Portfolio Updates for 2025
Welcome to a new post, following up and sharing some of the progress we made in 2024 as we enter this new year to simplify our portfolio: welcome to some portfolio updates for 2025.
How was 2024 for you?
Certainly some political drama continues in early 2025 that churns on both sides of the border; we’ll see how that impacts financial markets…but overall when it comes to our portfolio and in support our long-term investing plan, 2024 was a HUGE success.
We hope 2025 might be more of the same but as always, time will tell the investing tale.
Looking back to 2024, I recently shared our final dividend income tally your way.
This chart proved 2024 was a financial success as part of other long-term goals!
But this chart doesn’t tell the entire story.
Sure, while some stocks were up huge in 2024 like the ones below, some sufferred like the ones below as well:
Big winners in 2024:
- Walmart (WMT), up close to 70%.
- Capital Power (CPX), up close to 60%.
- Brookfield (BN), up over 50%.
- Manulife (MFC), up nearly 50%.
- Royal Bank (RY) and National Bank (NA), up close to 30%.
- XAW was up 26%
- QQQ was up close to 26%.
Big losers in 2024:
- Bell Canada (BCE), yes, we still own a very small amount in our taxable account)), down about 40%.
- Telus (T), we own a more modest amount compared to Bell, down about 20%.
The way I see it, if you’re an individual stock investor, you’re likely going to have some stocks that soar in value and others that tank in value at the same time. You’ll see this in your low-cost ETFs as well, it’s just not as obvious until you dive into the holdings.
Simply put: not every stock can be a big winner and nobody can predict the financial future.
Portfolio Updates for 2025
I’ve been getting lots of questions of late about what to do with BCE stock. Some DIY investors hold a bunch of it. I do not. I will summarize all those email replies to readers by saying for me/us: I am tempted to keep the very, very small portion of BCE we do own, for now, in our taxable account. I don’t have and have not owned BCE stock inside our RRSPs, TFSAs or my LIRA for many years now.
We’ll see how BCE stock may/may not recover from the depths it is in now and given BCE stock is now
I stand by what I wrote about BCE last year: I believe a dividend cut is coming in 2025. We’ll see by when and by how much or if I am correct at all…
On a more positive note related to the theme of today’s post, I continue to simplify our portfolio as semi-retirement / work on own terms draws very near.
Let’s take a look at our key personal investing accounts.
Our RRSPs:
Over the years, I’ve sold off many of our U.S. stocks inside our RRSPs: household names like JNJ are long gone in favour of BRK.B and some QQQ, amongst other low-cost ETF buys.
Since we are now financially independent and ready to embark on some part-time opportunities in 2025, a main objective for us this year is to increase our cash wedge for near-term spending in semi-retirement; specifically inside our RRSPs and not load-up on U.S. stocks or ETFs at all…
Our RRSP bucket approach looks something like this:
- The RRSP cash bucket – holds at minimum, Year-1 of our RRSP withdrawals in 2025 or 2026. No need to sell stocks or ETFs on a whim. Cash withdrawals are ready now in cash-alternative ETFs or money market funds instead of idle cash losing out to inflation.
- The passive income bucket – This bucket should generate thousands of income/cash per year now that dividend reinvestment plans from our stocks and ETFs have been turned off in recent years.
- The growth bucket – This growth bucket should continue assuming we don’t sell our stocks or ETFs near-term, in the coming 5 years, although I will sell those assets over time for sure as part of our retirement income drawdown plan. We’ll continue to hold a handful of growth-oriented names there such as BlackRock (BLK) and Berkshire (BRK.B) stock.
I wrote about owning BLK stock here:
When it comes to keeping cash, your mileage may vary including where to put your cash now and why related to registered accounts such as RRSPs/RRIFs.
This implies in 2025, we’re probably not buying much of anything inside our RRSPs for the first time in some 20+ years.
That feels very different for us, but in a good way. 🙂
Our TFSAs:
When it comes to our TFSAs, if you’ve been following along in recent months, I also mentioned we would likely buy more low-cost XAW for our TFSAs this year as a global ex-Canada diversifier – and so we did very recently.
Our 2025 TFSA contributions are now done and those contributions are now invested. Done for another year.
You might be wondering why buy now, won’t stocks or ETFs go lower in price?
They could.
We believe in lump-sum investing over DCA because it tends to work best most of the time…in doing so I just move on with the rest of my life.
Our Taxable Accounts/Non-Registered Investing:
Finally, for taxable investing as one of the final major personal accounts we own, while taxable investing might happen in 2025, I suspect we’ll forego lots of investing there and simply save up money where we can this year instead, inside a higher interest savings account for near-term travel.
If you’ve been following along closely, I loaded up more on a few Canadian stocks in recent years: household names like Tourmaline (TOU), Brookfield (BN), and Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) in particular – all three increased as a % in our portfolio in 2023 and 2024, leading up today.
With some travel coming up however, I just might not have any money to invest like I did.
We hope to vacation South in a few weeks. We have plans/ideas to visit Victoria, BC later this year. I’m planning a trip with my mother and sister to celebrate a special birthday milestone for my mom, and beyond that, there’s talk in our family about going state-side to watch an NFL game.
I’ll keep you posted how those trips and ideas play out!
Portfolio Updates for 2025 Summary
As we move further into 2025, there is definitely a major psychological and financial shift underway:
- RRSP assets are largely frozen,
- TFSA investing is already done for 2025, and
- Taxable investing might not occur at all.
I’ve been working and saving and investing my entire adult life, yet now, some of those things don’t really need to happen any longer.
As I potentially pursue more portfolio changes this year, I will keep you updated.
It is my hope for anyone who has already experienced financial independence, semi-retirement, and/or who is well established in full-retirement, I encourage you to comment away as much as possible on this site as part of this post.
Some of you have “been there, done that” ahead of me and I’m willing to learn what worked or didn’t for you. 🙂
Mark
Mark
My name is Mark Seed – the founder, editor and owner of My Own Advisor. As my own DIY financial advisor, I’m looking to start semi-retirement soon, sooner than most. Find out what I did and how I realized Financial Independence to tailor your own path. Join the newsletter read by thousands. Always free.
