Just starting out – how to get started with investing

Posted on July 2, 2026 by | 25 Comments
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Just starting out – how to get started with investing

Investing can be daunting. So much to think about. So many options. If you’re starting out, how to started with any investing?

I have some strong considerations for you in today’s post – find your whys, find your whats, before your hows. 

(I’ve made some minor adjustments to this post for summer 2026 to make it current.)

There is no one right way to invest – just your way

As you start your research about what to invest in, what accounts to fund, what products to hold, what stocks you might buy, etc., you’ll quickly come to the realization that everyone is likely telling you something a bit different.

But that’s OK. 

Take a pause. 

Breathe…

Based on my experiences including my own lessons learned over two decades of investing myself, there are many ways to successfully build wealth. 

Here are just a few common paths to consider:

  • Buying and owning real estate.
  • Becoming a private equity investor.
  • Invest in the stock market via owning various funds or companies themselves.
  • Become an entrepreneur and grow a business (or two)!

For our path, my wife and I have focused on the following for wealth-building and financial independence:

  1. owning our home (now condo) and,
  2. investing in the stock market. 

I run this blog for fun – it’s more of a passion project instead of any wealth generator for sure. I barely earn minimum wage from this site! That’s OK though, I enjoy running it. 🙂

Ultimately you need to determine what your wealth building path is and develop a plan around that.

Financial plans or business plans always come before financial products.

Just starting out? Ensure you have a financial plan before financial products

Image courtesy of BAM Alliance.

I put this image up above because it’s so damn important.

There is huge power in asking yourself “why” as your financial starting point.

  • Why do I want to have money? 
  • Why is money important to you or your family?

Then you can get into the “whats”. Here are some examples:

  • What are you saving or investing for?
    • I’m saving for my financial future OR
    • I’m saving to help my kids cover some university expenses OR
    • I’m saving for a trip Europe with my wife.  

Then you move into the “hows”:

  • How am I going to accomplish these goals?

Answering “Why”, “What” and then “How” is at the heart of any planning process.

Before you start investing at all, maybe do these three things first.

Our Financial Plan

For what’s it worth here are some things that are part of our financial plan in no order of importance:

  1. We want to be debt free. In doing so it will provide some significant financial flexibility. All income made will be ours to keep or spend beyond the basic necessities. We hope to own our home/condo outright and then we should be able to plan for semi-retirement. 

2010-2019: Financial reflections of the last decade

2. We want a newer car every 10 years. We’ll need to start thinking about replacing our existing car in another few years. We tend to keep our cars for about 10 or more years. Although saving and investing are really not the same things (investing has a longer-term time horizon), part of our financial plan is to have savings in place for newer cars before we need them. Ideally, we pay cash for our car(s).

3. We want to have retirement income security. We continue to save money every month and invest that money for our financial future.

We strive to:

  1. MAX out TFSAs every year, and then,
  2. MAX out RRSPs every year. In fact, we hope that in the coming years thanks to maximizing contributions to these accounts we can live off dividends and distributions to some degree.

Why my goal to live off dividends remains alive and well

4. We want to manage our risks – we want to self-insure. We have robust life insurance plans in place in case something happens to one of us for now but when we’re debt free and have plenty of retirement assets in the bank, we hope to self-insure.

Until then, we’ll keep term life insurance to protect our human capital while working.

In fact, our term life insurance is up for renewal soon. Here are some considerations on that.

Should I renew my term life insurance policy?

5. We want to worry less about money – keep a “that sucks” fund. With a modest emergency fund in place – we have money available to us for a few months of spending if/when we need it.

After listing #1-5 above, I suppose “our whys” with money could be summarized this way:

  1. To have cashflow > expenses.
  2. To work towards self-insurance and not pay life insurance premiums. 
  3. To have money available for travel.
  4. To maintain our “that sucks” emergency fund in case something happens and we need cash in a pinch. 
  5. To put money aside for long-term growth to become financially independent. 

Budgets

With our financial plan in place, we have a better understanding of what we need today, why, and how we are going to get there.

Here is what a complete financial plans should cover:

What should my financial plan cover?

How to get started with investing?

Like I mentioned above, while there are many ways to invest, for the majority of us an effective and efficient way to invest is in the stock via owning various funds or companies themselves.

My suggestion to you, to get started with investing, is to invest in low-cost Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and diversify into individual stocks (as you wish) from there. 

About 10 years ago now, I left the mutual fund industry and moved out of big bank mutual funds into lower-cost ETFs and dividend paying stocks. 

I haven’t looked back since.

At the time of this post, we now own about 25 or so Canadian dividend paying stocks for income and growth and a few low-cost ETFs for extra diversification.

If you’re unsure about what ETFs to own, check my extensive ETFs page here.  

When it comes to investing, choices abound.

Honestly, that’s great for DIY investors just starting out – but you have to start. 

Just get started and improve from there.  

