If you hold any US dollars, whether it is a US-dollar savings account, the US side of a brokerage account, or a single US-listed stock, your Canadian net worth has a moving part most people do not account for. The balance can sit perfectly still in US dollars while your net worth in Canadian dollars rises or falls, purely because the exchange rate moved underneath it. Counting that correctly is the difference between a net-worth figure you can trust and one that quietly lies to you.
This article explains how to fold USD accounts into a Canadian net worth, which exchange rate to use and why, the two traps that produce wrong numbers, and the one Canadian tax-reporting threshold that US holdings can cross. It is a companion to the broader guide on tracking your net worth across every account.
Net worth is measured in one currency, at today's value
Net worth is what you own minus what you owe, counted on one day, in one currency. The "one currency" part is doing quiet work. If some of your accounts are in US dollars, you cannot add a US-dollar balance to a Canadian-dollar balance any more than you can add kilometres to litres. You have to convert first.
For almost everyone living in Canada, the base currency is the Canadian dollar, because that is what you earn, spend, and owe your mortgage in. So the rule is: convert every US-dollar balance to Canadian dollars at the current rate on your snapshot day, then add it in.
"Current rate" is the second piece people get wrong, and it deserves its own section.
Which rate: today's, not the one you paid
The instinct is to record a US holding at what it cost you. You bought US$10,000 of a US index fund when the US dollar was worth C$1.30, so you paid C$13,000, and C$13,000 feels like the accurate number. It is not, for net worth.
Net worth measures what things are worth now, not what you paid. If the US dollar is worth C$1.40 today, that US$10,000 is worth C$14,000 today, regardless of what you paid. Using the C$1.30 rate you paid at understates your net worth by C$1,000 of currency movement that is genuinely yours. The reverse is true if the Canadian dollar strengthened: paying at C$1.40 and marking at C$1.30 would overstate.
The book rate, the rate you paid, matters for one thing: calculating your capital gain when you sell, where the adjusted cost base is computed in Canadian dollars at the rate on the purchase date. But for net worth, which is a snapshot of today's value, use today's rate. Pick a consistent source, the Bank of Canada daily exchange rate is the standard, and use the same source every month so your trend stays comparable.
The FX-moves-your-net-worth effect, worked out
This is the part that surprises people, so here it is in numbers.
You hold US$50,000 in a US technology stock. You take a net-worth snapshot on the first of each month.
- January 1: the stock is worth US$50,000 and the US dollar is worth C$1.36. Your holding is C$68,000.
- December 31: the stock is still worth US$50,000, it did not budge, but the US dollar is now worth C$1.42. Your holding is C$71,000.
Your Canadian net worth rose C$3,000 over the year from this position, and the stock did nothing. That gain is real: if you sold and converted to Canadian dollars, you would have C$3,000 more than in January. It is a currency gain, not a stock gain, but it spends the same.
Now run it the other way. Suppose instead the Canadian dollar strengthened and the US dollar fell to C$1.30 by year-end. The same untouched US$50,000 is now worth C$65,000, a C$3,000 drop in your Canadian net worth, again with the stock flat. If you were tracking only the US-dollar value, this C$3,000 would be invisible, and your net worth number would be wrong by exactly that amount.
Neither of these shows up if you leave the balance in US dollars in your total. That is why the conversion is not optional bookkeeping. It is the difference between measuring your actual Canadian-dollar position and measuring a number that ignores a real source of gains and losses.
Trap one: mixing currencies in one total
The most common mistake is the one that leaves no visible trace: dropping a US-dollar balance straight into a Canadian total without converting. A US$50,000 balance added as "50,000" into a Canadian net worth understates that position by roughly C$21,000 at a C$1.42 rate. The total still looks like a plausible number, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed.
This gets worse with brokerage accounts that hold both Canadian and US securities. Some brokers show you a blended account value; some show US positions in US dollars and Canadian positions in Canadian dollars on the same screen without a bold label telling you which is which. When you copy balances into a spreadsheet, it is easy to record a US-dollar sub-total as if it were Canadian. Always check the currency label on each line before you write the number down.
Trap two: double conversion
The opposite mistake. Some Canadian brokers hold US-listed stocks but report the position already converted to Canadian dollars on your statement. If you take that already-converted Canadian figure and convert it again, you inflate the holding by the exchange rate twice.
The fix is to know, for each account, whether the number you are reading is in US dollars (convert it once) or already in Canadian dollars (use it as-is). Write the currency next to each account in your tracker so you never have to guess. When a brokerage offers both a "USD" and a "CAD" view of the same account, pick one convention and stick to it.
The tax-reporting threshold US holdings can cross
One Canadian-specific wrinkle worth knowing, because it surprises people who never thought of themselves as having foreign assets. If the total cost of your specified foreign property exceeds C$100,000 at any point in the year, you must file Form T1135, the Foreign Income Verification Statement, with your return.
US-listed stocks and US-dollar accounts held in a non-registered account count toward that threshold. Two things soften it:
- It is measured on cost, in Canadian dollars, not current market value, so a position that grew past $100,000 but was bought for less may not trigger it.
- Holdings inside an RRSP or TFSA do not count. The threshold is about non-registered foreign property. A US index fund inside your TFSA is invisible to T1135.
T1135 is a reporting form, not a new tax. But the penalties for not filing when you should have are steep, so if your US holdings in taxable accounts are approaching six figures of cost, put it on your radar. This is separate from the withholding tax the US applies to dividends (generally 15% in a non-registered or TFSA account, and exempt inside an RRSP under the Canada-US tax treaty), which affects your returns rather than your net-worth measurement.
What a correct multi-currency setup looks like
The whole job comes down to four habits:
- One base currency, the Canadian dollar for most people here.
- Every foreign balance converted at the current rate on snapshot day.
- One consistent rate source, used every month.
- A currency label on every account, so you convert once, never zero times and never twice.
Do that and your net worth reflects both your assets and the currency they sit in, which is the true picture. Skip it and you are either ignoring real currency gains and losses or double-counting the exchange rate, and in both cases the monthly trend, the thing net worth is actually for, stops being reliable.
How Mozaic handles it
Doing this by hand every month is the step people abandon, because it is fiddly and easy to get subtly wrong. The Mozaic multi-currency net-worth view does the daily conversion for you: it reads your Canadian and US balances from the major banks and brokerages (read-only, via SnapTrade and Plaid), converts every US-dollar position to your base currency at the current rate, and shows one net worth number that already accounts for the exchange rate. It knows which accounts are in US dollars, so it converts each one exactly once, closing both traps above.
The broader net-worth tracker then folds those converted balances in with your registered accounts and any manual assets like a home or car. The connection is read-only, so Mozaic can never move or convert your actual money; it only converts the figures for display. Data is stored in Google Cloud's Montréal region under PIPEDA and Quebec Law 25 (/security). If all your money is in Canadian dollars, you do not need any of this. If you hold US stocks or a US-dollar account, the conversion is the exact part worth automating, because it is the part that silently goes wrong.
The bottom line
US dollar accounts belong in your Canadian net worth, converted to Canadian dollars at the current rate on the day you take the snapshot. The exchange rate is a live component of your net worth: it moves your Canadian-dollar total even when your US holdings sit still, and that movement is real money. Avoid the two traps, mixing currencies in one total and converting an already-converted balance twice, keep a currency label on every account, and watch the C$100,000 T1135 threshold if your taxable US holdings are large.
If you would rather not run a currency conversion by hand every month, the multi-currency net-worth view does it daily, and the 14-day free trial needs no card. For the wider setup across every account, start with the guide on tracking net worth across Canada.