Private Equity Investments: How to protect yourself against the risks + MORE Dec 17th

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Unlike your Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP), which must start winding down the end of the year you turn 71, you can keep contributing to your tax-free savings account (TFSA) for as long as you live. Even if you make it past age 100, you can keep adding $6,000 (plus any future inflation adjustments) every year.
Also unlike RRSPs, contributions to tax-free savings accounts are not calculated based on previous (or current) year’s earned income, says Adrian Mastracci, portfolio manager for Vancouver-based Lycos Asset Management Inc. Any Canadian age 18 or older with a Social Insurance Number (SIN) can contribute to TFSAs. 
Most near-retirees will have more investible wealth in RRSPs, since they’ve been around since 1957, while TFSAs started much more recently, in 2009. Once you turn 71, there are three options for collapsing an RRSP, although most people think only of the one offering the most continuity with an RRSP: the registered retirement income fund, or RRIF (more on this below)…

For Canadian investors and savers, it’s always some of the best news to come each year: the annual increase in the contribution limit for Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSA). And for 2019 the TFSA contribution limit was increased from $5,500 to $6,000.
The actual TFSA yearly limit was set at $5,000 back in 2009 when the investment account was first created but is indexed to inflation each year and rounded to the nearest $500 to simplify things for investors. The exception was 2015 when the TFSA limit was hiked up to $10,000 for that one year.
This current limit means someone who has never contributed to a TFSA and was old enough to have one since its inception will have a cumulative contribution room of $63,500 as of Jan. 1, 2019.
TFSA contribution limit – 2009 to 2019

Year
TFSA Annual Limit
TFSA Cumulative Limit

2009
$5,000
$5,000

2010
$5,000
$10,000

2011
$5,000
$15,000

2012
$5,000
$20,000

2013
$5,500
$25,500

2014
$5,500
$31,000

2015
$10,000
$41,000

2016
$5,500
$46,500

2017
$5,500
$52,000

2018
$5,500
$57,500

2019
$6,000
$63,500

2020
$6,000
$69,500

2021
$6,000
$75,500

Investing ideas for your TFSA
TFSAs are not just for savings…

For high net worth investors, the sustained growth of private equity markets in recent years is providing an attractive proposition. Out have gone the hedge funds that seemed to be more in vogue with investors before the global financial crisis. And in comes the private equity market; buoyed a generation of start-ups with significant growth potential that can be bought low and sold high. But it’s foolish to suggest that, even for the most experienced traders, it is risk-free.
As with all forms of investment, there is a risk-reward dynamic that can drive high returns. But it can also lead to significant losses – especially when external factors exert their influence. The good news is that you can protect yourself against some risks – for example, political instability – with specialist insurance from dedicated brokers such as Gallagher. For those other risks and threats, however, it requires a proper risk management strategy to protect your position.
The main risks to private equity investments
It is an attractive alternative asset class, of which there can be no doubt for budding investors…