|
Me and my wife just maxed out our tax free savings thingies and have "a guy" handling our investments. We've got about 40k each in a mix of conservative and moderate mutual funds. I don't know poo poo about the world of finance, but is it generally safe to trust these investment dudes to throw my money into the best places? He thinks the housing market is bubbly and interest rates are going to be going up soon and that the canadian economy and banks aren't as solid as people think, so he moved our money around based on those assumptions. Are we mostly doing the right things here?
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2013 04:25
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 23:22 |
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 28, 2013 20:46
|
|
|
tuyop posted:There is absolutely no reason to buy an actively-managed mutual fund. 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.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 03:51
|
|
|
What are "securities" and why do I need 4? I'm picturing 4 security guards standing guard of my money-bin. -I'm wanting a fairly long term low-upkeep place to dump money that will see good returns over a longer 10+ time period. A nice big fund that will be a retirement fund and/or a downpayment on getting into the strong and stable Canadian real-estate market some time in the post-apocalyptic future. Nothing I'd need a moment's notice. -I'm terrified though that anything other than a hoard of gold under my bed will be wiped out in some Russian style financial collapse that of course will see the financial class and oligarchs some how come out even more ahead. -I'm terrified that by even getting into the financial game these people are going to trick me out of all my pennies. -I'm terrified of knowing what funds to put my money into and making the wrong choice and having like 100k wiped out because I invested it all in RIM or Enron or something. -I'm terrified that if there is a big housing crash it will some how wipe out all my investments so I won't be able to buy that nice 2br house for 300k and I'll be back at square one. -As a ridiculous min/maxer and lover of economic games I will go OCD crazy if I'm not making the 100% best max-gains choices because unlike a video game you can never have access to all the information or a perfect understanding of the system so that once again terrifies me that I'll make some wrong or not-optimal decisions. -I hate paperwork and financial jargon. My current situation is that me and my wife both have low paying jobs but very small living expenses so we've surprisingly got close to 100k in savings/investments. We just opened a manulife account or what ever a couple months ago and have "a guy" managing it all. I didn't understand a word he said so basically we just dumped the money on him and said "just put it in the best places" after he asked about our lives and plans. I love not having to think or worry about it, I hate that the fund is getting like 6% or something as a management fee and I'm getting like 3-4%. Every week or two we seem to get some huge envelope (each) from manulife or the fund or who knows what full of numbers and graphs that mean nothing to us and we can't decipher and it's just a huge waste of paper. If I could read this poo poo I wouldn't need "a guy" doing this for me.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 04:24
|
|
|
So like where do I actually go to get started? What building do I walk into? Who do I talk to? What do I say/ask? How do I handle my tax-free savings accounts and all that? There seems to be a billion options and ways to go about this all. I don't need a billion options, I need 1-2 options or just being told exactly step by step what to do. Like "Go to your credit union, ask for this form, fill it out, make sure to tick box 85B".
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 22:50
|
|
|
tuyop posted:Without doing a ton of research on my part, and assuming that that is an actively-managed fund (judging by the MER, it is), then yes. I mean that. Whenever you buy or sell a stock, including if you are a fund manager, you have to deal with the following costs, among some others (I don't remember the exact list): And I use couch potato to figure out which "ETF" things to buy? And I buy 4 of them? And then every quarter or year or so I check what couch potato recommends and switch my gains around?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2013 23:18
|
|
|
I have a bunch of family in Kiev and some of them want to stash their money in Canada since they're all a bit scared and all lost everything in the 90's already. Is this crazy? How would we go about doing it? What is the easiest way to do it that doesn't involve massive amounts of fees and taxes?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2014 03:01
|
|
|
Why couldn't they just convert their local currency into euros or USD or CDN or what ever and then transfer it over? They sent us about 5k at one point and we've sent them money via moneygram as well. \/ I guess they could try and see. It's not a lot of money, maybe 10k all together but that's like life-savings level for Ukraine. Hell that's good life-savings level for most Canadians I know that haven't won the job or birth lottery. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Mar 24, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2014 18:13
|
|
|
