Ultimate TFSA RRSP & FHSA Guide 2026 How to Invest & Stocks To Buy

Today folks, Canada wants you to be rich and I'm going to explain to you how through a TFSA, a Tax-Free Savings Account, an RRSP, a Registered Retirement Savings Plan, and an FHSA, a First Homes Savings Account, for whether you're 20 years old or you're knocking on the door of retirement at 60, I'm going to show you the exact stocks I would personally buy between these age gaps, including what I'm even buying in my TFSA and RRSP at the age of 33. I'm going to reveal all of this as my name is Kyle. I'm a Canadian millionaire through Canadian real estate, these tax advantaged accounts. I'm going to pull the veil back and break this down because more of you need to be rich. There's too many people out there in Canada that haven't took advantage of something most people in the world don't even get access to. And there's a lot of propaganda out there, but I'm going to share with you the real propaganda that would truly change your life. So if you are on a path to financial independence, if you one day want to retire early, join me, hit that subscribe button. And let's first and foremost start with the noobs out there. God, go open a brokerage account if you haven't done it. Obviously, many of you are OG. If you're watching this channel, you already have Wealthsimple has some of the highest interest savings accounts today. It's free to open an account. It's free to open a TFSA and RRSP. God, just go do it if you haven't done it for the love of God, guys. Because firstly, let's talk about tax-free income and perpetuity for the rest of your life. And oof, does that not sound incredible? It's like native status for all Canadians in a TFSA. Not even the US has the luxury of accounts like this. This is a tax-sheltered account that allows you to make dividends and capital gains tax-free that you can pull out whenever you want without it affecting your income tax bracket. So how does it work? Basically, when you turn 18 every single year, you're going to be allotted a certain amount that the government chooses in which you can put to invest in this tax-sheltered account. So this account firstly was introduced back in 2009. It is still a very new account. It hasn't been around for all that long. But if you were of the age of 18 or older in 2009, as of today, 2026, you are allowed up to a contribution limit of $109,000 because every year they allow a certain amount and that stacks on top of itself unless you turned 18 in 2026. If you did or in 2025, you'd only really be allowed about $7,000. But let's say you turned 18 in 2020 during the pandemic, you'd have about $37,500 worth of room to contribute. You can look this up to figure out what your contribution limit is or log into the CRA website. They will show you what your contributable limit is. So for my accounts personally, I have two primary investment vehicles. I'm 33 and I've done very successfully at investing in this account because when I was younger, I was a bit more aggressive, invested in tech stocks, and tried to maximize the returns that I could get from what this account offers. So today my TFSA is worth about $253,000. And I'm a very conservative investor that focuses on a very simple path to financial freedom, the path of least resistance to wealth, which is typically passively weighted ETFs. I own VDY in this account. This is a monthly paying Canadian dividend ETF until I die. It's one of my favorites. It's a dividend and a growth ETF. And that's about 50% of my TFSA. And the other half is sitting in VOO, the S&P 500. So if I was 20 years old, firstly, before we talk about the retirement guys out there, but if I was 20, what would I do? Well, you want to maximize your return. You don't want to be all that conservative. You got a lot of time ahead of you to get rich. So you really want to maximize some of the volatility risk that you're able to stomach at that age. And the first thing I would do is 50% of all the money I invest, doesn't matter what account it's going in, 50% of my entire nest egg is going to go in a global market ETF or a broad based S&P 500 ETF. That's what I personally do. I own VOO right now. It makes up about 60% of my accounts, but XEQT is kind of an end all be all solution that gives you the world market exposure. And that is not something to, you know, turn your head away from. I mean, XEQT has offered a return of 14% a year for the last five years on average. If you, let's say you're, you know, you've got the full hundred K that you're allowed to contribute to a TFSA and the government allows 7,000 a year moving forward in 15 years, if that continued at a 14% rate of growth, you would be a millionaire in 15 years. Like that is nothing short of insane. And in fact, most investors could make XEQT an end all be all solution to their investing journey. It comes with a very low expense ratio of 0.2%. Go find one fund manager that's going to charge you 0.2%. They don't exist. I mean, these fees are insane, right? You get 43% US exposure, 25% Canada, Japan, and so on with the rest of the world. This is going to give you exposure to the best companies like Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, you name it. There's no management involved. You know it well, those OGs that follow this channel, but this is what I would make 50% or VOO, or if you're a Canadian, you could use the S&P 500 Canadian ticker VFV. That would be the 50% base. Now, if I was 20, what would I do with the rest of that capital? I would go immediately and put the other half of that into something like the NASDAQ 100 XQQ for Canadians. You could buy a QQQ ETF. There's so many variants of tech oriented ETFs. Why would I do this at 20? Because you want to maximize your volatility risk and get a higher rate of return. Because even if the markets do tank, you're going to feel it a lot harder. But because you're 20, you have decades ahead of you to invest. So you can afford a little bit of downside risk to maximize the upside potential. If you were in retirement, you might not want this risk because obviously, you don't want to see your accounts drop and do dramatic moves. But regardless, over 10 years, the QQQs here, the XQQ, the NASDAQ 100 has returned on average 18.68%. My God, over a decade, guys, if let's just say you had $100,000, you know, you