Non registered or cash account investing simplified

0:00 I get asked this question all the time. So, I've maxed out my TFSA and our RRSP. Now, what do I do? And honestly, most of my personal portfolio is in a non-registered account. So, let me show you how I'd set it up personally. This is just education, not advice. The classic ETFs to buy and hold long-term. I'm Brian, CPA over 15 years in finance. In a taxable account, you do want your core holdings to be there. So, boring broad market funds, you buy and never sell. Why? Because you only pay capital gains tax when you sell. Yes, you'll get some smaller tax slips for distributions along the way, but the big tax bill that only hits when you decide to sell. So, if you hold for 20 years, you defer for 20 years. There's many great options out there for core holdings. But US exposure in Canadian dollars, the classic would be VF, which is a Vanguard S&P 500.

0:46 you could look at VUN, which is a Vanguard total US market, a little bit broader exposure of small, mid, and large cap companies. XU is Eyesshar's total US lowest cost. If you want more growth tilt, you could look at ZNQ for NASDAQ 100, it's on hedge, trades in Canadian, but you don't want to put all your eggs in the US basket. No one country wins forever. XEF for international developed markets, VE for emerging markets. Balance these with your core US holdings. If you don't want to build it yourself, there's these all-in-one fund tickers like XEQT or ZEQT. I have the list here. It's global diversification in one ticker. Buy it, auto invest, forget it exists. You could look at Canadian dividend ETFs like VDY or XEI. Those work well here for the Canadian dividend tax credit, but that credit works best for low earners. As income climbs, capital gains becomes much more efficient long-term. Focus on growth as your core. There are swap ETFs out there like HXS that pay zero distributions. How? And they are very tax efficient, but they have higher embedded fees around 6%. And they really shine in a corporation. So if you've got a holdco, inquire about that with your accountant. And you know, people say buy VO instead of VFE. It's a little bit cheaper, but you need to be careful because VU trades in US dollars. Your bank charges about 1.5% to convert each way. That wipes out fee savings. So the rule is if you've earn earning Canadian, buy Canadian. If you earn in USD, buy in USD. A little bit more on how capital gains work in the account. So Canada uses an adjusted cost base. So if you buy at 50, then you also buy again at 60, the same amount of shares. The CRA adjusts your cost bases to 55. You can't pick which shares to sell. So if the stock's at 58 and you think you're going to claim a loss on your $60 shares, you can't. The CRA averages your you out to 55. So it's a slight gain. The big takeaway for me is you want to limit trading and defer taxes as long as possible. So you do that by keeping this account a little bit boring. Spicy stuff. A little bit of tilts can go on the shel in the sheltered accounts.

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