What to do with my investments?

[suntan]

It is best to compare apples to apples.

RBF921 compared to VGH.

Three year VGH wins. So sitting on your ass and picking your nose is literally a better strategy than paying some guy in RBC.

MER on the RBC fund actually isn't even all that bad.

[arcticcat522]

I just switched all my RRSP's to Questwelth. The cost is 0.2% anyone have any money invested with that? All the talk about passive out performing actively invested funds has me thinking I shouldn't have. They essentially make a large indexed fund for a lower MER it seems. Anyone have some inside into the Questwelth?

Also, are all the fees paid the same between all the mutual fund/ETF's?

[dezmarez]

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This has been an interesting thread and I have been planning to pull a lot of our investments from RBC and put them into VGRO due to the recommendations and lower MER of 0.22%. With that being said, when I checked our funds with RBC, all of them were out performing VGRO, and despite the higher MER, we're further ahead sticking with RBC. Only one of our funds was out performed by VGRO in the past 6 months.

Maybe I did my math wrong? I'm the type where I would prefer to set it and forget it but maybe there are other managed ETF's that are a better choice then VGRO?

The funds we have invested in include:
RBF921
RBF660
RBF607
BLK2045 (Not RBC)

It would have been nice to compare for a greater time period then 1 year but VGRO has only been around for about a year.

Maybe mutual funds aren't always highway robbery? Maybe my math sucks?

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It is best to compare apples to apples.

RBF921 compared to VGH.

Three year VGH wins. So sitting on your ass and picking your nose is literally a better strategy than paying some guy in RBC.

MER on the RBC fund actually isn't even all that bad.

All those fund codes you provided are "F" Class, meaning you are likely paying an account management fee to RBC on top of the embedded MER of those funds.
Double check on that, because you would want to take off an additional 0.50-1.50% (which is likely what your annual account management fee is)

As for the active vs passive debate, there are funds out there that do beat the market, the problem is, the additional commission/fee that you pay to your "Dealer" for advice is what can drag on the portfolio return. (Full disclosure I am one of those people that work for the dealer)

Take the below image:



This is a comparison between:

TDB977 TD US Blue Chip Equity I Series (MER 2.40%) (This includes the fee to the fund manager AND the fee to the "Dealer
TDB410 TD US Blue Chip Equity F Series (MER 1.06%) (This only includes the fee to the fund manager)
TDB902 TD US Index Fund E Series (MER 0.35%) (This is the fee to the fund manager)


As you can see, since 2001, you would be better off owning TDB410, which is an actively traded fund.
However, if you purchased the I Series, you were paying for an advisor to work with you, to HOPEFULLY, add value in the form of retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, education planning etc. etc. etc.

[rx7boi]

In my experience, when you buy the I or "Investor" series, it's basically just talking to your typical front-line "financial advisor" AKA glorified salesperson which I guess isn't too bad if you're pretty much fiscally illiterate.

Most of them end up pushing you to any mutual fund that ends up making the "dealer" money so I've never found them to put your interests ahead of the bank's for obvious reasons.

[90_Shelby]

I stand corrected, my fees are higher then I thought after a visit to the bank today. On that note I still think I’d entertain a good broker if I can get the fees down enough, and the bank has made a recommendation for us to see someone else. I’m also open to recommendations if anyone wanted to PM me. Alternatively, I may be going with the Vanguard funds recommended in this thread.

[eblend]

I'm personally still waiting for my RBC funds to transfer over to Questtrade. The RRSP came over a few weeks ago but still waiting for my LIRA. I noticed today my RBC LIRA account became blank, so my guess the money for that is finally on the way, after that going to go into the Vanguard ETFs I think. Not sure if I should wait for a dip, or just buy in now...kind of scared

[Buster]

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I'm personally still waiting for my RBC funds to transfer over to Questtrade. The RRSP came over a few weeks ago but still waiting for my LIRA. I noticed today my RBC LIRA account became blank, so my guess the money for that is finally on the way, after that going to go into the Vanguard ETFs I think. Not sure if I should wait for a dip, or just buy in now...kind of scared

You can't time the market

[Masked Bandit]

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I'm personally still waiting for my RBC funds to transfer over to Questtrade. The RRSP came over a few weeks ago but still waiting for my LIRA. I noticed today my RBC LIRA account became blank, so my guess the money for that is finally on the way, after that going to go into the Vanguard ETFs I think. Not sure if I should wait for a dip, or just buy in now...kind of scared

Time IN the market beats timeING the market

Or some shit like that. Long story short just get the money in.

[brucebanner]

Lots of great info in here and good timing too. I'm able to move pension money from a "union" I used to work for in a few months.

[rx7boi]

Vanguard has also done some examination into dollar cost averaging or lump summing it into the market:

https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGDCA.pdf

https://investor.vanguard.com/invest...nvest-lump-sum

[Buster]

Dollar cost averaging is just an active strategy. Might make your feel better... But the statistics don't support the idea.

