Hey,
new member to this site and forum but finding this great site could not have come at a better time. My wife and I just had twins so I have been in the market for an RESP plan that will work for us. After a little investigation we have decided to go with a TD self-directed RESP and I thought while I was at it I would create a self-directed RRSP as well as a TFSA. So am looking for some recommendations in the following areas if you folks would be good enough to chime in, they are:
1) Any recommendations on fund choices for the RESP? We plan on maxing out this plan every year ($5000) so that we can get the most out of the government grant portion for the twins.
2) I have about $90,000 in a company RESP plan that I can move to my new SDRSP and am open to suggestions. We have done pretty well in the last 5 years with the work plan but the fund choices are very limited. I know everyone keeps mentioning the TD e-Series funds but if there are other suggestions I would be happy to hear it.
3) Shame on me for not spending more time understanding the benefits of a TFSA but my wife and I have not utilized this at all. With the new account I have moved over about $5000 to invest and thought it best to ask for a little advice before I jumped in. Once again I am open to suggestions here and would love to get into some dividend investing, if possible.
Thanks in advance for any help and should you require any other information please let me know.
P.
Welcome to the forums and congrats on the twins! The TD e-series funds are effective for RESP plans because they have a low minimum starting investment, no purchase fees, and low MERs. Your timeline for investment will be around 18 years, so take that into account. A good mix would be about 75% stock 25% bond. I would follow the CCP "Assertive" strategy of 25% Canadian Index, 25% US Index, 25% International Index, and 25% Canadian Bond Index. Keeps things simple and make annual rebalancing easy. Once you are within 5 years of use, you can increase the bond portion to 40% or 50% to stabilize the accounts.
http://canadiancouchpotato.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CCP-Model-Portfolios-TD-e-Series.pdfAs far as your RRSP and TFSA goes, I would probably look at other options for these accounts because the amount you are investing will be larger. At this point using ETFs makes more sense. Being a former TD Waterhouse customer, I was not overly impressed with their fees, account options, or customer service. I hear much better things about RBC Direct (for big bank brokerages) and I now use Questrade myself because of their extremely low fees. The CCP website also offers great information about ETF investing:
http://canadiancouchpotato.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/CCP-Model-Portfolios-Vanguard.pdfThere is nothing wrong with dividend investing, especially if your are knowledgeable about how to analyze stock valuations and you take a conservative, long-term approach to investing. However, considering you are on here asking for advice on how to open accounts I would stick with indexing. Even knowledgeable dividend investors are not likely to significantly outperform indexing over the long term.