invested in this ETF at 18%, you never put another dollar into it, that $100,000 today would be worth about $523,000. And if you even contributed an extra $500 a month to this ETF in that same 10 year period, starting with 100 grand, you almost have $700,000. It's a very, very beautiful way to fast track tax free growth. So that's what I would do. If I was 20, it's a very simple, refined way. Now, if you were 60, and you're knocking on the door of retirement, you do not want risk, what you need is called wealth preservation. And I would approach it with a very similar mindset, I would immediately take half of all my income. And I would just plop it in a broad based ETF like XCQT, which does pay a dividend yield that you can utilize. But nothing wrong with taking some capital gains off this. But luckily, the distribution yield today is around 2%. Now, because we want to stabilize our income and just be a little bit more reliant on traditional companies that are less volatile, I would focus on four ETFs. For me personally, first 150% of my capital immediately into XCQT, the other 50% of my capital, I would split up between three income dividend oriented ETFs to generate passive income that I can spend in my retirement while also pulling when the markets do as well as they've been doing some capital gains off XCQT. But I would start with the Canadian markets with XEI. You guys know this one while the OGs out there currently yielding about 3.7% is going to give you broad exposure to the Canadian markets highly diversified between energy, financials and utilities, three very recession proof, you know, sectors of the market, you're talking about Suncor Energy, Suncor Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, TC Energy, Enbridge, Royal Bank, very traditional companies that pay monthly, this ETF pays monthly that you're going to be dripping from these kind of stocks. The second one that I would buy would be SCHD, a US dividend oriented ETF. All these ETFs have great long track records. This one pays about three and a half percent. If you take a look at the portfolio, you're getting exposure to very similar sectors, 20% energy, 18% consumer staples, 16% healthcare and 12% industrials. And then finally, so you have Canadian dividend stocks, US dividend stocks. The third one would be international dividend stocks. And my personal pick would be ZDI. ZDI right now yielding about 3.3%. This one is just giving you exposure. If you take a look at the holdings here, two stocks basically from all around the world outside of the West. So things like Rio Tinto, I think you're going to see things like HSBC, Shell PLC, I think Nestle's in here, Toyota Motor Corp is in here. So basically the reason that we're looking at these ETFs is if you look at the price and performance, not only do they offer great yields, but they offer great total returns, right? So ZDI over the last 10 years has been annualizing about 10% a year. If you look at SCHD for US dividends, you can see over the last decade, this one's been annualizing at about 13%, which is quite incredible annualized. If you look at XEI and we take a look at the performance of this guy over the last 10 years, we're talking about about 12% annual returns. So why I picked these ETFs specifically is they give you some cashflow that you can use today. And as the markets perform, there's nothing wrong with pulling some capital gains off of these ETFs, but this would give you exposure to the United States and the rest of the world's markets while kind of upper weighting some of the dividend income. And again, you still get great overall returns. So this is what I would look at if I was gearing toward retirement and where I would be gearing toward if I was younger. So you might be saying to yourself, if I was younger, why wouldn't I just start out within my TFSA by buying something that's higher, dividend oriented, because why don't I just build the dividend snowball and start focusing on that side instead of just tech stocks. And I'm here to tell you when you're younger, you need to focus on total returns, which typically when it comes to total return with growth, there's going to be a lot more volatility risk. So with volatility risk in retirement, you need to rely on the portfolio for bills today. Right. So you can't afford the markets to drop 40 or 50 percent, which if you own tech stocks, you understand the extreme volatility they go through, whereas ETFs like XCI just don't go through the same kind of volatility. They're more traditional companies. They're a lot more boring. And later in life, when you maximize the returns, which will be much, much higher, as we've seen with ETFs like XQQ, you can maximize that 18 percent return, which when you get to the age of retirement, you can sell this down tax free through these tax advantage accounts and then start diversifying it into what I call wealth preservation oriented ETFs and stocks. So on the other spectrum here, let's talk about the RR to the S to the P. This account is very similar to the TFSA. Basically, the government allows you to take 18 percent of your prior years, your prior year earned income, 18 percent of that that you can put in this tax sheltered account. But it's different in the fact that that earned income you made is now tax free at what you pay the tax later down the road. Let me simplify that because it might sound a bit confusing in a TFSA. You go to your job, you make money, you pay tax on that money, you put the The RRSP, you go out there, you make money, the 18 percent that you put in this account, the government waives the taxes on it. I want to show you how powerful this is because thereafter they allow you to invest it tax free in perpetuity until you withdraw it. And then once you withdraw it, that's when you have to pay the tax on it. But basically, you're getting a free loan from the government that's interest free to invest today. So basically, most people will never be able to maximize the use of an RRSP because 18 percent is allowed up to the first thirty two thousand four hundred and ninety dollars. To put that in perspective, let's say even if you made one hundred thousand dollars, you're only going to be allowed 18,000 of that hundred case. You need to be making close to like a couple hundred grand before you're really going to be