So you guys were right about Ukraine restricting money transfers out of the country. We found a way to get around it though. You can still do it but only between immediate family memebers and in limited amounts per day. So my mother in law is going to spend the next couple weeks going to the bank every day transfering money from my grandma to her then to my wife. Right now we just have a credit union account and to do a wire it has to go through like a half dozen banks. Is this going to horribly eat away at the money? Should we go open a Bank account to make this easier/cheaper?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2014 21:32
|
|
|
I've got a huge chunk of money sitting in a manulife mutual fund managed by a dude who offers drinks and snacks when you meet with him in his nice office and he really really cares about you and your family. It did just over 10% this year which is very nice, but it could be much much nicer without his and the fund's massive management fees. Also when I told him I'm very worried about Canadian banks and economy he assured me not to worry because "a crash in Canada would probably send stocks up, which is what happened in the US so don't worry the fund managers are well aware" Every few months I check the thread out thinking "that's it, I'm going to go self directed" then I read the thread and think "holy poo poo nope I'm in way over my head I guess this is why I need to pay a guy a fortune to do it for me". I wish there was a middle ground, where I could have some advisor or helper or what ever that actually knows about all this poo poo and can help me set up accounts and deal with the kafka-esq paperwork but not take a massive ridiculous fee and lock me into a few (apparently) lovely mutual fund products. There's also the feeling that if my current investments get hosed I can be mad at my "financial planner" and manulife, but if I went self directly I'd only have my self to blame. That and I have no idea what I'm doing and would simply ask the thread what to invest in. Then if I got more than 1 answer, panic. Is it possible to basically have what I have now, a few fairly conservative funds that I don't need to do anything with, but without the ridiculous fees? I know you guys have tried to explain to me before how to do this but it always gets to a point where I get conflicting info and I become paralyzed.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 8, 2014 23:23
|
|
|
Is there like a website or guide for how to do it? Like simple step by step? My problem is that there seem to be a million ways to go self directed. We used to have our mutual funds via our credit union and it was the exact same deal. Don't all financial institutions want you to use their over priced mutual fund dudes? Or is there a specific bank I can walk into and say "I want to do self-directed investing, how do we set this up?" and they'll take care of me? And yeah I'd love to take out 50k or so and see how self-directed stacks up against manulife. Of course it's not a sprint it's a marathon, the question is which will be ahead in 20 years not 20 months. This thread is great for people already investing but really confusing if you're trying to come in from the outside. Like I wish there was a 101 self-directed-investing guide in the OP for instance. I still don't even know what self directed is exactly. I'm buying and selling a bunch of stocks and bonds my self like a floor trader and combining them in some way that's like a mutual fund I'm making my self? I'm buying mutual funds my self and skipping the financial adviser guy?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2014 00:05
|
|
|
Ok, baby steps. There's a TD near my house that has a bunch of "waterhouse" logos on it. I'll go there and tell them what I'm trying to do and they'll open the right account for me right? Then what? Like exactly what. I understand the next step is to move money from my insane fees mutual funds into my TD water-house thingy but how do I do that? Do I just call up my dude and be all like "Sorry to break your heart but can you put all my money into this account?". He will probably try to scare me and has very good well rehearsed arguments that his fees actually aren't that high, even with the fees I'll get better returns with him, why risk doing it on my own? I will try to stay strong! Ok, now imagine I've moved all or half my money out. It's sitting in this TD account. How do I go about buying the actual mutual funds? I see this couch potato has recommended funds from the TD E series but I don't know the difference between an indexed fund and an exchange traded fund, or going international and being exposed to currency poo poo. Then there's taxes. I know right now I have my TFSA's maxed out and we continue to contribute the maximum every year. Will the TD people sort this poo poo out for me too, to like... bless my accounts or what ever makes them TFSA? I just want a super simple place to hoard a retirement fund and maybe forget it. I still don't quite 100% understand "balancing" either. Lets say I buy into 4 funds, is balancing just spreading the gains so my funds remain in the proportions I want so if one has a good year or bad year it doesn't get too out of whack? I almost need someone to just say something like: "Go to TD, open this account, make sure to tell them this and that so they will be TFSA. Then call your manulife guy and tell him X and Y. Then use this method to buy these exact funds. Don't forget to do Z since you're investing for the long term and Z will be the most optimal" PS Does the amount I'm investing matter? I know we recently got over some threshold with our manulife poo poo where our dude was like "oh great you're over X dollars so they're waiving a bunch of fees". Like would my funds influence your guy's recommendations on what bank to go with and or what funds to get? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 02:17 on Sep 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2014 02:12
