best places to invest in Canada

Asset allocation, risk, diversification and rebalancing. Pros/cons of hiring a financial advisor. Seeking advice on your portfolio?
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jogoss
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best places to invest in Canada

Post by jogoss »

HI All,
I am an American married to a Canadian and we are moving back to ONtario Canada in May. Since my spouse has been a non resident for a few years we have not been contributing to any Canadian investment firms. We use Vanguard in the US. I would like some advice on what to do once we move to Canada.

I have heard about Wealth Bar and it looks like a good place to start in terms of investing in Canada. Has anyone used them? Can you get Vanguard ETF INDEXED FUNDS from them? It seems like their rates are very good in terms of fees. Right now my spouse has their TFSA through RBC bank and I hate RBC bank and their high fees. I would like to ultimately move her TFSA to a better lower cost investment firm.

Has anyone used Vanguard in Canada? I see they can not give advice which is really too bad. Will this change? Why is this the case? Why cant they have financial advisory services like in the US?

I have also been looking at using a financial advisor since Vanguard is not allowed to give advice. I was looking at Objective Financial Partners since they are fee online financial advisors. They seem good. They are in Markham ONt. does anyone know about them? ANy other recommendations for fee only advisors in the Toronto area?

Also on a bit of a side note anyone have good recommendations for low fee banking in Canada? I think RBC has way too many fees. I would like to move our bank accounts to a lower fee or no fee bank if possible. In teh US they do have these kinds of banks but I know Canada operates very differently.

ANy advice and or help would be greatly appreciated
fireseeker
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by fireseeker »

Here is a resource for starting your search for a no or low-fee bank account:
https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-cons ... -cost.html
You can buy Vanguard ETFs in your TFSA if your account is with Royal's online investing arm.
However, it sounds like you need/want investment advice. If so, you must figure that out first through research and interviews.
Like most others here, I don't use an adviser so can't offer insight on who to use.
FI40
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by FI40 »

If you are interested in Wealth Bar, you may also be interested in TD E-series mutual funds or Tangerine's "all-in" type products. CCP (Canadian Couch Potato) is well known in personal finance circles in Canada and discusses some of the differences here.

http://canadiancouchpotato.com/model-portfolios-2/

Unfortunately I don't know much about advisory services either. I'm sure many on the forum do though.
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Peculiar_Investor
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Welcome to FWF.

Are you specifically looking for robo-advisor services or do you manage your Vanguard investments yourself? If you don't require robo-services and would like to manage your investments yourself, you could open account(s) with a discount brokerage and then purchase Vanguard ETFs in a manner that is consistent with the approach you are using with Vanguard in the US.

Most, but not all, discount brokerages in Canada are owned by the major banks, so it is sometimes becomes easier to have your banking and discount brokerage services through the same financial institution, as it makes moving funds between banking and brokerage services a bit more seamless.
jogoss wrote: 29 Jan 2018 00:31 Has anyone used Vanguard in Canada? I see they can not give advice which is really too bad. Will this change? Why is this the case? Why cant they have financial advisory services like in the US?
Many FWF'ers use Vanguard ETFs, both Canadian listed and US listed, to construct their portfolios.

As you have likely found, Vanguard has Canadian operations, Vanguard Canada. Their only offerings to date are ETFs, they do not offer index mutual funds, advisory services or brokerage services like the US. Whether that will change in the future get periodically debated here, but so far there have been no indications that it will happen.

Our wiki, aka finiki, contains articles that might help you decide whether you need a robo-advisor service or whether you would like to construct and manage your own Simple index portfolios - finiki, the Canadian financial wiki similar to the above mentioned Canadian Couch Potato methodology.
jogoss wrote: 29 Jan 2018 00:31 Also on a bit of a side note anyone have good recommendations for low fee banking in Canada? I think RBC has way too many fees. I would like to move our bank accounts to a lower fee or no fee bank if possible.
As you seem to have found, the Canadian big 5 banks have a variety of accounts with a large variety of fees. Often the level of fees can be reduced by choosing an account with minimum balance requirements. You might also review our wiki article, Low cost banking, although because the "virtual banking" space is experiencing lots of growth and new entrants the information in the wiki article might be a bit dated. But the wiki article should at least serve as a good starting point for research. If you check the Under the Mattress: Protecting Your Money forum you'll find lots of discussion about how to get the best savings rates and other matters related to low cost banking and credit cards.

There are a couple of other resources that probably should be reviewed, Taxation as a US person living abroad - Bogleheads and Cross-border and expatriate issues - finiki, the Canadian financial wiki.
Imagefiniki, the Canadian financial wiki New editors wanted and welcomed, please help collaborate and improve the wiki.

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adrian2
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by adrian2 »

jogoss wrote: 29 Jan 2018 00:31 Also on a bit of a side note anyone have good recommendations for low fee banking in Canada? I think RBC has way too many fees. I would like to move our bank accounts to a lower fee or no fee bank if possible. In teh US they do have these kinds of banks but I know Canada operates very differently.
Simplii Financial or Tangerine
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AltaRed
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by AltaRed »

There is also Motive Financial, the successor to Canadian Direct Financial which is associated with Canadian Western Bank, and in the same "online banking" theme, but associated with (owned by) the major bricks and mortar banks.

P.S. P_I, the low cost banking narrative needs to be update. CDF is now Motive Financial.
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by Hyperborea »

Since the OP is an American, he needs to think long and hard about investing in any non-US ETF or mutual fund. Look up US laws on PFICs (Passive Foreign Investment Companies) and see the terrible time you'll be in if you do. You may want to have your wife hold the non-US PFICs.

However, if your wife is a green card holder she will also have the same PFIC issue. If you don't plan to return to the US to live or it is many years in the future she may want to think about abandoning the green card. This will involve US expatriation laws. This is a good resource that I've been using for my own expatriation plan - https://hodgen.com/category/expatriation/
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by Quebec »

AltaRed wrote: 29 Jan 2018 21:46 P.S. P_I, the low cost banking narrative needs to be update. CDF is now Motive Financial.
Done! (see Low cost banking)

EDIT: formating
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jogoss
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Re: best places to invest in Canada

Post by jogoss »

Thank you to everyone who has answered my questions. I really appreciate it.
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