Welcome to my Helpful Sites page.
My Tools and Services!
Simple Excel Dividend-Income-Tracking-Tool-version-2020-09-28
Or you can try:
Updated-Excel-Dividend-Income-Tracking-Tool-and-Graph version 2023-01-05
Need help with any retirement income drawdown order or projection for your retirement? Contact me here!
Canadian Dividend Stock Tools:
Look no further this site (tsx.exdividend.ca) to sort and filter dividend stocks in our Canadian market.
Financial Independence and Retirement Calculators:
1. Check out networthify.com. When to use it?
In a snapshot you can see when you can retire based on any current estimated values like annual savings and annual expenses.
2. Use our Government of Canada – Retirement Income Calculator
Why use it?
Our federal government has designed a very good (free) calculator that walks you through your assets and helps you see how each level of the retirement income system (your personal assets, vested workplace pensions, government benefits) will contribute to your future financial security.
When to use it?
- Helps estimate CPP and OAS benefits but note that the CPP estimator will assume that you work until 65, your benefits may be less if you retire before then.
- Provides a graphical representation of potential income during retirement.
Why it doesn’t work so well?
- Does not account for a spouse or partner.
- Does not account for provincial taxes.
- Does not show how much to withdraw from each account in tax optimized manner.
3. Check out Morneau Shepell – Personal Enhanced Retirement Calculator (PERC)
PERC is a free tool that lets you calculate how much income you can draw from all of your financial assets in retirement. Check out my post about Retirement Income for Life related to PERC.
When to use it?
- Ability to include a spouse or partner in projections.
- Provides a graphical representation of potential income during retirement.
4. Use FIRECalc for Monte Carlo simulations.
Why I like it?
“FIRECalc looked at the 110 possible 40 year periods in the available data, starting with a portfolio of $1,250,000 and spending your specified amounts each year thereafter.
Here is how your portfolio would have fared in each of the 110 cycles. The lowest and highest portfolio balance at the end of your retirement was $-1,401,172 to $15,513,124, with an average at the end of $3,072,711. (Note: this is looking at all the possible periods; values are in terms of the dollars as of the beginning of the retirement period for each cycle.)
For our purposes, failure means the portfolio was depleted before the end of the 40 years. FIRECalc found that 16 cycles failed, for a success rate of 85.5%.”
Other Calculators and Tools:
There’s no substitute for a comprehensive financial plan or projections report but engineer and DIY Couch Potato investor Kurt Friesen developed this:
Index Goose – Simulate Your Retirement Portfolio with Index ETFs.
Not sure how to visualize your portfolio or backtest portfolio returns? Check out Portfolio Visualizer.
Vanguard has an excellent retirement nest egg calculator.
Here is an excellent TFSA calculator here showing how to generate a $1 million portfolio tax-free.
Financial Mentor has a great FREE retirement calculator.
How Much Are You Paying (and losing) in Fees?
This is a great, FREE calculator to highlight the terrible damage that high-fund fees do to your portfolio.
Curious about market volatility and returns?
Check out this Volatility Meter from Steadyhand – showing the historical returns of key asset classes and how diversification can affect a portfolio’s potential volatility and returns over the long run.
Retirement Draw Down Calculators:
Here is a blogpost about Variable Percentage Withdrawal (VPW) and a link to a FREE portfolio draw down tool here.
Here is an excellent RRSP/RRIF withdrawal calculator from Taxtips.ca.
Need a LIF payment calculator? See what those payments could be here.
Need to figure out your Foreign Withholding Taxes (FWT) when it comes to your ETFs? PWL Capital built one.
Use this FREE Canada Pension Plan (CPP) calculator? A free one?
Visit this site Holy Potato aka John Robertson who updates his CPP calculator annually. Great stuff John!
Got a defined benefit pension? Need to know your pension adjustment (PA) for RRSP contribution room? Find out more here.
Adjusted Cost Base Calculators:
Need to keep track of your Adjusted Cost Base in a non-registered account? Use this free Adjusted Cost Base calculator.
Mortgage and Debt Calculators:
This is one of the best rent versus buy home calculators I’ve used, thanks to the New York Times.
Mortgage Comparison Sites:
RateSpy.com is one of my go-to sites for mortgage rates.
Tax Help:
I tend to giveaway online promo codes to use TurboTax Canada every year. Just search “TurboTax” on my site. 🙂
I’m a huge fan of this free site for tax information: TaxTips.ca
Check out these great Canadian resources below:
Ratehub – compare mortgages, credit cards, insurance and more!
MoneySense – regular features and expert insights on family financial planning, investing, real estate, travel, retirement and more!
CreditCard Genius – my go-to site dedicated to comparing credit cards in Canada.
EnergyRates.ca – unbiased insights comparing energy rates in BC, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and soon Quebec.
Some great dividend sites I’ve enjoyed:
Sure Dividend – including this guest post about owning U.S. dividend aristocrats – should you own them?