Need advice on $10000 TFSA fund with NBC migrated from Motive | National Bank | Discussion forum

Depends on your income tax bracket and future plans.

Assuming a 3.5% investment rate (about the best you would get on a GIC for a year) will give you $350 over the year. If your combined provincial/federal tax will be over 42% you would pay less to transfer the GIC than you would pay tax on the interest if unregistered.

You could also do a 9 month TFSA GIC at NB (currently at 1.85%) and settle for a lower rate (and 3 months of whatever the Progress account will be) while waiting to do the December manoeuvre next year.. probably will only make $150ish on the year though.

Another thing to consider is whether the FI you transfer to will be who you want to stay with next year... if you take a 1yr GIC and their rates fall out of competitiveness, you will be in the exact same situation a year from now. This is why I miss Motive's pick-your-length GICs a lot... I would have done an 11month GIC to time it for December maturity.

Crunching the numbers, a lot of the situations seem to be a wash, your returns after fees and taxes will be within $50 of each other for all the options I have listed.

If you do, you won't be able to redeposit into a TFSA until 2026!

Does NBC have a short term or cashable GIC? Hold on to GICS till December 2026, withdrawal, and reinvest in January 2027.

But need to weigh out the loss of interest vs the penalty.

If NBC is under federal regulations, there is talk that transfer fees will no longer be allowed.

The upcoming Budget 2025 elimination of investment and registered account transfer fees was discussed previously in Review of fees charged by federally regulated FIs.

National Bank offers these short-term non-redeemable GIC's:

One can park the funds for a few months in their Cash Advantage Solution (CAS) in the TFSA account. These are the current CAS rates:

phrank said

Don't forget the government is poised to eliminate transfer fees for registered accounts this year.

I tried posting a link, but it didn't work. You'll have to search yourself for the info about it in the budget which should finalize in the next couple of months.

  

Posting a link via the link button doesn't work. Just type or copy and past your url directly into the body of your post and it will show as a clickable link.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/budget-2025-ottawa-to-end-investment-transfer-fees-in-hope-of-more-competition/

Yes, I should have said 2027.

At last no more investments in NBC Tax Free Savings. Last two maturing GICs were deposited into NBC TFSA cash account on 02Jan and today the funds were withdrawn into my CIBC checking.

I realize I'm going to lose a bit doing this as will have to wait until Jan 2027 to re-contribute those funds. I'm just glad to have the TFSA stuff with them out of mind.