TFSA contribution 2017

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cqren92
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TFSA contribution 2017

Post by cqren92 »

When can I contribute my 2017 TFSA contribution (5500$)? from the beginning of 2017 or after 2017, next year?
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optionable68
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Beginning Jan 2017
3-time winner of FWF Annual Stock Market Predictions contest
cqren92
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Thanks
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Welcome to FWF. In case you're not aware, in addition to the discussion topics here, we also have a wiki is a collaborative work that is primarily based on knowledge built up in the discussion forum, and is presented in an easy-to-navigate and searchable format.

Specifically the Tax-Free Savings Account - finiki, the Canadian financial wiki article might be helpful to you.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by queerasmoi »

For what it's worth I track my "all TFSA room ever" spreadsheet as follows:

Columns: Date, Withdrawal, Deposit, New Room
For every year since the TFSA was created there is a New Room transaction on the 1st ($5000 for 2009/10/11/12, $5500 for 2013/14, $10000 for 2015, $5500 for 2016/17). Deposits and withdrawals are tracked by their dates as well. Everything sorted chronologically.

Calculations:
Total room = sum of New Room column
Total deposit = sum of Deposit column
Total withdrawals = sum of Withdrawal column
Total withdrawal current year = sum of Withdrawal column but only starting with this year's first row. (Every year when you enter new room, adjust this formula)
Contribution room = total room - total deposits + total withdrawals - total withdrawals current year
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by cqren92 »

Thanks for very useful information.
If I went to CRA web site(my account), It shows the TFSA contribution room , is this my contribution room for this year?
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Pickles
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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cqren92 wrote: 07 Apr 2017 11:55 Thanks for very useful information.
If I went to CRA web site(my account), It shows the TFSA contribution room , is this my contribution room for this year?
Not necessarily. CRA tracking of contributions lags by a year or more. Rely on your own records of contributions to your plan. If you have only one TFSA account, it should be easy to add up your total contributions to date and determine what contribution room you have left.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by 2of3aintbad »

Pickles wrote: 07 Apr 2017 16:26
cqren92 wrote: 07 Apr 2017 11:55 Thanks for very useful information.
If I went to CRA web site(my account), It shows the TFSA contribution room , is this my contribution room for this year?
Not necessarily. CRA tracking of contributions lags by a year or more. Rely on your own records of contributions to your plan. If you have only one TFSA account, it should be easy to add up your total contributions to date and determine what contribution room you have left.
Financial institutions are required to report TFSA details to CRA early in the year, within 60 days, for the previous year. So today, you can see the contribution room for the start of 2017 and the details of how that was calculated. But if you check again in December 2017, you will see the same numbers despite any contributions or withdrawals this year. So there is always a lag time, but it is not a mystery.
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Pickles
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by Pickles »

Pickles wrote: Not necessarily. CRA tracking of contributions lags by a year or more. Rely on your own records of contributions to your plan. If you have only one TFSA account, it should be easy to add up your total contributions to date and determine what contribution room you have left.
2of3aintbad wrote: Financial institutions are required to report TFSA details to CRA early in the year, within 60 days, for the previous year. So today, you can see the contribution room for the start of 2017 and the details of how that was calculated. But if you check again in December 2017, you will see the same numbers despite any contributions or withdrawals this year. So there is always a lag time, but it is not a mystery.


It is a mystery to the original poster, hence his questions. And no, the CRA doesn't necessarily post the data received in a timely way. There is always a lag. I stand by what I said: people should add up their own contributions and not rely on the figures CRA currently shows.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Pickles wrote: 08 Apr 2017 09:54 And no, the CRA doesn't necessarily post the data received in a timely way. There is always a lag. I stand by what I said: people should add up their own contributions and not rely on the figures CRA currently shows.
Best practice is to keep your own records and compare to CRA from time to time. I believe that our major financial institutions mostly do report to CRA on a timely basis and CRA posts on a timely basis (ie by end of February). However, FI's have been known to make errors. One year Tangerine did not report a TFSA withdrawal of mine [March 2013, in fact] to CRA, leading CRA to believe I had a much lower limit than my records showed. I called Tangerine, they investigated and reported back to me that they would submit a correction. Within a month or two CRA records had been updated for the correction.
I don't know whether there was a problem at Tangerine affecting thousands of accounts, or just mine. Also don't know if Tangerine investigated and corrected other accounts, or whether there are thousands of uncorrected Tangerine errors on CRA's system....?
YMMV
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Pickles
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by Pickles »

Yup, DavidR, relying on CRA is not a good idea but monitoring its tracking of your contributions is necessary.

