Cry daily? 5hr screen time? This investment guide is for you.
The mentally-ill-friendly, absolute bare minimum you need to start investing.
TLDR: Use Wealthsimple to invest in XEQT in a TFSA if you make less than $50K/year or an RRSP if you make more. Don't touch it for years.
⚠️Disclaimer: I am nothing remotely close to a financial advisor. Like- I paid my taxes like 4 months late, and I'm not even sure if it went through because I'm too scared to check my CRA account.
I am, however, an expert in living with crippling mental illness.
This is the investing guide I needed when I was struggling but knew I needed to be doing something, felt the clock ticking, but had 0 leftover brain capacity for figuring out what to do.
This is the absolute bare minimum you need to start investing.
Set up your retirement fund in 3 clicks.
CLICK 1: make a wealth simple account
DO IT WITH A REFERRAL CODE!!! You get $25 free. If you don't know anyone, you can use mine (and then we both get $25!) PROMO CODE: TTXHLYZ
this post isn't sponsored by them. It just got good reviews on reddit, and it’s well known/free so works for me. Plus, their TTC ads are pretty lol.
CLICK 2: open a TFSA if you make under $50,000 annually or an RRSP if you make over that.
Read below for what both of these are if you're not familiar.
These are Canadian accounts, I don’t know the tax benefits for other countries, but at the very least you can just use a cash account to trade in, it just means you’ll get taxed on the earnings.
CLICK 3: hit trade, type XEQT, press buy
Do a quick google search for promos, sometimes if you spend a certain amount or use a code you can get free cash.
If you have a regular paycheck, select ‘buy on a schedule’ so you can just set it and forget it.
This is for Canadians, but if you’re from the US, you can type VFV instead (read below).
That’s it! Congrats 🥳
As I hope I've made very clear, ❗ I AM NOT A INVESTOR OR EXPERT ❗
I literally just learned this stuff like 2 weeks ago.
I’m sharing it here anyways because I am an expert in being mentally ill, and I know there are other people who feel just as stressed, just as overwhelmed, and just as worthless as I did for yearssssss before working up the energy to figure out how to start investing.
I hope that I’ve made a guide that’s simple enough for you to just click, click, click, and go while you still have control over your one braincell 🙃
Thanks :)
- Tasha 🌼
If you're slightly less braindead right now, and want to learn a little more, here’s what all these terms mean:
TFSA
TFSA stands for tax-free savings account. Money you make inside a TFSA is not taxed. This applies to GICs, investing, and even just interest earned. I hold most of my money in a TFSA with EQ bank (because it has 3.5% interest), and then I have a second TFSA with Wealthsimple only for investments (because it has 0% interest).
This account is good if you need to access your money still- I use it to pay bills, student loans, and just general expenses if I don’t have enough in my chequing account.
Learn from an actual expert about TFSAs.
RRSP
RRSP stands for registered retirement savings plan.
This account is good for if you have a regular income of more than $50K annually, and if you don’t need to access it regularly. Pretty much, you’ll only be able to take out limited funds to buy a house or pay for school, this is just for retirement.
Some employers will match your RRSP contributions- DO THIS. It’s literally free money with no catch.
The main benefit here is for taxes. Whatever you put into an RRSP can be written off on your taxes. It will only be taxed when you take it out. That’s why you want to do it when you’re making more money- for this account to be worth it, you want to bet that you’ll be in a lower tax bracket in old age than you are right now.
Learn from an actual expert about RRSPs.
XEQT (and VFV and VEQT)
This is an ETF, which is like a collection of different stocks. It's considered a generally safe and profitable long term investment, a set and forget type deal. It's a good thing for a couple reasons:
it's automatically managed, which means you pay less in management fees (called MER in investor talk).
it's geographically & company diverse (this ETF is 43.88% US companies, 23.54% Canada companies, and the rest is divided between Japan, the UK, France, Germany, and China) while still investing in the S&P 500, which is 500 of the largest in the US (think Apple, Tesla, Walmart, etc.)
Other good options are VEQT and VFV.
VFV is just the S&P 500. It's been suuper successful in recent years, but I didn't go for personally because I like the global diversity, and also it's more expensive (~$100 compared to XEQT's ~$30/stock.)
VEQT is basically the same thing as XEQT. There are small differences, but this is more a guide for people trying to do the bare minimum. You can't really go wrong with one or the other, some people even split their investment budget between both. Learn from an actual professional.
Learn from an actual expert on ETFs, XEQT, and XEQT vs VEQT.
Still freaked out by investing? Consider GICs.
Guaranteed Investment Certificates are essentially no risk investments- you’re guaranteed to come out with more money than you put in. But because it’s no risk, it’s also very low reward.
If you put $1000 away for 1 year, you’d get $43 back*. Not great, but better than nothing and no risk.
In all honestly, I would buy GICs when I was drunk and wanted to spend money, but not in a way that I would regret. I would just put like $1-15K of money from my TFSA into a GIC for 3mo-1yr and get enough for a plane ticket by the end of it. Wasn’t the best investment, but better nothing I guess? Check out this GIC calculator for funsies.
Learn from an actual expert about GICs.
*Based on rates from EQ bank. That’s not an ad, just what I use.
Learn from other sources:
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