Brian,
BRIAN5000 wrote: ↑30 May 2017 15:43
Those aren't the ETF's I'm closet indexing to I'm just using XIU & DIA very few stocks required and combined with an existing portfolio with 1/2 mil of embedded CG it's the best I can do. Any new buys could be more broad based ETFs like you suggest. Rebalancing and death are problems but in absence of any better ideas or planner SO can just let it roll, daughter is coming on board soon.
Starting over or starting from new, and that may happen if we have another 2008/2009, I would use broad based Etf's.
It's perfectly understandable that you want to avoid triggering capital gains just to move the money into ETFs.
People seem to forget that indexing in Canada has only become easier recently. 20 years ago, it was virtually impossible. TD e-series, the first (and only*, so far) family of relatively
low-cost index funds has been introduced in late 1999 / early 2000, 17 years ago. iShare's Canadian index ETFs (XIU, XBB, etc.) were also created around that time.
*
I would qualify all other Canadian-based index funds as expensive, including TD's I series which is similar to the e-series but with higher fees.
It's not until Vanguard came to Canada in late 2011, less than 6 years ago, that
really low-cost Canadian-based ETFs became available in Canada. As for low commissions and commission-free trades, to acquire the ETFs, they're recent too. The lowest commission used to be $30 per electronic trade.
There's probably a good number of people on this forum who had to create and grow their portfolio in a world where low-cost indexing was virtually impossible. We can't criticize them for not having embraced indexing at a time they couldn't do it!
Personally, I wasn't even aware of indexing. If I remember correctly, I started to learn about it in 2007. We moved our then small portfolio into index funds in early 2008. Before then, all I had been exposed to was random financial articles in French-language newspapers, all about selecting individual stocks, which I tried to do without success. Luckily, we didn't lose much in the 2000 debacle (we didn't have much money invested and only lost a relatively small portion of it), but we would easily have had reasonable returns if we only put half our money in XIU and the other in XBB instead of selecting stocks. After the debacle, my wife and I kept all our
new savings out of the market; instead, we accumulated a sizable down payment, bought our home, then started aggressively paying down the mortgage. In hindsight, I guess that this was better than continuing to try selecting stocks.
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