I echo Peculiar_Investor's suggestion that cqren92 read the finiki article on TFSAs. The finiki not only covers the questions you asked, cqren92, but also the questions you didn't think to ask. :)
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Pickles
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Pickles wrote: 08 Apr 2017 11:31 I echo Peculiar_Investor's suggestion that cqren92 read the finiki article on TFSAs. The finiki not only covers the questions you asked, cqren92, but also the questions you didn't think to ask. :)
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

Post by BRIAN5000 »

Just sold CAR.UN in my TFSA for a substantial profit (~20% + distributions) from my purchase just over a year ago. Proceeds are going into MAW104 in my TFSA. My latest (newest) objective for my 'never to be touched' TFSA is to have only one holding, i.e. MAW104, in it. Set and forget until my estate cashes it in.
Not a bad idea I'd be ok with one holding or maybe two but not at 1%. To bad there wasn't a Canadian $ version of VT I'd go with it and VAB. I really don't want to do XIC & XAW and VAB or XIC & VCX and VAB.
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AltaRed
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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BRIAN5000 wrote: 22 Nov 2017 17:51 Not a bad idea I'd be ok with one holding or maybe two but not at 1%. To bad there wasn't a Canadian $ version of VT I'd go with it and VAB. I really don't want to do XIC & XAW and VAB or XIC & VCX and VAB.
That assumes there are not some 'smarts' in the Mawer organization for re-balancing MAW104 along geographic regions and 3 asset classes to justify their 0.94%. They will win some years and not others, but on whole they have had a good track record historically. I am prepared to cut them some slack on what amounts to a total sum that is not a whole lot more than my average asset holding. Call it an experiment perhaps but when I am dribbling at the mouth and incontinent, that holding should be in good hands.

In any event, my 2018 contribution will go to the same place on Jan 2nd.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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'dribbling at the mouth and incontinent'

Pretty sure this happens to the young ones too, just called Saturday night not Sunset days at the home.

I've got 3 mawer funds but not the balanced ones (yet). I agree it's a reasonable plan. Unfortunately now and then a bit cap brute comes along and offers them all a suitcase of money and we loss of another independent operator like them. Cheers
Last edited by Profit not Prophet on 23 Nov 2017 09:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Agreed the Mawer apple cart could be overturned. I'll face that if/when it comes.

<OT> FWIW, folks who follow my babble close enough also know that GASP, I hold one other legacy mutual fund in my dark closet. It happens to be F series Franklin Bissett Canadian equity fund (MER 1.15%) that I was able to buy in the early E*Trade days before they got put into their place by the fund industry and not permitted to sell F class directly to mere retail clients any more. It's been a long term winner, handily beating the TR TSX Composite over the past ~20 years or so. It has continued to prosper under Bissett even though Bissett was bought out by Franklin Templeton circa 2000. Seems to be a case of leave what works alone......</OT>
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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AltaRed wrote: 22 Nov 2017 22:05GASP, I hold one other legacy mutual fund in my dark closet. It happens to be F series Franklin Bissett Canadian equity fund (MER 1.15%) that I was able to buy in the early E*Trade days before they got put into their place by the fund industry and not permitted to sell F class directly to mere retail clients any more. It's been a long term winner, handily beating the TR TSX Composite over the past ~20 years or so. It has continued to prosper under Bissett even though Bissett was bought out by Franklin Templeton circa 2000. Seems to be a case of leave what works alone......
Did this get into your TFSA? I also have some holdings at IAG that escape taxation as a grandfathered holding from a term life purchase back in 2002. 15 years of tax-sheltered earnings. $350k!

