Turn Your Mortgage Into a Wealth Building Tool

Smith Manoeuvre Logo

The Smith Manoeuvre strategy was developed by Fraser Smith and advanced by his son, Robinson Smith

Most Canadians carry a mortgage that eats up their income, offers no tax benefit, and delays wealth creation. But your mortgage doesn’t have to hold you back.

What if you could turn your mortgage into your most powerful financial tool?

What if you could start getting tax refunds, growing an investment portfolio, and paying off your mortgage faster — all without spending a dollar more each month?

That’s exactly what The Smith Manoeuvre helps you do.

What is The Smith Manoeuvre?

The Smith Manoeuvre is a financial strategy designed for Canadian homeowners. It gradually converts your non-deductible mortgage into tax-deductible investment debt. As you pay down your mortgage, you reborrow those paid-down amounts and invest them in income-generating assets.

This allows you to:

  • Deduct the interest on the re-borrowed portion generating tax refunds

  • Reinvest your tax savings to accelerate mortgage payoff

  • Build long-term wealth through compound growth

  • Increase your net worth without increasing your monthly expenses

The longer you run the strategy, the more it snowballs, and the better the results.

The strategy is completely legal and fully supported by Canada’s tax laws when set up and managed properly. It’s not a gimmick or an experiment. It’s a proven, structured plan that has been around since the 1980s and is currently being used by thousands of Canadians.

The Smith Manoeuvre Books

The original concept was developed in the 1980s by Fraser Smith and was well documented in The Smith Manoeuvre book he wrote sharing the strategy with Canadians. His son, Robinson Smith, has since carried the torch and rewritten a more modern guide to The Smith Manoeuvre in 2019.

Why This Strategy Works

In Canada, mortgage interest is not tax-deductible when used for personal purposes. But if you borrow to invest in income-producing assets, the interest becomes deductible.

The Smith Manoeuvre takes advantage of this key difference. It transforms your mortgage, payment by payment, into a tax-efficient investment tool.

By making one small adjustment (reborrowing paid-down principal and investing it) you can:

  • Claim tax deductions that generate annual refunds

  • Use those refunds to pay down your mortgage faster

  • Build a growing investment portfolio alongside the debt reduction component of your existing mortgage payments

  • End up with more equity, more investments, and more financial freedom

Accelerators to The Smith Manoeuvre

The basic Smith Manoeuvre is already powerful, but if you’re ready, you can take things further with these optional accelerators:

1. Cash Flow Diversion

Are you currently contributing to a savings or investment account on a monthly basis? With the Cash Flow Diversion strategy, you can redirect those existing contributions to make your money work harder. Instead of investing $200 into a savings or investment account each month, you first use it to prepay your mortgage, then immediately re-borrow the same amount to invest. You still stay fully invested, but now you’re also accelerating your mortgage conversion and generating tax deductions using the exact same $200.

2. Debt Swap

If you already have investments sitting in a non-registered account ($5,000, $10,000, $50,000 or more), you may be able to use that capital to rapidly convert an equivalent amount of your mortgage into tax-deductible debt. You start with the same invested dollars, end with those same dollars still invested, but in the process you gain valuable tax deductions and take a major leap forward in your Smith Manoeuvre implementation. In some cases, it’s possible to convert your entire mortgage this way immediately. You can accomplish more without any new contributions by simply restructuring the funds you already have invested.

3. Cash Flow Dam

Do you have rental income or an unincorporated business? The Cash Flow Dam is a highly effective way to accelerate your progress. By redirecting income from your business or rental property through your personal mortgage, you can prepay large amounts of non-deductible debt and re-borrow to invest. This allows you to convert more of your mortgage faster and generate bigger tax deductions along the way. This accelerator can shave years off your amortization timeline, again without any additional contributions.

4. DRiP Accelerator

Some investments offer a DRiP, which automatically reinvests your dividends to buy more shares. However, when using The Smith Manoeuvre, it may be smarter to take those dividends in cash. Why? You can then use the dividend income to prepay your mortgage, re-borrow it, and reinvest. This allows you to earn a return on the same money more than once and amplify the compounding effect.

5. Prime the Pump

When you first set up your re-advanceable mortgage, you may have immediate access to some available equity. This lump sum can be used to “prime the pump”  by investing upfront to take advantage of compound growth and kickstart your tax deductions. While this involves new borrowing and should be carefully considered with your advisor, it’s a powerful way to put your available equity to work from day one and accelerate your results.

Who is the Smith Manoeuvre For?

The Smith Manoeuvre is ideal for Canadian homeowners who:

  • Have a mortgage on their home

  • Want to reduce taxes and increase after-tax cash flow

  • Want to grow long-term wealth using the money they’re already spending

  • Have strong credit and enough income to qualify for a re-advanceable mortgage (or already have a re-advanceable mortgage)

Even if you’re not sure about whether this would work for you, it’s worth taking a closer look. A simple tweak to how you use your mortgage can open the door to thousands in tax savings, long-term investment portfolio growth, and years off the life of your mortgage. Many Canadians already have the proper mortgage structure in place and don’t even know it.

Want to Learn More?

Check out my free Smith Manoeuvre mini-course to learn more. The course is broken down into 7 videos which are only 2-3min each and will give you an excellent overview of the strategy.

Want to See If It Would Work for You?

SMCP BadgeI’m a Smith Manoeuvre Certified Professional (SMCP) and have been helping clients structure their mortgage to reduce tax and grow their net worth for over a decade.

If you’d like to see your potential using the official Smith Manoeuvre Calculator, start with our short online Smith Manoeuvre intake. We’ll then collect the info we need to run your calculator so you can:

  • Get an estimate of your potential tax savings

  • See how much sooner you could be mortgage-free

  • Preview the potential net worth improvement by your current mortgage end date

  • Unlock additional resources to help you better understand the strategy

You complete this quick form in less than 3 minutes. We then follow up by email to collect a few extra details, then put together a no-pressure overview of your numbers, plus outline next steps if you’d like help putting things in place.

Prefer to Explore on Your Own First?

Here are a couple of additional ways to learn more directly from the source: