recent RRIF discussions under "General comparisons" | RRSPs and RRIFs | Discussion forum

Alexandra said
Unless you want a specific amount of funds coming out of your RRIF each year, instead of under the minimum withdrawal rule, then what most banks do is they take the lowest paid GIC interest with them and take the minimum out of that.

So if your lowest paid GIC is for $20K at 1.85%; and minimum withdrawal is 5.4%, they will take $370 out of the $20K and the remainder of that GIC goes on until maturity. The other higher interest GICs remain the same. This is how I do mine as I want the minimum withdrawal each year as of now.  

I'd consider that pretty good service if your bank does all that for you passively in the background. What FI does this for you?

In my own case, I have a self-directed RIF at TDDI -- it doesn't have any GICs in it, but among other things I do maintain an ISA balance (but never any outright cash). I'm on a quarterly payout, and without any action by me the bank issues a payment around the 15th of Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec. However, they don't correspondingly sell anything in my RIF to offset the payment, which requires me to remember to go into that account and sell enough of the ISA holding to cover the debit.

The first time this happened I didn't know what to expect and I also didn't want to duplicate anything, so I waited and waited for an automatic liquidation to show up but it never did. Two weeks later I just covered it on my own. Then a few weeks after that I got a form letter in the snail mail telling me I had a debit balance in my RIF and would I please address it, but it was old news at that point.

I'm now self-trained to take my own action quarterly in that account, but it was a bit unnerving at the time seeing a lingering negative cash balance in a registered account and wondering who was supposed to fix it

Norman1 said

The brokerage RRIF's are set up differently than the deposit RRIF's at a bank or credit union.

Knew about the in-kind thing, but didn't know about the "no automatic settlement" thing.

It's not a big deal, it's just that I didn't expect it. The TD rep I had to deal with when I set up the RIF never mentioned anything about payment settlements one way or the other.

In any event, my account my responsibility

Alexandra, CIBC does that too, my wife has her RRIF there, with (what will eventually be) laddered 5 year GICs. It works as described and seamless. The only downside is the GIC rates she is given, which are awful of course.

I have a brokerage RRIF, don't use the minimum and also insert a tax withholding amount that I figure out each year. The whole thing is a pain....luckily its only once per year. They insist in cash that is settled in, and visible as such in, the cash account before doing anything. For example I have to sell Renaissance HISA which then takes 2 days to settle, plus this year an additional day to "appear" in the account (probably because of Covid remote staffing limitations) before I could give them instructions. Also I have to make sure the following year's withdrawal date, which they automatically set as the same as the current year's date of withdrawal, isn't too soon for me.