bielbs

105 - 25 Main Street West
Hamilton, ON L8P 1H1

Just wondered if anyone has had any dealings with the above regarding bringing your pensions over here.

Is there a down side to bringing the money over, both my pensions are government and pretty bullet proof, to bring them over here through a private company could put my pension at risk, right?

Also what if you decide that you don't want to retire in Canada but possibly somewhere warm or even back to UK,

any thoughts appreciated

MB-Realtor

I used Investors Group to bring my pensions over, they are owned by Great West Life.

But like all of these companies your experience will depend upon your advisor.

airbornesapper

My experience with IG...expensive MERs and mediocre (less than average) returns.

We have been with them for years but have reduced our portfolio with them down to 30% of our fund holdings.

That will be zero as soon as the rear end loads are gone. They are full of tricks to hide fund performance, i.e blending/collapsing one fund into another.

I would not recommend IG to my worst enemy.

Two more words: stay away.

Partially discharged

As bad as these guys?
http://www.primericacanada.ca/

airbornesapper

Funny you should throw them in the mix...I looked into them at one point..

That was enough.....

Partially discharged

I've heard nothing but bad things about them...My wife and I were approached at a social event by a rep from that company. It seemed dodgy and I spoke to 2 insurance agents I know socially and they both warned me away in no uncertain terms.

It is MLM at its worst.

MB-Realtor

Its is indeed.....

MB-Realtor

We used IG to bring the schemes over here, but did not invest with them, we used the monies to invest in our own business.

johnh009

If you retire somewhere warm, Canada can still be a good, secure place to park your money. As a non-resident, it is very tax friendly for dividends and you can receive capital gains from most investments tax free.

bielbs

It is MLM at its worst.[/QUOTE]

thanks everyone,

can you excuse my ignorance, what is MLM?

airbornesapper

thanks everyone,

can you excuse my ignorance, what is MLM?[/QUOTE]


Multi level marketing....

Piff Poff

We have used Investors Group to bring our pensions over, not sure what to do with our monies now, seeing as we have only just started to see some growth after investing with them since 2005. Don't think I'd actually recommend them really.

johnh009

Like MB-Realtor says, it depends on the advisor. I had no luck with IG, when my funds went down, they told me the answer to my problems was just buy more. Now I do it myself and I have much more success. I opened an online trading account and only buy the bluest of blue chip dividend stocks and reinvest the dividends, preferably when the market is down. And, when the market takes a spike, I sell a few off and then buy them back on the dips. Fees are minimal too. One of the best tax breaks you can get in Canada is on company dividends, that is because the company issuing the dividends has already paid the tax. And, capital gains is also a good break in Canada as you are only taxed on 50% of what you make.

If you are nervous about stocks, you can always buy Exchange Traded Funds, such as iShares:


http://ca.ishares.com/index.do

JonboyE

With front end/back end loads and trailing commissions the sort of mutual funds these kind of investment advisers (aka salespeople) recommend are very inefficient ways of building wealth. If you make regular contributions over 25 years a third of the money you invest will go as fees and commissions. You have to beat the market by a long way to generate real growth and experience shows that most of these funds don't.

As the saying goes, why pay someone to lose your money when you can lose it yourself for free.

For anyone who doesn't have the time or inclination to manage their own portfolio they should look at the fee structure of the mutual funds they are considering. Tracker funds often have low fees because there is very little fund management involved - and very few fund managers out perform the market in any case. The difference between a 3% and a 1.5% per year fee may not sound much, but compounded over 25 years or so it can have a dramatic impact on the value of your nest egg.

Piff Poff

My eyes glazed over and my mind emptied when you mentioned bluest blue chip dividend stocks - see I just don't get it. I do believe you must have some sort of interest in that type of thing to actually understand it, which is why people like me have an advisor. Our advisor has never suggested we invest more into our portfolios as they (well OH's is) are pretty healthy and we did errr on the cautious side as soon as things started to get iffy, so we didn't lose as much as we could have done and we are slightly up now from where we started.

We have invested in another property now, it seems to be a little safer than plowing money into something that can just disappear overnight. Yes I know the housing market can and does bottom out but you usually see a more gradual decrease.