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By Jonathan Chevreau on May 13, 2025
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

By Jonathan Chevreau on May 13, 2025
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Should you hold equities? Fixed income? An annuity? Or all three? Financial advisors debate the options in today’s “tariffied” environment.

Investment asset allocation is important during all stages of life for Canadians. It’s probably the biggest single determinant of one portfolio’s success and another’s failure. But your time frame matters. Younger Canadians have long enough horizons, so they can afford to take more risk on growth-oriented equities. Retirees, by contrast, have no guarantee their investment losses can be recouped before they need the money to pay for day-to-day needs.

Add to all this the “tariffying” environment of the Trump trade war, and with it fears of a recession or worse, and it’s certainly not a time for retirees to take excessive risk. I mentioned in my previous column about registered retirement income fund (RRIF) withdrawals advisor John De Goey’s recommendation for retirees to “de-risk” their portfolios. For this column, I followed up with De Goey about the old rule of thumb that your age should equal your fixed-income exposure (bonds and bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs), guaranteed investment certificates (GICs), money market funds and preferred shares). For example, that rule would suggest a new RRIF owner aged 71 might have 71% fixed income and just 29% stock exposure.

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However, De Goey says that guideline is outdated. He showed me a formula that was new to me and perhaps most readers. “My view, after taking longevity into account, is that you should use age times the decimal of your age until you get to RRIF age—71. This assumes that the client is not particularly risk-averse. The portfolio still has to be suitable.”

So, under this new rule, and assuming the other qualifications apply to your personal circumstances:

Beyond that age, however, De Goey thinks 50% fixed income is the maximum. “People over the age of 71 should be able to withstand having half their money in equities even if they’re in their 90s, because the risk associated with the 50/50 portfolio is quite low.”

Allan Small, senior investment advisor for Scarborough-based IA Private Wealth Inc., says the amount of equities and fixed income in an........

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