The International Schools Review Forum

Does anyone have an positive experiences with this company in Luxembourg? I need a place to park my money.

TD Direct Investment in Canada is terrible - they keep on blocking my access to my money / investments because I am no longer a resident of Canada, which they INSISTED would not be a problem when I opened an account with them.

Any other alternatives? All I want is a place to invest in ETFs, and not touch the money until retirement except in the case of emergencies.

I have worked with a couple of Canadians who really like WealthBar. They were able to build indexed portfolios with Vanguard ETFs and let their advisor at WealthBar rebalance their portfolio yearly. The fees are under 1% and there are no commissions.

Ive heard positive things about TDI, the negatives tend to be that your mostly on your own. Have you looked into LON or HK?
A number of strong do it DIYs like Charles Schwab. I cant comment on Wealthbar, though 1% for a simple re-balancing is throwing coin away.

The WealthBar fee is slightly higher than the fee you would pay to a Vanguard Personal Advisor (.75% vs. .3%) if you decided to use one, but it's definitely not the 4% you get shackled to with Friends Provident or the like, and you don't have to deal with penalties for moving money back out. I don't have any personal stake in it one way or another, but it is an option for Canadian expats.

I do tend to agree with you PsyGuy; I prefer to manage my own portfolio and keep the fees as low as possible.

Thanks guys... I will look into all of these when I'm home this summer. I'm done with TD bank in Canada. They keep freezing my money and I actually had a small crisis recently that I needed to use some of my savings for.

What are the tax implications for going with things out of country?

@rake

Of course there are higher fees, its not slightly higher its 2.5 times higher. Its only a few 10ths of a percentage but thats 4.5 points and with average annual yields of 4% thats significant. Its looks great compared to a full 3% or 4% fee, but those fees are basically poo. At that point your investment program is a hobby, because your not making anything.
Looking at very broad averages when creating a portfolio and looking at returns 4%-6% for stocks, 2%-3% for bonds and about 1% for currency instruments. A balanced portfolio with a moderate risk profile should bring you about 4% a year. 1% represents a quarter of your yield. Thats a lot considering your advisor/investor really isnt doing anything for you if all they are doing is re-balancing your portfolio. They arent creating a unique solution, they very likely have a portfolio profile for different groups/classes of clients, all they are doing is copy and pasting the same recommendation that they likely put a lot of clients into. Your paying 1% for maybe 1 hour of collaborative work. You can re-balance a portfolio yourself with a couple hours of market -, one day on the weekend out of the year tops.
It would be one thing if a financial advisor added value, but most of what they do is sales. because no one can predict the market. What financial advisors do is add convenience.

F.prov is cash scam. Its day trading with someone elses money and charging them to allow the investor to play. Active management means lots of transaction fees, and they are essentially using the fund as flash coin as a buyin to high risk markets and products, while using a significant portion of the capital to cover a portion of the fund with insurance contracts.