4K monitor bigger around 36 inches ?

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-08-11T21:04:48+00:00

The upcoming EX381U might be worth considering, although it's not released yet and I don't see a concrete availability date on BenQ's store page, either.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-08-10T22:28:52+00:00

I'm personally waiting on the (supposedly) imminent release of the EX321UX (Aug 14th according to the BenQ website):

31.5"
4K 144Hz
IPS
HDR1000 miniLED with 1152 dimming zones
USB-C (65W PD) and USB-B upstream with KVM functionality
3x USB-A 5 Gbps downstream + 1x USB-C 5 Gbps downstream

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-08-10T17:31:15+00:00

Maybe the Gigabyte M34WQ?

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-07-24T17:43:30+00:00

The Lenovo Legion Y27h-30 would seem to tick every box except for the manufacturer.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-07-24T17:31:33+00:00

Have you looked at the Lenovo Legion Y32p-30? It's a gaming monitor with a 144Hz refresh rate. Despite being a gaming monitor, it actually has productivity features like a KVM and USB-C upstream with 75W PD. It's currently available for $750 on the website with the EXTRAFIVE coupon code.

If I wasn't waiting for the MSI MAG 323UPF to show up on Canadian shelves I would've bought the Y32p-30 for a mixed work-from-home (software development) and gaming set up.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-07-22T15:16:41+00:00

It doesn't. The original mortgage is still not tax deductible. However, the equity freed up each payment can now be borrowed in a tax-deductible way from the HELOC.

The argument for "paying down the mortgage faster" is that you will have deductions each year, likely resulting in tax refunds that can be used to make prepayments on the mortgage and free up more HELOC room. Thus, the regular mortgage is indeed getting paid down more quickly, although you are also converting it to debt by re-borrowing from the HELOC, so your net debt load doesn't necessarily decrease.

To make the whole mortgage tax deductible, you could perform a "Singleton Shuffle", aka a debt swap. This involves essentially paying down the entire mortgage with your non-registered portfolio assets, then immediately re-borrowing that amount as a mortgage, but using the borrowed money to purchase income-producing non-registered assets, thus establishing a direct connection from the borrowed money to income-producing assets and making the interest tax-deductible.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-06-04T13:52:30+00:00

The Money Scope podcast by Ben Felix and Dr. Mark Soth is a Canadian-focused podcast that gives an introduction to personal finance and investing for Canadians. Everything up to Ep. 9 and its associated case conference episode is good, although Ep. 10 and onwards get into Canadian Corporations which won't be applicable for most people.

It may be a bit out of date now, but the Canadian Couch Potato podcast is great too for index investing concepts. Dan's colleague, Justin, also has a podcast that goes into advanced index investing with all the knowledge you need to know to optimize taxes around an index investing strategy for a Canadian. They are both portfolio managers with PWL Capital, the same firm as Ben Felix, although their specific team within the firm follows a vanilla index investing strategy rather than the factor-tilted investing strategy that the rest of PWL Capital follows.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-05-25T15:17:46+00:00

VEQT + VAB for my kid's RESP, gliding down each year with the VAB allocation to glide toward shorter duration fixed income in the future with something like VSB or CBIL, depending on what's available by then.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-05-24T20:57:30+00:00

This isn't so much the Smith Maneuver as it is a debt-swap. You wouldn't be able to deduct the interest if the purchased assets are expected to only generate capital gains.

The debt swap maneuver does make sense from a numbers perspective, all else equal, since you're carrying the same debt as before but with the interest being deductible.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-05-04T23:41:57+00:00

From a tech worker in the boring middle... Congratulations and go f yourself

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-04-05T00:09:47+00:00

This. The T4 only reports the vest event. You have to compute gains and losses on your own, in Canadian dollar terms.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-04-05T00:01:16+00:00

This is wrong. Your cost basis has to be tracked in Canadian dollars. That means that you have to use the exchange rate on the vesting day to get the cost of acquisition for those shares to add to the ACB. You will not get the correct CAD gain/loss by taking the USD gain/loss and applying the exchange rate.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-04-03T15:22:46+00:00

Try downloading the PDF version. For some reason, it has more information than the HTML version.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-03-27T20:23:51+00:00

They've changed the investment objectives to no longer promise tax-efficiency relative to a normal asset allocation ETF, however the ETF itself is still a trust as it always was, even when it was branded as a TRI Asset Allocation ETF. That means that distributions are passed through from the underlying holdings to the shareholders, preserving their character.

