According to RBC Global Asset Management: The MER is the total of the management fee, operating expenses (or administration fee) and GST/HST charged to a fund each year. It is expressed as a percentage of a fund’s average net assets for that year. All mutual funds and ETFs have an MER.
If a fund gained 4% last year but paid a MER of 3%, you, the investor in the fund, would realize a return of only 1%. If two funds are identical except for the MER, the one with the lower MER returns more to the investor.
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D-series TDB3088 has a MER of 1.19 while TDB972 has a 2.02 MER. |
Recently, I compared five funds. All funds opened with an original investment of $10,000. Note: the two Dividend Growth funds are identical except for the series. One is an investor series while the other is a D-series.
The D-series fund has a MER about 0.8% less than the very similar I-series fund shown.
The D-series fund returned $285.48 more to the investor than its I-series counterpart. That's a nice reward for buying and selling your funds directly without the aid of a middle man at the bank.
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TD Dividend Growth Funds compared: fund with lowest MER performs best. |
A general rule: always pay as little MER as possible.
What else should one watch for when buying mutual funds? Answer: sales commissions, known as loads. Try and only buy no-load funds which have no sales commissions added when being purchased or sold. I try to stay clear of both front-end load and back-end load funds as both increase costs.
Is that it? No. Generally, mutual funds are not sold for quick trading. If mutual fund units are sold too soon after purchase, a short-term trading fee is charged. This fee deters quick and frequent trading of funds and the associated trading fees a fund would accrue. How soon is too soon? Usually, one must hold a mutual fund for a minimum of thirty days to avoid short-term trading fees but check this and confirm with each individual fund.
Lastly, there are a few funds designed for short-term investing. An example would be TDB8150. I once thought of TDB8150 as a money market fund. I was wrong. TDB8150 is an investment savings account mutual fund with
absolutely zero fees. It currently is pays 2.30% with no MER. It has a
fixed unit price of $10 but the initial investment must be $100 or more.
There are no buying and selling fees. And it is CDIC insured up to
total investment of $100,000 per account. Deposits to TDB8150 are
limited to $5 million (Canadian).
I did a full take on TDB8150 but I say little more than I do in this post. Here is a link: TDB: My favourite spot for parking cash.
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