fully utilizing the tax advantage here. Most Canadians don't make much more than about what, 60,000, 70,000. So if we say 70,000 dollars of that 70,000, you're going to be paying about sixteen thousand five hundred and twenty two dollars in taxes. But if we contribute the 18 percent that's allowed on that 70 grand, that's about twelve thousand six hundred dollars. So if you fully maximize that twelve thousand six hundred bucks, you're going to go down to just below thirteen thousand in taxes. That's an overall tax saving of over three thousand dollars, about thirty five hundred. If you go back to that handy dandy, you know, compound calculator here and let's just say you're able to contribute that extra three thousand. Let's keep it simple, three thousand that you're saving that you're not giving to the government today. That's three thousand for the next 30 years. The government's not going to tax me on tax money I get back. And if I make 10 percent or let's just say we grow this over a 20 year period and we put it in that XQQ or growth oriented ETF guys, that three thousand every single year, if we just repeat the same thing for 20 years could be worth half a million damn dollars. That's what the government is giving you the capability of. So at that point, when you get to the age of retirement, you start withdrawing against it. That's when you start paying the tax at your marginal rate. So if you're making let's say you're at that hundred fifty K level and you're in a higher bracket, you get lucky enough somewhere in your working career. This is where you're in the upper bracket where your marginal rate is forty three percent. So what you really want to do if you want to maximize this account to its fullest is basically contribute to the RSP as much as possible when you're in the highest marginal bracket. Because basically, if in retirement, you only need, say, 70000 to live, that's going to put you back in the lower bracket at which you're even going to pay less tax on what you already were supposed to pay, which is incredible when you start withdrawing it. These accounts combined can completely morph and change your life. And my RSP, it's not much different than my TFSA because I look at these accounts is exactly the same from an investment standpoint. I own a lot of S&P 500 VOO in here. I own VDI as well. If you go into early retirement and you want to start drawing against this earlier, you can even use it with those dividend stocks like SCHD. And the beauty of owning U.S. stocks in this account is the government waives the withholding tax. If you're unaware, anytime you buy a stock in the U.S. that pays a dividend, you have to pay the government 15 percent to bring that dividend over the border. So if you put it in your RSP, the government magically waives this for some reason, unlike the TFSA and all these other accounts. I don't know why they do, but they do. And it's a good place to just save yourself an extra 15 percent on dividends. It's anecdotal, though. I wouldn't let that hold me back from just owning the best possible investments between these accounts, depending on your age and your goals. Now, there's also the FHSA. This is the first home savings account. I never got to use it because I bought my first property right when they introduced this account. But it's very similar to an RSP at which the government will give you a tax refund on any capital you put in here up to forty thousand dollars, starting at eight thousand a year annually to contribute to your first home. And if you never end up buying a home, you can actually roll this back over into your RSP. This is an account that you want to be hyper aware of how you're investing, because if it is for short term use to buy a property, you might not want to take on too much risk of getting full exposure to the markets, because at any point in time, the markets can drop a lot. Like if we go into a full blown geopolitical event like we're currently seeing and it gets escalated to the point where it affects global markets. I mean, we could see a substantial crash, crash of 20 percent or more in the markets at which we don't know how long it takes that to recover. And if you're buying a property within one to three years, you don't want that kind of volatility risk. And because the government is already refunding you tax money on this, you might want to just take the tax refund as part of the or a GIC for the short term so you can pull it out and use it as a down payment in the near term. That's how I would start looking at an FHSA if I was utilizing it to purchase a property. Again, long term investing requires about a 10 to 20 year period. If your time frame is lower than five years for any kind of investment, you want to be careful about how you're allocating that. And obviously, you know, I'm a guy that would rather focus toward equities and dividends and recession proof stocks, because let's be real, if something like XCI or S.E.H.D. dropped 90 percent tomorrow, the last thing you're going to be worried about is your stock portfolio. But if you can't hand handle or stomach drops like we saw in the pandemic, where even the likes of S.E.H.D. went down 30 percent, it would be appropriate to look toward higher interest savings vehicles and maybe put about 20 or 30 percent of your portfolio. Talking to more of the retirees at this point, not the younger investors. If you're younger, you really want hammer home some of the bigger, higher growth sectors that you can handle 30 percent drops because even the pandemic was able to recover over a couple of years. Right. But if you're in retirement, obviously you might not want to deal with that. So look at high interest savings ETFs, again, GICs and make that part of your portfolio within your TFSA or RRSP. Now, this is how I view the accounts. If you want to have a more in-depth conversation that's more personalized to you, go to consider going to Kyle Livingston dot com, support the channel, you know, book a one on one. I don't mind chatting personally about anything that you're trying to achieve in life and subscribe because I will do an updated video on my corporate account, why I buy individual stocks in my corporation and exactly the structure behind investing through a corporation in Canada on that. I look forward to catching you in the next one.