Happy 10-year anniversary to the tax-free savings account. That’s right, the TFSA, once a secondary savings account where people would mostly store short-term cash, hit double digits in January and it’s sure grown up over the years.

People have realized that virtually anything that can be held in an RRSP can be held in a TFSA. That’s stocks, bonds, mutual funds, more long-term investments – you can put long-term retirement assets into it.

As the years have gone by, the TFSA’s annual dollar limit has grown. In 2013 it rose to $5,500 and, as of January 1, 2019, it’s $6,000. (It did jump to $10,000 in 2015, but went back to $5,500 the following year.) The current total contribution room for those were at least 18 years old in 2009, Canadian residents and who have never used a TFSA is $63,500. That’s a lot of room to work with.

With 10 years having passed since the introduction of the TFSA, we wanted to know if Canadians are thinking about these accounts differently than they once did. We spoke with Jonathan Braun, Manager of Tax and Estate planning at IG Wealth Management.