|
|
|
Thanks so much, it doesn't look any harder than managing your own personal bank accounts, just instead of moving poo poo from savings to chequing you're moving it from one mutual fund to another. To better sell my wife on this, just what differences in gains (or savings more exactly) would we see doing this through TD rather than our "manulife guy" ? I don't even know exactly what his cut is, or the cut of the funds them selves. Are those separate things? Like the "guy" gets a cut, and the mutual funds them selves often have a listed % management fee. Am I still paying those later fees when I do self directed and only saving my "guy"'s cut, or am I saving more? Let's say I had 10k over the year and "my guy" earned me 1,000. How much more would I have seen if I had been doing self-directed? My funds are taking about 3-4% in management fees, but earned us 10% this year. I don't even know if that's good. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Sep 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2014 03:05
|
|
|
My wife is really not on board. Her family had their entire savings wiped out in the 90's (russia) and growing up her experience with "self directed investing" was a family member losing most of their savings when another family member had a "hot investment" and then the money all vanished. Then later another family member got talked into another hot investment and lost everything. I'm trying to explain we'd be getting the exact same sort of stuff as we're getting through manulife, just not paying ridiculous fees that in the long term take a huge chunk of your income for absolutely no better performance. She also has similar fears I do, that I'd some how press a wrong button or type something in wrong or set up an account wrong and accidentally invest 100k into Kitimat condo project. But as long as I have you guys to hold my hand a little on buying my first funds through TD's e-trade stuff I should be golden. She says if I get it all set up she'll consider it. But from her perspective I'm just like that family member running up and saying they're fools to keep their money in the safe bank and he has a guaranteed better performing investment. Oh some dudes on the internet say to ditch the mutual fund guy she's known and trusted for years? The same dudes that say there's going to be a housing crash any second now? Hmmmm. *edit* holy poo poo I can't argue with a DS9 reference.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2014 03:27
|
|
|
Sounds like a good idea, I'm just worried if the manulife poo poo does like half a percent better it will be proof "the guy" is a financial genius worth his percentages. It's going to be hard to even get the money to start this TD thing. She said she might consider letting us add more a year or so if I haven't lost it all. But she seems pretty sure I'm going to screw something up or forget to do something and lose it all and that losing out on $150k of compounding interest over 20 years is no big deal because if I'm responsible for the money I'll lose it all. In the meantime I guess I'll go find that 4 pillars book! I think I'll try to swing by TD tomorrow to open an account. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Sep 9, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2014 05:13
|
|
|
Babby's First e-fund update: Searched local shops for 4 pillars, none of them had it and wanted $35 to order it, went amazon for $12. Have an appointment to open a TD account on Friday. Have an appointment to open a "WebBroker" account at TD Waterhouse for "direct investing" tomorrow. Called my Manulife guy and have $2500 coming my way in about a week. Should be an ok amount to get started? TD Waterhouse also said they do free seminars on direct investing and using the webbroker interface, worth checking out? Am I doing this right? I don't remember anyone mentioning webbroker before, but when I went into the TD and told them I wanted an e-series fund they sent me next door to waterhouse. When I told the lady there I wanted e-series mutual funds she was like "oh you mean web broker?" Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Sep 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2014 00:10
|
|
|
So should I cancel this waterhouse appointment and try to... ask harder at the TD bank? I'm getting conflicting which is paralyzing me. These are the sort of mixed signals and "don't do this or fees will kill you" "no do this its better!" stuff that gets me really flustered. My end goal is to have some simple e-series like couch potato recomends (i think?) mutual funds that I can more or less forget about in a TFSA. If I'm starting with $2000, $100 fee is going to kill me. But in the end I would like to have well over 100k in there, but I need to prove it's better and just as safe as Manulife to my wife. Weird fees or surprise charges or taxes will ruin that experiment. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Sep 10, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2014 02:56
|
|
|
