What reinvesting actually adds.
The same position, compounded two ways: distributions reinvested, and distributions taken as cash. Yield and price change go in separately, because a 12% yield paid out of a NAV that falls 4% is an 8% return — and a single "annual return" box is where that gets lost.
| Year | Put in | Value | Distributions that year | Income a month |
|---|
What this does and does not assume
- The yield is on market value, not a fixed amount per unit — which is how a yield is quoted, and it means a falling price shrinks the income rather than raising the yield forever.
- Both rates are steady. No real fund pays the same rate for twenty years: 16 of the 22 covered here have cut theirs at least once. A straight line is a model, not a forecast.
- Reinvestment is at the going price, monthly, with no commission and no fractional-unit rounding. A real DRIP buys whole units and leaves the remainder in cash.
- Money added is invested when it arrives — at the start of its month, or for a yearly cadence at the start of the year, which is when TFSA room appears. That is why the same annual total contributed yearly beats it contributed monthly: the January lump is invested for twelve months rather than an average of six. Switch the cadence and the gap is the cost of dribbling it in.
- Tax, if you enter a rate, comes off each distribution as it is paid. That is right for interest and foreign income and wrong for return of capital, which is not taxed on receipt at all — the spread calculator splits a distribution by character if you need that.
- Nothing here is adjusted for inflation. Every figure is in today's dollars undiscounted, so a twenty-year total is larger than it will feel.
Why yield and price change are separate boxes
Because adding them is the whole question. A fund yielding 9.9% with a NAV falling 6.5% a year returns about 3.4% — and it pays you the 9.9% the whole way down, which is what makes it feel like it is working. Across the funds listed here the median annualised price change is 3.06%, and 7 of 22 are below zero.
A model, on figures you chose. Not a projection, not advice, and not a claim about what any fund will do. Full disclaimer.
Fund data as at 2026-08-10. Rates and limits carry their own source and retrieval date.