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tuyop posted:No they don't, but they're hardly the only low-MER Canadian and International index funds available so I don't really get the excitement over e-series. The excitement is: it's the only product in Canadian finance that allows dollar-cost averaging into market indices with non-prohibitive transaction costs and low MER.
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Oct 7, 2013 19:53
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tuyop posted:Ok, so maybe I'm not understanding dollar cost averaging or transaction costs because I haven't gotten there yet. True, I forgot about Questrade's "free ETF" thing. You could certainly go that route. I'm not sure how long that will last though, and as stated, I'm not a huge fan of Questrade's online tools. My setup is that I send $AMT from my chequing account into TD e-series on a weekly basis, and as far as I know, e-series is the only economical way to do this at low amounts at high frequency. There's probably little actual benefit in contributing so often versus monthly or quarterly, but I like having it set up this way.
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Oct 7, 2013 20:22
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Squibbles posted:Maybe this is a dumb question... You want to start off with a sensible split, and then add your purchases with an appropriate proportionality (each week, I contribute $X to the US index, $Y to the CA index, etc). Inevitably, with market fluctuations, things will get out of sync, so yearly you'll aim to rebalance back to a target allocation in order to take profits and buy cheap securities.
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Oct 17, 2013 15:35
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I'm thinking of opening a trading account at BMO or TD. Does anyone know if they charge additional fees for self-directed registered accounts (RRSP or TFSA)? I'm thinking of opening a non-registered and a TFSA there.
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Oct 17, 2013 15:37
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Thanks all, that was useful. Will probably just go with BMO as I already do business banking through them.
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Oct 18, 2013 16:50
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Corrupt Cypher posted:First off, thanks so much for putting this thread together OP. I've just finished paying off my OSAP debt and had already begun putting my monthly savings into Investors Group mutual funds to help out a friend whose recently started at the company. Cool, good to hear. I wouldn't recommend that you expose yourself to market fluctuations if you're going to need this cash in the short term. These investments we've been discussing are for long-haul investments... for retirement, or a decade or two out. So you may wish to keep your capital for a car in a high-interest savings account or GIC for the present. Another event like 2008, and an e-series portfolio might drop 30-40% quickly. Not a good thing if you're planning to buy a car in the next month, but mostly irrelevant over a long horizon (especially if you have the cojones to continue purchasing units while they are 'on sale' - that's why automating your investing is so great). You might still want to start getting into the habit of contributing regularly to something like e-series though, as a savings vehicle for the long term, ideally within a TFSA. However, if you're new to this world, you should train yourself to expect fluctuations in the market and not worry at all about the day to day valuations. All of this financial stuff is as much about emotional discipline as it is about technical details. Don't rush though...  A minor point on terminology: liquidity and volatility are orthogonal. e-series funds are highly 'liquid' - that is to say, you can always sell them for cash... but their value has the potential to be quite 'volatile'.
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Oct 28, 2013 17:51
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Corrupt Cypher posted:I'm completely open to this, I just never understood the practicality of it. In general, this is an argument with merit, especially for high-rate debt like credit cards. Car loans are often at a very low interest rate though. It can be worth paying the 2-3% rather than blowing a bunch of capital if it allows you flexibility in either life or investing.
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Oct 28, 2013 19:52
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah I got a 0.9% financing for my car so I simply invested that money I would have paid cash for the car for but at way higher returns. A related, wider point: of course - when purchasing a car - one must always be aware that sometimes dealers will sell a vehicle 'cheaply' with 'expensive' financing or vice versa. So there's no point striving for 0% financing if it comes at the cost of a pricier vehicle. The financing is effectively built into the car at that point, even though it notionally says "0%". You want to negotiate these things separately, if at all possible, and have a backup plan for financing either personally or through your bank if need be.
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Oct 28, 2013 21:12
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PSA: TD is offering a free $100 if you open and automate mutual funds savings by Nov 1st. http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/products-services/banking/accounts/account-services/automate-your-savings.jsp A great opportunity to start e-series savings. The branch won't make it e-series for you, but you can send in a form later to convert over to that, and for now focus on getting the bonus.
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Oct 29, 2013 15:08
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Demon_Corsair posted:Is the moneysense guide to perfect portfolio a good primer? Trying to dig up info on canada couch potato is just painful. 3 items per page? are you loving kidding me? Um, all you need is the model portfolio page. I agree the 3-item pagination for the blog is not ideal, but that's all supplementary info.
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Oct 29, 2013 20:30
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tuyop posted:There is absolutely no reason to buy an actively-managed mutual fund. Hardly a controversial proclamation in this thread.
