you pay commission when you buy

Keep accumulating money in a your savings account (using a regular pre-authorized payment between your chequing and savings account).

Calculate the minimum transaction size in your online broker account, given commission you pay. Here's an example.

Whenever you reach this amount in your savings account, transfer it to your investment account and buy additional shares of your asset allocation ETF.

You don't need to anything else on a regular basis.

Your provider maintains the original asset mix of your asset-allocation ETF. It's called rebalancing.
If you signed up for DRIP (dividend reinvestment program), any cash distributions you'll receive from your ETF will be automatically reinvested.

Once a year

Monitor your account, but not too frequently. Once a year at least, every month may be too often. Always check the following:

Has your ETF paid distributions as expected?
Are your pre-authorized additions going through as expected?
Are you charged fees as expected? Any there unexpected fees?

How is your investment doing?

Price alone is not the best measure.

The easiest thing is to check the current price of your ETF and compare it to the price at which you purchased.
This becomes more relevant when you are close to cashing out. When you sell at a higher price than you bought, you have made money (it's called a capital gain). If you sell at a lower price than you bought, it's a capital loss.
But as a measure of how your investment is doing, the price does not account for the value of the distributions you're receiving.

Total return measures how your investment has done over a period of time, usually a year.

It considers both distributions and capital gains / losses (changes in price).
Capital gain / loss is calculated as if you bought the fund a year ago and sold it today. Unless you actually sell the investment, the difference between those two prices is called 'paper capital gain / loss'.
Your total return for that year is the paper capital gain / loss plus distributions. It is expressed as a percentage (distributions and gain / loss, divided by the amount you started the year with) - the higher the better.
Total return is reported after the MER is paid.

You can use total return to compare your fund with other similar funds. For example, with...

An asset-allocation ETF with a similar asset mix, from a different provider.
An asset-allocation ETF with a different asset mix, from your provider.
A portfolio index mutual fund with a similar asset mix to your fund (it's one of our ready-made investing strategies).

Check your ETF's tracking error. It should be small and not change much over time.

An index ETF should track its index.
There will always be a small difference, mostly related to transaction costs inside the ETF.

From time to time, you need to assess if your asset mix is still appropriate. Your risk appetite and investment horizon may have changed because something has changed in your life.

Make it a goal to think about your investment strategy once a year, and always reassess your strategy when your financial / personal circumstances change.

You don’t have to worry about income tax at all if this is a TFSA.

With other registered accounts, RESP and RRSP, you don't have to worry about income tax until you withdraw money.

If you have taxable accounts, you'll need to learn about investing and tax.

Next: Close

what if your online broker goes bankrupt?

Online broker investment accounts are insured through the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (check its members’ directory to make sure your provider is on the list).

All your regular accounts with any broker are protected for $1 million should the broker go out of business.
RRSP and RESP accounts have additional coverage of $1 million.

If your asset-allocation ETF declines in value, this insurance does not cover it. This is investment risk. Since you're holding a diversified fund, the loss may be caused by what happens in financial markets - you'll have to wait it out.

follow your budget - add money to your investments

You'll invest new money by buying additional shares of your asset-allocation ETF. How often you do will depend on the terms of your online broker account.

at the beginning

Make sure you're set up for money transfers between your chequing / savings account and online broker account.

keep up with your

asset-allocation ETF

RESP

RRSP

no commission when you buy

You can invest new money as soon as you've saved enough to buy a few shares of your ETF.

It makes sense to set up pre-authorized payments, likely from your chequing account to regularly add new money to your investment.

You may have already arranged it when filling out your application.
If not, you should be able to do it online - you may need to set up both ends, your online broker account and your chequing account.,

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