of over time as DIY self-directed investors. Well, to help answer some of those…
Can you retire using just your TFSA?
The opportunity for Canadians to save and invest tax-free over decades could be considered one of the greatest wonders of our modern financial world. This begs an important question: If you start early enough – Can you retire using just your TFSA? We believe so and in today’s updated post we’ll show you how! Can you retire using just your TFSA? Why the TFSA is…
Build Long-Term Wealth using our Diversified ETF Model Portfolios
Synopsis: This article will provide example ETF model portfolios with a focus on building an ETF portfolio that is both low cost and very easy to manage. We will explain the benefits of owning diversified ETFs and how vital we believe it is to invest for the long-term letting compounding do its work. Wouldn’t you just love to find the way to invest that delivered…
Should You Invest in a High-Interest ETF?
Some fans of this site own dividend-paying stocks for income and growth. We do too! Other fans of our site own low-cost Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to passively ride market returns. Yes, we do too! But there are many other ways to invest…including the use of a high-interest ETF for some cash buffer against bonds and equities as asset classes. Should you invest in a…
Best ETFs for your RRSP
You’ve saved and contributed to your RRSP for this tax year. Kudos! Now, what do you buy? Well, if you want to invest inside your RRSP using Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), you’ve come to the right place. We believe these are some of the Best ETFs for your RRSP. Best ETFs for your RRSP Why ETFs? Let’s be clear: there are a lot of ways to invest. …
Canadians Expect to Need $1.7 MILLION to Retire – That’s a Problem!
According to a new BMO study and related articles on this subject we read, Canadians polled now expect to need $1.7 million to retire. Is that right? Does that even make sense? We believe that’s a problem for a few reasons. Read on. How much do you need to retire? Answer: “it depends”. Yes, those are the facts. A key part of any retirement planning…
Could You Retire if the Global Financial Crisis Happened Again?
Could you retire if the Global Financial Crisis happened again? The Global Financial Crisis turned a few retirement dreams into investing nightmares. Stocks plunged in value during this period and evaporated the retirement savings of many, that took decades to build. This crisis further exacerbated other looming financial problems: there were plummeting home values, stagnating wages, and the crisis triggered a decade+ era of essentially…