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Oct 30, 2013 03:38
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Baronjutter posted:I'm glad I put pretty much all my money into one of these right before this thread started. They pay better than the bank's interest rates but the fund's management % take is always wayyy higher than any gains I see. But even after reading this entire thread twice I'm still too stupid to figure out what the alternative is as there's no couch-potato recommended place anywhere near me. No one who is not an illiterate is too stupid to understand this. You buy 4 securities and rejigger the allocation annually. Not hard. If you have specific questions, ask away.
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Oct 30, 2013 03:56
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Lobok posted:I assume this automation won't work with transfers from accounts outside of TD correct? I don't have any chequing or savings accounts with TD anymore, just a line of credit. I don't see why it wouldn't - my automation is set up from ING Chequing, though this was in place long before a bonus was offered. They shouldn't care, in theory, where the money comes from - their objective is getting people to buy mutual funds. Lobok posted:While we're on the subject, is there a quick 1-2-3 explanation of exactly what one would ask for in setting up these accounts? You have to make a full-on appointment with one of the investment managers at a branch so I don't want them to give me some spiel that distracts me from getting the very simple thing I want. I want to have the e-series TFSA that this thread mentions time and again, which I will have to do the final conversion of myself through the mail-in forms. Just go in, open some subset or all of { RRSP, TFSA, non-registered } regular mutual fund accounts. Listen to the bullshit. Tell them you are planning for the long term, but stick with something conservative for now while you "learn about the markets". Get the accounts open, hopefully score the bonus, then fill in the paperwork to transition them over to e-series. Don't mention e-series in the branch - you're there as a good, little docile mutual-fund-investing Canadian. Once all that business is done, you can get your e-series allocation right, and set the automation for those going forward.
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Oct 30, 2013 17:05
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tuyop posted:A security is just a stock or bond. I think there are some weird other stuff like options, too. Don't worry about that stuff. Everyone, especially you Baronjutter, should internalize this post. Print it and put it on your goddamn wall.
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Oct 30, 2013 17:09
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slidebite posted:Would this be a good thread to talk about Canadian credit cards? That other credit card thread seems to be mostly American from the brief browse I took. Of course. I have the MBNA Smart Cash World card, which was pretty lucrative on cash-back until TD bought them over and tightened the screws. I also have the Chase Amazon which has fantastic forex rates - they charge the mid-market rate on foreign currencies - which is practically unheard of in Canada. If anyone has any recommendations for replacing the first one, I'd be all ears. My criteria is pretty much: - decent cashback or points rate since I pay practically everything by credit card (yes, this is probably inflationary and bad for merchants - but that's the world we live in, unfortunately) - rental car insurance coverage - no annual fee, unless the reward payout strongly justifies it
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Oct 30, 2013 21:54
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I'm surprised to hear that the Aspire Travel World is good... Capital One is a notoriously skeezy company. After being a customer of theirs briefly when I lived in the USA for a while (long story - no credit in a new country means you get to deal with the bottom of barrel operators until establishing non-zero credit history), I don't think I could in good conscience sign up for it.
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Oct 30, 2013 22:33
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slidebite posted:I plan on treating it like my mutual funds...really not touching them unless they really under perform. Danger Will Robinson. You're free to buy and sell as you please - but this sort of timing intention is what leads to most investors, professional and amateur alike, not beating the market. If you follow an indexing strategy, you don't allow this sort of thinking to influence your purchasing, and in fact, you'll be buying underperforming securities come rebalance time (as they are 'on sale'!).
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Oct 31, 2013 04:36
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Kal Torak posted:I'd say you are bang on. Those seem about as safe as you can get in the Canadian market. Just my opinion. I respectfully disagree. I'd go with VCN. Covers more companies, more diversified, and is more representative of the entire market. Half the MER. The dividend focus seems like a gimmick unless this is more of a short term (sub 2 year) play.
