Excellent! Thanks so much, Le Barbu.
So if you were me, on the 17 year registered account you would go:
Canadian equity 35% TD Canadian Index – e (TDB900)
US equity 35% TD US Index – e (TDB902)
International equity 30% TD International Index – e (TDB911)
Do I have that right?
And yep, I have money in a regular account, so all good for cash/liquid/emergency. Some of that will move into the subsequent investments but this exists, too.
A lovely thing, too, has been that the fancy back-office person they put me with at Waterhouse for one appointment, she is of the same mind as CCP, the gist of things here, and also what you said here:
...another could try to "shave" another 300$MER/year with ETF's instead of TD Index Funds (difference between 0.4%MER compared to 0.1%MER over 100k) etc. Seaking for the best, you can miss the good!
She, too, felt that in my case TD Index Funds were at least as good a choice as the lower-free ETFs, and noted that we need to pay attention not only to "lowest fees" but overall net gain, saying that sometimes an option with slightly higher fees nets more for the investor than the lowest fee option does, which is not at all what we're aiming for!
I've been wanting to grasp all of this stuff -the end picture, but also the details along the way that allow me to get there- for two reasons:
1. I've been working at grasping this stuff for over a year, and I'd like to finish that process, and
2. I really want to drop the money in ONCE. I don't want to drop or move money and then a week later "get around to" learning the next piece and want to move everything again.
This said, the whole thing around ETFs, US withholding taxes, etc, is indeed beyond me at this moment -and I'm not ready to delve into learning about those- and I'm hoping that my new RDSP account will be set up this week, hopefully today or tomorrow. So, I want to work out what I'm doing with this one account so that I'm ready when it is... Moving all the other accounts, if I want to take three more weeks on those, that's fine. This one needs to be done before year end, though.