Canadian Money Forum banner

TD Canada Trust e-Series TFSA vs TD Waterhouse e-Series TFSA

20K views 12 replies 9 participants last post by  Eclectic12 
#1 ·
Hi All,

Given that you can get the maintenance fee waived and you can purchase TD e-Series mutual funds transaction-fee free in a TD Waterhouse TSFA account, is there there any difference between that and a TD Canada Trust Mutual Fund TFSA that uses the same e-Series funds?

Thanks!
 
#2 ·
At TDW you deal with people who understand investing. You can deposit cash in the TFSA. I have done this without trouble.

At TD Canada Trust, you will likely be assigned someone who doesn't know how to set up e-series. You must buy the funds directly when you contribute. But you can put it into money market and divvy it up later. I haven't put in the effort to figure it out yet.

I would pick TDW. It also makes an easier transition to etfs or a mix of both when the account gets bigger.
 
#3 ·
If you mean a TDW TFSA brokerage account, then another difference is that the only restriction in what investment you buy is that it is a TFSA qualified one. So when it suits, you can also buy stocks, bonds, GICs etc. in addition to MFs.

The last I looked at the MF types (in my case it was RRSP account), the trade off was that only MFs could be purchased, in exchange for a lower annual fee.


Cheers
 
#4 ·
A few tips for buying in a TFSA

Like the name suggests you don't pay taxes on the income earned from your investments. For this reason I try to buy high yield stocks OUTSIDE the TFSA (you pay less income tax on dividend earning so don't take up all your room with those types of stocks)

Don't invest too much in risky stocks in your TFSA, the tax-free works both ways, so you can not write off your losses.
 
#10 ·
I am confused about this. If we don't pay taxes on the income earned from the investments, then the high yield instruments should be within the TFSA, and not outside them? Because they are high yield, they are supposed to bring more income, right? If they are within TFSA, the income should not be taxed then. Do I see it wrong?
 
#8 ·
The others have touched on most of the differences. Some others:

With TDMF, you'll have to fill out an investor profile, and if you try to buy funds that don't match your prescribed asset allocation, your transaction will be blocked. At TDW it's self-directed, so you're free to set your own asset allocation.

With TDMF, you can't hold cash, and the reps can't handle e-series funds. That often leads to confusion when you want to withdraw (e.g.: from an RRSP for the HBP or LLP) since you need to first switch to a fund that a rep can handle (like a money market fund). With TDW, you just sell to cash before withdrawing.

If you do need to work with a live person, the TDW reps just want to help complete your instructions, whereas the TDMF reps are salespeople. (My "last straw" case with TDMF involved a friend whose purchase of an equity e-series fund was blocked by the investor profile; when she went into a branch to adjust it, she got the hard sell from a rep for an hour, and walked out without having had a chance to actually update the IPS, which was the whole reason for going in!)

TDMF will update your balances more quickly than TDW, which can take 3 days to update your transactions. If you're in the habit of frequently fiddling, you could run the risk of entering a transaction twice with TDW.

ability to "switch" mutual funds [...] Can you do this in Waterhouse TFSA?
Yes!
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top