Case Study - Where to invest?

[Ninjasandpancakes]

Hi Mustachians :)

I'm looking for some investment advice. I am married with a 17-month-old, and baby #2 is due in two months. I am 29 years old and my partner is 28. I am currently a stay-at-home parent. When baby #2 arrives, my partner will be taking parental leave  for 61 weeks (we live in Canada). During this 61 week leave, our only income will be EI from government parental leave. We will be using some of our savings to get us through this time, but we see it kind of as taking a year of retirement early to spend with our kids while they and we are young.

My partner and I are both have natural mustachian spending tendencies. We've always been good at being frugal and saving. But we are super novices when it comes to investing.

Our financial details are as follows:
 
Salary pre/post-paternity leave: 62,000
EI income for during 61 week leave: 20,000

Our yearly expenses are approx 33,500

Only debt is our mortgage which is 267,000 with biweekly payments of 636.

Account Balances:
Investor's Group:
- My TFSA: 29,000
- My RSP: 15,100
- Partner's TFSA: 28,200
- Partner's RSP: 15,200
- Joint non-registered account: 38,000

Sunlife:
LIRA (my retirement account from a previous employer): 13,600

Manulife:
Partner's work retirement account: 6,250

Joint checking account: 40,000

Total of all accounts: 185,350

We also have one car worth about 5,000 and about 120,000 in home equity.

Question
I'm looking for advice in two areas:
1) We would like to move our money out of IG due to the high fees. My question is where should we move it? When we move these accounts, I will also be setting up a family RESP for our kids.
I was thinking Questrade, but I don't think I have enough confidence in my investing skills/enough time to learn to make this work.

2) What to do with the money in our checking account? 
5K will go to the RESP this year. Do I invest the rest, and withdrawl as needed during the parental leave? Or leave it in our account to use during the parental leave, and invest the remaining when we get back to making money?

Thanks in advance!

[daverobev]

1. Easiest: TD eSeries mutual funds. Cheapest: Questrade

Questrade is easy. Type in a 'symbol' for an ETF you want to buy; click on it; click buy/sell; enter some info (select a Limit order, refresh to get 'live' price, enter a price one or two cents above the current 'ask' price. Done!). Once you've done it twice you'll be fine.

2. Never invest short-term money. Open an account with EQBank and get 2.3%; transfer cash to your main chequing account as you need to.