Went to my TD Bank appointment, got a lady who's been working there 30 years and knew her poo poo. Instantly knew all about their e-series stuff and filled out all the paperwork along with setting up the account. Gave me some advice, said she'd help with anything as well as help assure my wife. Went over why using a "guy" for mutual funds is pretty much throwing your money away and confirmed that although I won't be making the bank much money, I'm absolutely doing the right thing and she's salary. She also said due to the amount we'll be potentially investing she'll make an appointment with one of their "guys" who is non-commission and just generally go over everything I need to know to get my e-series funds going and optimize everything for taxes/retirement and make transferring over my TFSA smooth. She had even heard of canadian couch potato! Good signs? Am I on the right track?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2014 00:36
|
|
|
She had one of those apparently popular charm necklace collector things just LOADED with charms and those are apparently super expensive so she's clearly doing well for her self.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 13, 2014 01:25
|
|
|
Yay The Four Pillars of Investing arrived today.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2014 19:01
|
|
|
So I finally got a letter from TD saying they can't make my e-fund account because of missing info. The bank lady forgot to put my email in, so I had to write my email address down and put it in their provided return envelope and mail it off all the way back to Toronto. Why this signup isn't online is far far beyond my comprehension.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2014 19:37
|
|
|
It's been what.. a year since I last posted almost? Still getting hosed around setting up my TD e-series stuff. Online says I'm hooked up, but it doesn't work because the bank says I'm missing info in my account and everyone I talk to has a different answer. I've half given up, gently caress TD why do they make this so hard? I have 100k I'd like to give them but they're throwing up so many loving hoops. Their latest idiocy is mailing me a form and saying to write my email address in it (after emailing me that they need to mail me back a form so I can put my email address in it) then after I sent it back saying the form is no good because it's a copy and not the original. It's what you idiots sent me! Are all the "big 5" run this poorly? On the plus side my stupid manulife investments have done super well all this time and apparently a lot of the e-series guys I was going to buy have done a bit poo poo. Also, my wife is getting stocks every pay day for the company she works for because they give you a 50% discount. I was told we were idiots if not instantly selling the stocks and investing something else. How do I do this? How do we even access these stocks or do anything with them? My wife seems to think you "aren't allowed to do that". Now that our currency is hosed and canada is super hosed, what should someone with 100k sitting in a lovely high-fee manulife TFSA do? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Feb 4, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2015 23:55
|
|
|
My TD e-series poo poo is officially actually set up and good to go. I'm meeting my "personal banker" tomorrow to figure out how to transfer everything and get started. I want to get started with just a few grand to prove to my wife the e-series isn't a scam vs our strong stable manulife fund overseen by a hard working guy who I think she assumes is buying and selling stocks for us every day to get the maximum returns, AND offers free drinks when we go to his office. Which specific funds should I buy? I'm specially looking for one that will do well over the next year, or at least not go down. Because if my e-series performs not quite as well as our manulife stuff my wife will go "ah ha! See our guy works harder!"
|
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2015 23:20
|
|
|
"Thank you. Your request has been submitted." If all goes well I may have just bought $200 worth of TD's US equity-e. It's been a long road.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2015 00:04
|
|
|
Lexicon posted:It's good that you're dipping your toes in, but remember this is a long term investment and to not get spooked by any drops. You are buying at all time high S&P500 and decade high USDCAD, after all. Some bumps over the next 48 months should be very expected. It was just a sort of random purchase to make sure it works. Plan to bring a few grand and copy one of potatoman plans
|
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2015 07:50
|
|
|
I think this year we'll try to do our taxes our selves rather than pay a guy. What's the easiest free software for a couple with simple as poo poo returns?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2015 20:06
|
|
|
Also as far as I understand it, for mutual funds the whole "risk" thing is just more how big your ups and downs will be, not if you "risk" your money being all lost. What's important is the long term average. So a conservative fund might see -1% one year, 7% the next year, then 2% and after 15 years average out to 5% or so, while a "high risk" fund might see all sorts of crazy poo poo like 20% one year, -15% another year, but after 15 years averages out to 7%. So the longer-term your investment, the higher risk you can go because all you care about is the long term average. But if you aren't investing long term, if you're just putting some money away for a few years, you don't want to need your money the year after your fund did -20%.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2015 21:24
|
|
|
Me and the wife just went through with simple tax. A few things on investment stuff was a little non-handholdy and confusing but I think we got it all done, really easy and sure beats paying some dude $50 to do it. A good program!