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Oct 31, 2013 04:50
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I believe "self directed" is bank nomenclature for "we don't 'oversee' or 'add value' to what goes on here". By contrast, any mutual funds including e-series bought through TD Mutual Funds (as opposed to TD Waterhouse) is "overseen" by the bank. If you frequently buy/sell to try and time the market or make purchases inconsistent with the bullshit risk analysis survey they have you do, they reserve the right to refuse it until they talk it over with you or some such. I do my weekly e-series purchase through TD Mutual Funds and it's been fine. I've changed various parameters and they haven't hassled me ever. But it's still not "self directed" as far as they are concerned. If they ever do make waves, I'll be moving these over to ETFs ASAP - though that would be unfortunate because I do like the zero-transaction-cost, low-MER, dollar-cost-averaging that only e-series provides. Oh, and you don't need a chequing account with them to be buying these. I do it directly from ING Chequing. The only product I have with TD is an e-series TFSA and non-registered account.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:12
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Lobok posted:I just came from the bank and set up the mutual fund TFSA. Do I have to let it sit for a month as they say before making changes or can I start the e-series conversion right away? Get it going right now All the "conversion" is them setting a bit on their database to allow you to purchase the exact same index funds at 1/3 the MER. Every other aspect of the account - the web UI, the account numbers, everything, remains the same. It's pure price discrimination, nothing more.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:19
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Demon_Corsair posted:So basically I should be converting my existing TD RRSP to e-series (Do I have to mail the form in, or can I go in to the branch with them) instead of getting a TD waterhouse account. If you have tons of cash, go waterhouse. Below a threshold, say, $50k, you're probably better off with e-series mutual funds. In the case of the latter, they don't consider it "self directed" but it will be de-facto self-directed. But don't make any moves that strongly contradict your risk profile thing (e.g. don't buy the emerging market index when you said you were a conservative/short-term investor). Just mail the form in - the less you deal with the branch jokers, the better. Demon_Corsair posted:Edit: Yea, I just logged into my existing TD account, and there is the option to buy, sell, or move funds. So what do you think? stupid or lying? Stupid. As I said: branch jokers.
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Oct 31, 2013 20:23
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Lobok posted:All right thanks. And thanks for the heads-up about the $100 bonus - I had wanted to do this for a while, especially since the thread began but that was the perfect impetus I needed to actually get to the bank and do it. (Though I misread and the bonus was up to $100. Still, free money.) No worries! That's what the thread is for
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Oct 31, 2013 20:25
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Saltin posted:Self Directed means a bit more than that. A self directed RRSP is capable of holding a larger variety of securities than a run of the mill RRSP Yeah of course, I just meant in terms of what the bank means what talking about a "mutual funds" account specifically.
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Nov 1, 2013 16:35
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Always take free money, but with an eye to getting out of these horrible group things as early as humanly possible. They are always, always, poo poo.
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Nov 3, 2013 18:06
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Saltin posted:Long story short - don't expect the spread between "tax benefit I enjoy today" versus "taxes I have to pay tomorrow" to be as big as you think it's going to be. I am not criticizing the RRSP at all, but, the TFSA is a million loving times better in almost every case, and should be topped out first, as a priority, by everyone who is not the very highest marginal tax bracket today (and even then, those people should max the TFSA every year) This, a thousand times, this. RRSPs have two purposes, in my view, for a youngish person today: 1) For use by high-income workers who can't defer their income subject to tax by any other means (e.g. don't have the option to leave excess earnings in their corporation, for instance). If you are some kind of banker or rig worker or what not, you probably want an RRSP. 2) For strategic use outside of retirement - to finance a sabbatical type thing, or possibly take advantage of home buyer's plan, income splitting, etc. Outside of those two cases, I don't think they are that great of a deal. My retirement strategy is centred on my TFSA, and non-registered holdings.
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Nov 4, 2013 02:21
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Kashwashwa posted:I still don't understand how that can be true, when you get all of the taxes on the money contributed to an RRSP back... for me that's like 25%. If I had put that into a TFSA, I'd be making let's say around 6%... You've missed the point entirely - which is perfectly ok, because that's why this thread exists An RRSP trades taxation today for taxation in future. A contribution generates a tax saving now... But the government gets its cut when future withdrawals happen. This is entirely unrelated to the return generated by the holdings in these accounts. A TFSA and all its earnings belong fully to the owner, now and in future. No downstream tax on withdrawal or earnings.
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Nov 4, 2013 04:40
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tuyop posted:So I got married this year, it's pretty great, but I'm trying to make a list of financial and bureaucratic stuff that we have to take care of. Not sure. A major life event like this is probably worth paying for a couple of hours of an accountant's time just to learn new rules, benefits, options, etc. That's what I'd do. (Congratulations though!)
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Nov 4, 2013 14:45
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reflex posted:I have six months of expenses holed up, but keeping it completely liquid is only getting me 1% interest. Is it a bad idea to keep one month completely liquid and invest the other five in low-to-moderate risk portfolios to try and get a little more? My ultimate plan would be if life went sideways, live on the one month money while I withdraw the other five. It varies by circumstance, but "6 months of expenses" has always struck me as an overly conservative position. If you have a good line of credit and several credit cards, or better yet, the ability to borrow against an investment portfolio, that strikes me as a far better contingency plan. You want some access to liquid funds of course, but 6 months seems a little excessive.
