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
RRSP Deadline and Contribution Limit
Before we start, as quick reminder, the RRSP contribution deadline for 2023 is March 1, 2023. Read on! There are a lot of RRSP questions going around, especially during RRSP season. This is why we have this comprehensive post so you can find everything you need to know about the RRSP in one spot! What is an RRSP and how does it work? What is…
Best GIC Rates in Canada
As you well know, to build wealth, it takes more than savings to compound away to grow your portfolio into something meaningful. That said, keeping cash savings secure or guaranteed in some cases can be very smart. What are GICs? What are the best GICs to consider and why? What are the best GIC rates in Canada in 2023 – and who are those providers? Read…
New Year Financial Checklist Items
Out with the old, in with the new some say. Welcome to 2023! That said, whatever is old can also be new again with our valuable new year financial checklist items – to start your 2023 personal finance journey off right! Budgets are good but monitoring your cashflow is better in any year! While budgets are good we’re not really fans of them here on…
Our Best Posts of 2022
Wow, where does the time go?? 2023 is around the corner, and with that, we figured we’d share some of our favourite posts from 2022 that really resonated with our readers and members, posts that got some media attention, and/or posts that really added value to many visitors to our site based on feedback – detailed case studies (for free!) about potential retirement drawdown orders…
Top Tax Tips for Retirees
We spend a lot of time on our site helping and talking to many retirees, semi-retirees and Canadians preparing for their financial independence dreams. On that note, as the end of another calendar year approaches and with a new year ready to begin soon we thought we’d share a few of our top tax tips for retirees. Read on for the goods! Top Tax Tips…
TFSA vs. RRSP – Why the TFSA wins
A quick search will highlight lots of articles that debate whether it is beneficial to invest inside the Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) or use the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) for retirement. We’ll be blunt for today’s post: while it can “depend” we believe the TFSA wins over the RRSP for a few key reasons that every adult Canadian should know about. Read on why…
Be Mindful of these Personal Finance Biases
We’d like to believe we’re all rational, logical, and well-thought-out human beings. Well, that’s a hard no! For today’s post, since we enjoy reading about and learning more about psychology including personal finance behaviour and biases, we thought we’d list and describe how to be mindful of these personal finance biases. These biases will influence your judgments, beliefs, and decisions when it comes to money…
When Beat the TSX (BTSX) works and when it doesn’t!
In previous posts on our site, we highlighted the investing concepts behind Beat the TSX (BTSX) to juice your retirement income. In today’s post, we’ll highlight the Beat the TSX (BTSX) strategy, when it works, when it doesn’t, and just as importantly chat with a passionate, early-retiree that not only follows this strategy but writes about it extensively as a subject matter expert! Let’s get…
Beat the TSX (BTSX) for Retirement Income
The investing concepts behind Beat the TSX (BTSX) to juice your retirement income are rather simple, but there are some considerations for any investor to ponder before going all-in. In today’s post, we’ll highlight the Beat the TSX (BTSX) strategy, why it works, and some of the potential drawbacks of this approach so you can make an informed decision as part of your investing practices….
ETFs You Should Avoid Buying and Why
At Cashflows & Portfolios, we have stated a few times over that new investors (or even established investors) may want to consider investing in broad market Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to build wealth. That said, not all ETFs are created equal! Today’s post is about some ETFs you should avoid buying and why – because they are not in your investing best interests. To learn…