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2015 01:05
|
|
|
So I only got tax poo poo for my non TSFA investments. No where on any of my taxes (yay simpletax it was fun!) did I make ANY mention of my TFSA. Did I do things right or am I going to jail?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 19, 2015 00:20
|
|
|
So my wife's being doing a stock buy thing with her company because they double your contribution so hey free money right? They just changed the rules so you can only cash out once a year though as too many people were cashing out every month. Still, doubling your money is good right? She's got over 2 grand squirreled away so we're going to cash that out and throw it in my e-series poo poo. She's still really not game on transferring our manulife stuff over to TD e-series because she wants that money to be "safe" but says we can start growing the e-series with other money. She still views it as a less stable/more risky thing 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2015 18:28
|
|
|
Yeah I use coast capital for all my daily banking because all their poo poo is free and decent customer service and I like their web stuff, and I use TD just for their stupid e-series poo poo.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2015 21:23
|
|
|
I want airkilometers
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2015 16:38
|
|
|
Why is she not interested in e-series? I mean other than the months of paperwork and fuckups and people who don't know what they're doing. After that you're set.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2015 21:19
|
|
|
Yeah, as a poor with maxed out TFSA this is nice for me but I'm like the only person in my peer group I know with any sort of investments, let alone not still paying off student loans and poo poo in their 30's. I'd much rather have a lower cap and an actual developed-world level of social services and infrastructure. That's worth a hell of a lot more to me than how ever much I'll save on taxes on my TFSA.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2015 23:42
|
|
|
I convinced my wife to cash out a couple years worth of company stocks she's been collecting since they match 50% and just recently are changing to a system that you can only cash out once a year. She's letting me put it all in my TD e-series. Hopefully this will slowly evolve into being allowed to transfer part or all of our manulife high-fee bullshit into the e-series.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2015 03:19
|
|
|
rt_hat posted:I used to use the default rewards one from TD and was getting back about $200 cash back. Since then, I've used http://www.greedyrates.ca Thanks for this, I just applied for a new card. I've been running the same high interest zero reward lovely "student" visa card for like 8 years.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2015 16:19
|
|
|
So I want to stick with these TD e-series funds but man is it a pain getting money from my coast capital account to the TD account, and the TD interface is pretty bad. I'd so love to keep everything within my credit union. They were trying to talk me into switching my mutual funds over to them giving me the whole eye-rolling speech about how banks are evil and greedy and charge crazy fees while credit unions are all about serving the members and give sooo much money to charity. My TD e-series dudes have .33 to .5% MER while, from what I can tell reading the prospectus for the coast capital options (and I don't even know if they are any good) they are closer to 1-3% depending on the fund, but I'm not quite literate enough to fully understand this pdf let alone judge if the funds are any good. https://www.coastcapitalsavings.com/Resources/Documents/Prospectus/SEI_SimplifiedProspectus.pdf Are any of these coast capital funds at all competitive with the couch-potato recommended TD e-series funds? I'm fine dealing with a bad interface and doing pre-authorized withdraws from my coast capital to TD every month if it means squeezing a few more percent of interest out of the funds, or a few percent less in MER robbery. Advice? \/ The fees are on page 21, allegedly. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Apr 30, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2015 00:38
|
|
|
Lexicon posted:@Baronjutter - you can move money pretty easily from a non-TD institution either with a automated buy or a one time transfer initiated from the TD [terrible web app] end. I have my siblings set up this way - it was originally configured by providing TDMF with a void cheque, as I recall. The guy was going on and on about how there's NO WAY TD isn't charging me huge fees for the account or to manage the funds and just because they list the MER at .33% doesn't mean they aren't getting their cut somewhere because banks are evil and always trying to screw you. He guaranteed coast capital's funds would be cheaper. From what I'm reading about their funds, this teller was talking out of his rear end. He also kept going on about how much more socially responsible credit unions are and how much they donate. Made me keep thinking back to the canadian politics thread today where a canagoon found his credit union was giving massive donations to the Alberta PC's and wild rose. I love my credit union for daily banking, the banks do try to gently caress you over for that. But unless coast capital offers something like TD's e-series they can go gently caress them selves in a democratic socially responsible way. Also jesus christ, Coast capital has gobbled up countless Vancouver island and Vancouver credit unions and is lobbying to be allowed to spread nationally. They want so bad to become as big as the banks.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2015 00:55
|
|
|
blah_blah posted:TD's All-Inclusive Banking Plan is pretty good, why not just dump your lovely credit union. Yeah I'm not paying $30 a month for the honour of a debit card. All the major banks want some ridiculous minimum or huge fees.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2015 04:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 23:22 |
|
|
The 5000 include mutual funds, not just savings account? Nah none of this would work, I'd have to have my wife transfer to TD as well, and my work pays me easily because they use the same credit union so just transfer the money. I'll just keep TD for investing and coast capital for daily banking.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2015 05:30
|
|