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Nov 4, 2013 18:06
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slidebite posted:So I checked with my RBCDS adviser about buying the ETFs in my non-reg account. Needless to say, I'm not very impressed. I though it was something like $50 transaction to buy, boy was I wrong. It's like 2%. How is that even possible? Can you elaborate
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Nov 4, 2013 21:27
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Wow. That's nuts. So what exactly is RBC Dominion Securities? A managed analogue to RBC Direct Investing?
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Nov 4, 2013 22:05
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As I've long claimed, the financial services industry is largely predicated on consumer ignorance.
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Nov 5, 2013 02:50
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slidebite posted:True enough. Of course I'm aware of discount brokerages, just didn't know (or remember) RBC had one. Makes sense they would though since other competing institutions do. If you have other banking at RBC, you might as well keep it all in the same place if the prices/service etc are the same. I'm slowly migrating my investment stuff to BMO away from Questrade for pretty much this reason. I admire what Questrade is doing - I just hate using their website, and their service can be a bit shoddy. They are likely unbeatable if you are doing lots of trading though (don't do this).
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Nov 5, 2013 17:26
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This presentation is a bit tech-specific (was given at Twitter) and obviously is sub-optimal without the accompanying talk, but I think it's well worth the time of most people in this thread to spend ten minutes in perusal (especially anyone who finds all this stuff overwhelming): http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/adamnash/personal-finance-for-engineers-twitter-2013 Note the recurring themes from this thread: recency bias in real estate, benefit of low-cost index funds, general inability of people to outperform market, etc….
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Nov 6, 2013 23:03
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Tony Montana posted:There is no Australian investing thread, is there? I don't have the search function. There are Australian forums and I'm starting to poke around.. but I'm a long time member of the SA community and I like how we discuss stuff. Not that I'm aware of, fellow colonial. Why not start one?
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Nov 6, 2013 23:53
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tuyop posted:It looks like you guys have lower MERs than us so that's cool! It wouldn't be hard - virtually the whole planet has lower MERs than us. Canadians: We'll Buy It, No Matter the Price™.
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Nov 7, 2013 00:31
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reflex posted:Here's a general TFSA question: let's say I've maxxed it out and thrown $25,500 in there. I have a good year and end with a 5% return so my TFSA is now at $26,775, but then something happens and I have to withdraw it all. Once January 1 rolls around, is my contribution limit $25,500 + $5,500 or $26,775 + $5,500? The latter. Your withdrawal amount in year N gets added to your contribution limit for year N + 1.
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Nov 7, 2013 16:13
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mik posted:Would I technically have to wait until 2014 to move the money into the new TFSA if I withdraw in 2013? Yup, and you'll be potentially fined quite heavily if you fail to wait until the new year ticks over. That's why the transfer forms exist.
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Nov 7, 2013 17:19
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Saltin posted:Having said that, the statistics about how TFSAs are actually used in Canada are dismal. Half of the people that have opened a TFSA have no money in it, and of the other half, 80% of them use them quite literally as a savings account, earning 1% or less in interest. Yeah, it's pretty bad. You can lead a horse to water, and all that...
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Nov 7, 2013 17:21
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It's horseshit to debate the semantics and suggestibility of "account" or "savings" or "plan" or whatever. People need to get their act together and learn this stuff. Most won't, but that's on them. There is an absolute plethora of information out there, all free, in all manner of sources. There's no excuse for anyone who's a well-adjusted, literate, adult. No one was born with the knowledge of a TFSA's taxation rules.
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Nov 7, 2013 22:54
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Demon_Corsair posted:Until this thread I had no idea you could use a TFSA as anything other than a savings account. I have had my account since they first came out. No one in the bank ever mentioned that it could be used for mutual funds. There is almost no info floating around saying that they can be used as anything other then a savings account. Well, you know now, don't you! That's a start As for 'pinning it on the average person' - no one, and I mean no one gives a poo poo about your financial future. Not your employer, not the government, certainly not the banks, etc. So that only leaves you. People seem to have no trouble quoting the minutiae of offside rules, or world series batting averages, or whatever the gently caress other inane thing. This stuff is rather more important, and it's really not that hard. I mean, Jesus, you can't crack a Globe and Mail or regional daily any day in January through February 28th without financial columnists prattling on and on about TFSA and RRSP decisions, etc.
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Nov 7, 2013 23:04
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