[eblend]

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You can't time the market

Thanks, got me thinking while researching last night...

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Time IN the market beats timeING the market

Or some shit like that. Long story short just get the money in.

...and this is basically what I learned last night as well. I don't plan to touch the money for the next 30 years or so, so it will go up and down over time, but overall should come out ahead.

With that said, this morning I dropped everything into VGRO ETF, here is hoping things work out long term!

[Buster]

great decision.

[Masked Bandit]

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Thanks, got me thinking while researching last night...



...and this is basically what I learned last night as well. I don't plan to touch the money for the next 30 years or so, so it will go up and down over time, but overall should come out ahead.

With that said, this morning I dropped everything into VGRO ETF, here is hoping things work out long term!

Please elaborate on "and this is basically what I learned last night"? Did it come to you in a dream or have you be been doing some reading / educating on the subject?

[suntan]

Check out r/wallstreetbets, it's full of great investing ideas.

[eblend]

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Please elaborate on "and this is basically what I learned last night"? Did it come to you in a dream or have you be been doing some reading / educating on the subject?

I did some research. I am off for over two weeks for the Christmas break, and my RBC funds finally moved over just before Christmas day, so I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish during this time, mostly home projects, but one other thing was to get this investment stuff all sorted out. I got most other projects at home done, and couldn't really avoid this investment stuff for much longer, as much as I really didn't want to deal with it, think mostly hesitation and fear. When I went to bed I just laid there for a couple hours reading up on "timing the market", "investing in a dip", as well as "VGRO vs XGRO" and stuff, and found many articles basically pointing to the whole "time in the market" being the main thing, and since I am dealing with RRSP and LIRA, and probably got a good 30 years of work to go (I'm 35 now), I figure what the hell, let it be. My initial thinking was that I would invest in some monthly GICs, wait it out, but then after doing some research, I decided to just go for it.

I really liked this article in particular:

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/201...-market-timer/

[ExtraSlow]

Timing the market would be really effective if you were able to reliably predict market movements. However, that's unlikely for even experienced professionals.

[Masked Bandit]

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I did some research. I am off for over two weeks for the Christmas break, and my RBC funds finally moved over just before Christmas day, so I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish during this time, mostly home projects, but one other thing was to get this investment stuff all sorted out. I got most other projects at home done, and couldn't really avoid this investment stuff for much longer, as much as I really didn't want to deal with it, think mostly hesitation and fear. When I went to bed I just laid there for a couple hours reading up on "timing the market", "investing in a dip", as well as "VGRO vs XGRO" and stuff, and found many articles basically pointing to the whole "time in the market" being the main thing, and since I am dealing with RRSP and LIRA, and probably got a good 30 years of work to go (I'm 35 now), I figure what the hell, let it be. My initial thinking was that I would invest in some monthly GICs, wait it out, but then after doing some research, I decided to just go for it.

I really liked this article in particular:

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/201...-market-timer/

Good move!

I said it earlier in this thread but I have to repeat it, anyone that's looking to gain a solid basic understanding of investing for 99% of us average joe type folks just listen to all the episodes of the Canadian Couch Potato podcast. If you prefer your media in print then I found Wealthing Like Rabbits an easy ready and I'm currently working on Millionaire Teacher. The Wealthy Barber has also been a staple of basic info for personal finance.

[rx7boi]

Good for you @eblend

IMO the best path to becoming an investor is to have the motivation to seek out learning material. The article you linked about "Bob" is a great read, one that I've read myself several years back too.

You can have all the people in this thread telling you what's best, but in the end you know your own tolerances and can come to your own decisions about where you want to park your money. It's a deeply personal thing so I'm glad you were able to run with it after some brainstorming in this thread.

One last thing I'll mention is that since you have a LIRA, there may be considerations about your asset location (different from allocation) across your portfolio. I'm not sure how your 200k is divvied up, but there are tax implications and restrictions for LIRAs when they get converted to LIFs. This is of interest to me since I recently left a company after 6 years so I have a commuted pension going into a LIRA soon as well.

See following article:

https://www.myownadvisor.ca/what-is-...-invest-in-it/

Perhaps @Buster has some additional thoughts on this. The article talks about both sides, one being maximized withdrawal flexibility in retirement and the other being simplicity which would be the case for you since everything is in VGRO.

[suntan]

I'm going to put a little spin on the just buy ETFs thing.

ETFs work great for efficient markets. But lots of markets are not efficient.

I consider these to be efficient markets:

US stock exchanges.
European stock exchanges.
Japanese stock exchange.

That's it. It is generally agreed upon that the bond market is both opaque and illiquid. I do not consider the TSX to be efficient (way too many stocks with different classes that allows front-running).

I consider the global small cap market to be inefficient. You can actually do better long term going with an actively managed small cap fund (MAW150 for example, with MAW107 being the seminal example).

However I do think the bond market should improve precisely because of bond ETFs. There really needs to be a central exchange(s) for them though.