<p>A Layman's Guide to Investing On-demand, 1.25 hours</p><p>Description: Are you questioning whether your investment advisor is doing a good job for you? Maybe you’ve started to look at the new disclosures on your investment statements and have discovered your rate of return isn’t as high as you’d hoped, and oh my goodness, the fees you’re being charged!</p><p>The simple truth is that most Canadians are using mutual funds with excessive fees to try and secure a comfortable retirement. And it isn’t working.</p><p>This course will start out by explaining the basic types of investments including guaranteed investment certificates (GICs), stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It will then expose why mutual funds don’t work including how to calculate the management expense ratio (MER), how the punitive fees hurt you and finally how to get out of them. It will then show you the much better alternatives to using mutual funds and the people who sell them:</p><p>1. Full-service broker 2. Discount brokerage account 3. Fee-only financial planner (combined with a discount brokerage account) 4. Robo-advisor</p><p>You’ll see demonstrations of an actual discount brokerage account and a robo-advisor.</p><p>You’ll also get several free spreadsheets, including the "Investment Option Cost Analyzer" to determine how much you would pay in fees using mutual funds compared to each of the other four options, as well as the value your investments would grow to in each case. Simply enter the number of years you want to invest for, how much you’ll add to the account each year and how many trades you’ll make per year. It’ll be easy to find the option that minimizes fees and maximizes your investments.</p><p>Topics include:  Basic investment options. Term deposits and GICs, stocks, mutual funds, ETFs.  Mutual funds. How to calculate the management expense ratio (MER), how the punitive fees hurt you, how to get out of them.  Full-service brokers. When they might make sense. How they charge.  Fee-only financial planners. A great solution when combined with a discount brokerage account since most of them don’t handle investments. Where to find them.  Discount brokerage. The incredible low cost option. Where to find them. A demonstration of an actual discount brokerage account (Questrade).  Robo-advisors. Answers to all the questions you have about them. A detailed spreadsheet of all the ones currently available in Canada with details about how each one charges, the ETFs they use, how the artificially intelligent computer decides when to automatically rebalance your portfolio and more. You’ll also see a demonstration of a robo-advisor (Wealthsimple) and the reports they provide.</p><p>Who will benefit: Anyone who wants to minimize investment fees and maximize their investments.</p><p>Special Instructions/Notes: Each attendee will get a free copy of the spreadsheets:  Fee-only Planners and Coaches Directory  Robo-advisor detailed comparison chart  The Investment Option Cost Analyzer Take it here (Link to CPA Ontario PD portal): https://portal.cpaontario.ca/Pages/en_US/Forms/Public/Events/Default.aspx Type my last name “Trahair” in the search box or look in “On Demand” courses.</p>