Wealthsimple

April 7, 2026

In This Issue

8 min read

Welcome to TLDR’s special quarterly markets edition! First, we unpack a wild Q1 in the markets, then reporter Katherine Laidlaw dives into a topic we’ve been discussing a lot around TLDR HQ: the so-called “sandwich generation” — cash-strapped middle-aged folks who are caring for kids and aging parents. It’s a growing cohort that reveals a lot about our changing country. Tell us what you think in the feedback module below. We’ll return with a normal TLDR next Monday!

—The Editors

Q1 REPORT CARD Jan. 1 — Mar. 31

TSX	+2.8%

S&P 500	-4.8%

Bitcoin	-24.3%

Magnificent 7	-11.6%

Brent Crude Oil Futures	+71.1%

Biggest Canadian Gainer*	Cenovus Energy: +36.9%

Biggest Canadian Loser*	Thomson Reuters: -27.7%

*Universe: TSX 60. Total returns shown in local currency. TradingView data; NYMEX data for Brent. Bloomberg Mag7 index shown for Mag. 7.

The Quarter in Markets

Canadian stocks are killing it in 2026

Here’s a surprising flip of the script: Canadian stocks are trouncing U.S. stocks this year. The TSX has already closed six days at all-time highs in 2026, while the S&P 500 is off to its worst start since 1995. Nvidia, the AI-boom poster child, is down 14% from its peak. Meta: -13% year-to-date. Microsoft: -21% YTD. Meanwhile, Enbridge, the old-school Canadian pipeline giant, is up 14% in 2026.

Why? Two forces collided: (1) U.S. tech had been priced for a best-case-scenario AI bonanza, but chip shortages, data-centre costs, and slowish adoption have sobered traders about how long gushing profits will take to arrive. And (2) the Iran war has created a windfall for Canada’s energy sector. Over the past decade, the S&P 500 has outperformed the TSX (~13% annual vs. ~9.5%). So the lesson here isn’t “dump America.” It’s “diversify,” since the sectors that drag on Canada’s markets in tech booms are the same ones that salvage it when tech stumbles.

The Big Important Story

The Sandwich Generation Is Getting Smushed

By Katherine Laidlaw

Mireille’s induction into the sandwich generation came in 2021, with a worried phone call from her mother’s friend. Mireille’s mother, Colleen, a retired professor in Guelph, Ont. — both of their names have been changed — had always been the one to drive her friends to exercise class, but now she was forgetting her way home. Maybe, the friend suggested to Mireille, she shouldn’t be driving anymore?

For Mireille, that call five years ago changed her life, triggering a cascade of medical appointments, hospital stays, and retirement-home tours, all squeezed around her two teens’ schedules. And work. And, theoretically, sleep.

“It’s like I’m living in two worlds,” says Mireille, 48. In one, she’s a flight attendant, making round trips from Toronto to Vancouver and L.A., while also raising a family. In the other, she trails her mom, now 79, around the house as if she were a toddler, worried she might fall or misplace something.

A quarter of all Canadians — 13.4 million people — provide at least some unpaid care for a parent or child each year. A growing subset of nearly 2 million people provide unpaid care for both. Mireille is now a verified member of this club, known as “the sandwich generation” or “the crunch generation,” thanks to their precarious role supporting two households.

They’re mostly folks in their late 30s through early 60s, and all the giant, suffocating responsibilities, new and old, on these midlifers have made them more stressed about their finances than any other group of Canadians, according to surveys. We found out how they’re getting squeezed and what they’re doing about it, so the rest of us can learn from their experience.

The care double whammy is breaking budgets

Middle age has long been an extra-pricey stage of life, what with kids and all. What’s new is that women today are having babies later and later, while their boomer parents are living longer than past generations, putting overlapping burdens on Sandwichers.

Take Debbie, an insurance underwriter from Newmarket, Ont. She looks out for her parents and her in-laws, all of whom collect pensions. But when her father needed cataract surgery last year, his insurance plan would only cover his nearsighted correction or his farsighted correction, not both. So Debbie paid $8,000 out of pocket. Then her parents’ central AC broke ($7,000). Then her father-in-law needed hernia surgery, and they opted for private care ($5,000) rather than force him to wait months for the publicly insured option.

“I don’t exist,” Debbie joked to me wryly. “I only exist to assist the kids and the parents.”

The sandwich generation earns the most and pockets the least. Middle-aged Canadians have the largest median income of any generation. But between child care and caring for aging parents, they’re left with less than anyone else.

Then there’s the other side of the midlife money sandwich: children. For medium-income households that earn between $83,000 and $136,000 annually, raising a child — just one of them — from birth to age 18 now costs around $374,000. That’s up from $167,000 in 2004, far outpacing inflation. And if your household makes more than $136K, you’ll likely pay way more, since child-rearing expenses rise in lockstep with income.

Perhaps the biggest hitch with children is all the extra space they need to grow; hence, middle-aged Canadians spend more annually on housing — $31,600 — than any other group.

Thanks to all these costs, Canadians aged 40 to 54 have endured the biggest jump in spending over the past dozen or so years, according to StatCan. They have by far the highest living expenses, at more than $141,000 annually per household. And they hold the highest household credit-card debt of any age group — an average of $12,000 — even though middle age is when wages typically peak.

The sandwich generation is surviving on credit. One of the clearest signs that midlife Canadians are getting squeezed is their credit-card balance: they’re carrying the most debt of any generation, despite their generally high pay.

The indirect costs are just as painful

Unpaid caregivers provide roughly three hours of care for every one hour of professional care, and two-thirds say it hurts their careers. Last year, Mireille missed weeks of work while caring for her mother, and while she was away, her husband had to scale back on his IT business so he could pick up the slack at home. Altogether, their combined income dropped from $220,000 in 2024 to $100,000 in 2025.

But the hardest part, Sandwichers say, is the mental toll

All the appointments, all the calendar invites, all the schlepping. It adds up: 86% report feeling depressed or anxious, in addition to other negative health effects.

Debbie used to roll her eyes when friends warned her that the spontaneity in her life would vanish once she had kids and as her parents aged. She says that by the time January rolls around, “my life is planned literally up to the end of September.” She counts herself lucky to have paid vacation and a standing monthly dinner with friends.

Sandwichers are not (entirely) giving up

The remarkable thing about middle-aged Canadians is that, despite all the crunching and sandwiching, they’re still saving about $15,000 a year on average. That’s less than millennials’ $22,000, but still meaningful. If you start saving at 45 (and let’s hope you begin before that) with $0 and invest $15,000 annually until you retire at 65, you could end up with more than $500,000 (assuming a 5% annual return). Point being: modest contributions add up. “I think you should just save whatever you can and hope for the best,” Debbie says.

Another advantage middle-aged folks have is that many will inherit substantial sums as part of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in Canadian history. They also have some of the highest rates of homeownership in Canada. (And 30-somethings aren’t far behind.) Mireille’s husband tries to ease her fears about retirement by reminding her that they could just sell their place to fund their golden years. But then what, she wonders? “We’re not going to live in a tent.”

Perhaps they can lean on their children to figure out a solution. ♦

Illustrations by Ben Denzer. Brennan Doherty assisted with data reporting.

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Who Cares?

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This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), Maude Campbell (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Eva Grace Clement Cruz (specialist, product engagement), Setareh Sarmadi (senior editorial producer), Matthew Karasz (markets editor), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief).

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🤮 The great middle-age cash crunch…