Maybe we should start a true confessions thread?
For the fun of it...Keith
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Not a confession but I saw a sign stuck in the roadside grass yesterday. 'Tired of debt...get our home equity loan from x%'
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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kcowan wrote: 23 Nov 2017 06:43 ]Did this get into your TFSA?
No. This is one from my original E*Trade DIY investments sometime pre-2000. The only MF that I ever kept from my fund investing days in the '90s. Hopefully I will look back 20 years from now at the Mawer fund (which of course is in my TFSA) with the same 'fondness'. Long live TFSA contributions hopefully, albeit we've discussed before how contributions will no doubt be capped some day.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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AltaRed wrote: 22 Nov 2017 22:05
<OT> FWIW, folks who follow my babble close enough also know that GASP, I hold one other legacy mutual fund in my dark closet. It happens to be F series Franklin Bissett Canadian equity fund (MER 1.15%) that I was able to buy in the early E*Trade days before they got put into their place by the fund industry and not permitted to sell F class directly to mere retail clients any more. It's been a long term winner, handily beating the TR TSX Composite over the past ~20 years or so. It has continued to prosper under Bissett even though Bissett was bought out by Franklin Templeton circa 2000. Seems to be a case of leave what works alone......</OT>
Me too - bought in late 90's directly from Bissett. Other long termers are PHN Bond fund and Sceptre (now Fiera Capital) Equity Growth.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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willowberry wrote: 24 Nov 2017 13:24Other long termers are PHN Bond fund and Sceptre (now Fiera Capital) Equity Growth.
I'm also a long term holder of PHN Bond and Sceptre Equity Growth. Back in the day, these were the low cost funds in their respective categories. I don't want to sell them due to unrealized capital gains.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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I have absolutely no past fondness whatsoever for any active fund I was either tempted to purchase or stupid enough to actually buy. Templeton funds in the early 80's. Really, really tempted, but even then I knew I didn't want to pay their ridiculous front end load. They also had a closed end fund on the TSE, but I never actually pulled the trigger. Then there was at one time in the 90's independent firm Altamira. By 2002, so much for being independent when National Bank came along and swallowed it up. In 1995 there was a lot of hoopla about low cost Scudder's arrival in Canada from the U.S.A. Actually went to their grand spanking new office on the ground floor of a Toronto skyscraper in the financial district and signed up with great expectations for the future. Oops, that didn't last long. Around 1997 when nobody else seemed to be interested in precious metals funds, I actually bought one. I got so bored with watching it doing nothing, I sold in a matter of months. Little did I know that precious metals were going to take off in the early 2000's. That's about my history of foray's into the active fund market. Complete waste of time and money for me.

What do I have now in my TFSA? Part of our emergency cash in a HISA and the rest in TD e-Series funds where I can actually automatically re-invest any distributions. Thank you TD for offering a decent product to investors that actually works.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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Taggart wrote: 26 Nov 2017 15:12 Then there was at one time in the 90's independent firm Altamira.
What a roller-coaster that was. I made piles of money (for the time), then proceeded to lose almost all of it.

But was I discouraged? Not me. I piled into TD funds, especially their Science and Technology fund. I made piles of money, then proceeded to lose almost all of it.

Then I learned how to get my emotions under control.

Currently, my TFSAs is where I hold part of my RRBs. Much better than holding them in a non-registered account.

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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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I rebalanced on the way up and kept most of the money from Trimark Discovery.
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Re: TFSA contribution 2017

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ghariton wrote: 26 Nov 2017 18:52 [
But was I discouraged? Not me. I piled into TD funds, especially their Science and Technology fund. I made piles of money, then proceeded to lose almost all of it.
....
George
Me too, TD Science & Technology fund was my first and only MF experience. I made lots on paper and then went on to realize a real loss. Fortunately I then purchased DIA ETF and somehow avoided the HighTech bubble from an investment view. (I was more than involved in the bubble in my employment).

To bring it back on topic, I have not yet made 2017 contributions. I have been procrastinating, as to raise the cash for my TFSA payment I need to sell stocks in my non-registered account and realize the capital gains. Haven't been able to get my head around the right maths on whether this makes sense.
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