2017 Goal - Better Finances and Investing (Canada)

3:41:00 PM

With every new year, I always set up new goals to further push myself. For 2017, I have started researching TFSA options and investment strategies. I plan to refer to this page as my cheat sheet of investing notes.

Financial Dashboard Tracker:
I had been using a plain old excel file for tracking some of my fund performance on periodic basis last year (one of my last year resolutions). I did some looking around on the internet and found google finance. It is an interesting tool that might have some practical tracking applications across various portfolios. I am currently debating whether it might be worth my time upgrading my excel file to do real-time fund extraction and transaction keeping.

Link: Google Finance Portfolio
Link: Online Excel Template Portfolio Tracker

TFSA:
With another new year (2017), the TFSA contribution limit for 2017 is $5,500. The current total TFSA contribution limit is $52,000. In the past, I normally put a bunch of cash and generate "high interest" in the sheltered tax account. For this year, I'm willing to put more risk and invest directly into the market. I did some quick searching and decided to open up TD Direct Investing TFSA account. TD won't charge you maintenance fees as long as you maintain $15,000 or do some other stuff ... (see page 7 of link).  I also found out that Questrade has a TFSA account with no fees for purchasing ETF funds. However, a lot of my research has led me towards purchasing TD e-series funds (free with TD Direct Investing account).

If you forget how much you can contribute to your TFSA account, I always refer back to the CRA login website to look up online the outstanding contribution limit. The government does track how much you take in and out of your TFSA accounts.

Link: CRA Login

Investing - Couch Potatoe Strategy:

"The Couch Potato strategy is a technique for building a diversified, low-maintenance portfolio designed to deliver the returns of the overall stock and bond markets with minimal cost. The strategy can reduce a typical investor’s costs by as much as 90%, while at the same time beating the majority of mutual funds and professionally managed accounts." 

When I was young, I wasted too many years with mutual fund accounts that had high MER (Management Expense Ratios). In addition, it was very hard to time the market especially with stocks (takes time and energy). I have been using this couch potato strategy for a couple years but haven't been aggressive in investing and rebalancing my existing portfolios. For my children's RESP accounts, I have been applying the CPP (Couch Potatoe Portfolio) as well.

I was recently inspired to focus again by someone who achieved $1M using this investment strategy (link).

Favorite Link Readings:

Fund Facts for These TD E-Series:
TDB909 - TD Canadian Bond Index Fund -e
TDB900 - TD Canadian Index Fund -e
TDB902 - TD US Index Fund -e
TDB911 - TD International Index Fund -e

Next Goals for 2017:

  • Would like to consolidate multiple brokerage accounts into one
  • Withdraw all of the TFSA savings account and merged into TFSA investment account (in 2018)
  • Establish single source file/system to track the investments


Random Picture from : At Hwy 7,  Loblaws

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