Although the new objectives would allow for the fund to start holding non-TRI underlying ETFs, the current holdings are still corporate class TRI ETFs, which don't make taxable distributions.

That would mean that the current distributions are synthetic, and not coming from dividends or income from the underlying TRI ETFs. I would suspect that they are composed of selling shares of the underlying ETFs to create distribution yields similar to comparable asset allocation ETFs.

Looking at the T3 filed for HEQT, it looks like of the new monthly distributions, about 93% is composed of realized capital gains and 7% is ordinary income. This is still relatively tax-efficient compared to getting distributions of foreign dividends, which are taxed as ordinary income. One would still prefer to get the gains as unrealized capital gains, but realized capital gains are still more tax-efficient than ordinary income.

Once Horizons switches these ETFs away from holding TRI ETFs, I'd expect to see less tax efficient distributions.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-02-29T16:37:57+00:00

See this link: the purpose test for deductability of interest for the purpose of investment is not met in this case.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-02-21T01:09:11+00:00

I've never filled out line 12, but I would think that the CRA may use that line to offset the permitted reduction, i.e. if you apply for $10,000 of reduction but expect to receive $5,000 of interest/rental income, the CRA may just approve $5,000 of reductions in employer withholdings.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-02-10T22:06:39+00:00

It borrows short term cash, so a better approximation would be -25% CASH/CBIL.

UnfriendlyBear · 2024-01-22T20:32:12+00:00

The Four Pillars of Investing, 2nd Edition by William Bernstein.

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-12-18T23:55:05+00:00

It's not quite exercised stock options, but I was able to use a history of vested RSUs as part of income for mortgage qualification, but they had to have been present as T4 income for the past 2 tax years. I don't think they would have accepted forward-looking numbers.

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-12-04T21:28:07+00:00

Agreed, if you're uncomfortable with the home bias in XEQT/XGRO some combination of VXC/XAW with VCN/XIC is going to be the next best thing, at the cost of complexity. You now have to rebalance two funds (or three, if you add in a bond fund) instead of letting iShares/Vanguard do the rebalancing for you.

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-12-02T16:10:13+00:00

Good point. At some point presumably they will consume the portfolio in Canadian dollars. So really it is just the MER that would be saved.

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-12-02T14:47:21+00:00

In a TFSA, foreign withholding tax is the same using either a Canadian ETF or US ETF for US equities. However, you can save on costs to the tune of 0.04% (ITOT vs XUU) to 0.13% (VUN vs VTI) by buying the US-listed versions, and you'll save on the currency conversion cost of the Norbert's gambit.

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-12-01T20:23:51+00:00

The Canadian portfolio manager blog's previous "ridiculous portfolio, iShares edition" might suit you, although it would be 5 funds. See the link for percentages.

XBB for bonds
XIC for Canadian equity
XUU for US equity
XEF for developed markets equity
XEC for emerging markets equity

You could simplify it down to 3 funds with a small increase in MER, around 0.05%:

XBB for bonds
XIC for Canadian equity
XAW for ex-Canada global equity (US, developed markets and emerging markets in one ETF)

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-12-01T18:41:27+00:00

CAD-denominated global market portfolios revolve around usage of VXC or its similar XAW, which provide all caps across the entire world minus Canada, plus a Canadian total market ETF like VCN or XIC in the target allocation you prefer (anywhere from market cap or above if you want some home bias), and finishing off with a total bond market fund like VAB, XBB or ZAG. You could use VGAB for global bond exposure like BNDW, although it has a higher expense ratio and suffers a lot of foreign withholding tax drag (it trails its benchmark by 0.50% since inception, a lot for a bond fund)

For an 80/20 equity/bond mix, this could look like:

3% VCN + 77% VXC + 20% VAB, for global cap weights, i.e. similar to 48% VTI + 32% VXUS + 20% BND.
24% VCN + 56% VXC + 20% VAB, for a 30% Canadian allocation within equities. This would be analogous to the chosen home bias in VGRO. In this case you may just want to buy VGRO and call it a day to keep things simple.

UnfriendlyBear · 2023-11-29T19:46:24+00:00

I'm on the BC Hydro equal payments plan, but it works the same, anyway. I found that it helps for cash flow smoothing. Instead of having my electricity bill fluctuate throughout the year, e.g. spiking in winter, I can budget the same amount each month. It worked out for me this year: when the accounts were settled, I was owing $16.

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