A big thanks to a number of recent emails who inspired this post.  Keep the emails coming – happy investing!

For more reading, check out my “Start Here” page for many just getting started articles.

For millennials make sure you read this post and get your FREE ebook!

Mark

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25 Responses to "Just starting out – how to get started with investing"

  1. Jasmeen · Edit

    Hello Mark. I am a newbie here. Me and my husband are starting out new and want to invest regularly. We both are Canadians and have our TFSA, RRSP and Cash accounts. But We dont want to take headache of investing in different etfs, stocks etc. etc. We want “The 1” fund which we can regularly put money in for our lifetime and dont want to jump from that fund to any other fund for our whole life. We are in our mid 40s, dont have Children yet. Can you please suggest us which would that “The 1 fund” be that you could recommend for us? “That 1 fund” could be combination of everything – growth, regular dividends etc. etc. I know i am asking too much from you, but I think you know what i am looking for..he he…I hope to learn more from your website and knowledge on regular basis. Thank you in advance

    Reply
    2. Mark · Edit

      Hi Jasmeen,

      Very nice to hear from you….

      Depending on your tolerance for risk, losses, gains, timeframe, etc. I believe any all-in-one fund might be great.
      I have a dedicated post for that:

      https://www.myownadvisor.ca/the-best-all-in-one-exchange-traded-funds-etfs/

      I’ve also shared how I personally invest here and here:

      https://www.myownadvisor.ca/dividends/

      https://www.myownadvisor.ca/etfs/

      All-in-one funds allow you to focus on your savings rate and very little else since whatever the pool of stocks you invest in, well, that’s what you get in returns less tiny fees paid.

      For equity ETFs, I own mostly XAW for some ex-Canada investing and I own some QQQ for tech-growth.

      Your “1 fund” could be HEQT, VEQT, XEQT or a “GRO” fund like XGRO, VGRO, etc.

      Let me know your thoughts after you read those links. Happy to share more and reply more.

      All my best,
      Mark

      Reply
      1. Jasmeen · Edit

        Thanks for your reply mark. How about VFV.to as compared to the “1 fund” you mentioned – HEQT, VEQT, XEQT or a “GRO” fund like XGRO, VGRO, etc.??

        Reply
        1. Mark · Edit

          I really like VFV the only challenge is you are ignoring all other countries beyond US.
          The US market has been amazing, no question, for the last 10-12 years but they did have a “Lost Decade” and it could happen again.

          https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tsx-positioned-to-outperform-s-p-500-for-the-next-decade-strategist-1.1933701

          https://www.rbadvisors.com/insights/how-to-avoid-another-lost-decade-in-equities/

          I have no idea what the future holds really, but I will say it’s likely good to invest beyond Canada a bit and the U.S. a bit too just in case. I’ve been doing so since about 2016-2017 more myself. 🙂

          Mark

          Reply
  2. Paul · Edit

    Hey Mark, “Just Starting Out” important info for anyone…thanks. As for myself, it sounds like TD e-series would force me to split accounts or use new money. As a retired person, I find it so much easier to stick with one broker (I use Investorline). As you say, fees are minimized when you invest and hold individual companies. But, not apposed to getting into more ETFs or good funds to spread diversification and possibly increase monthly income. Will keep your suggestions in the hopper.

    Reply
    1. Mark · Edit

      I think TD e-series can make great sense for younger investors who are internet savvy (i.e., buy online) but don’t want to pay any commissions as they slowly build up assets (i.e., buying funds every few months). $10 per trade/buy can be prohibitive if you’re only investing a few hundred bucks every few months.

      Once said younger investor gets into a few thousand or $10k+ into their account, I think they can easily switch into an all-in-one fund or a low cost mix of ETFs (dividend-oriented ones) or pure indexed; get into individual stock ownership as well.

      Low-fee is the best predictor of eventual returns. Behaviours matter too!

      Good to hear from you Paul.
      Mark

      Reply
  3. Amanda · Edit

    Hi Mark,

    I have been reading your blog for over a year now – thank you so much for everything you share – I am miffed at myself that I haven’t cut ties with my advisor yet even though I have been following – its finding the time and having the confidence. I am contemplating either the BMO investor line or the TDDI – but not sure which is best – I know this sounds silly but do I just call them and open up a “self directed RRSP and TFSA” account and will the brokerage do the rest from there? Like what are the dynamics of setting up Self directed account?? Are there practice platforms to help guide you through the purchasing process? I have to figure how to break down 100K that is invested in a series of funds from Fidelity, Dynamic and Sentry and is arranged in a Spousal RSP, RRSP, TFSA and RESP – I am not sure where to put what where but the information here I believe is sufficient – the low cost ETFs sound like a good start to me. I just need to get started and I have a mentality that doesn’t like to offend anyone – what do I tell my advisor?? How do I cut ties nicely? No worries, I will make it happen – I just have to jump through a few mind hoops. Again – thank you and your readers for everything they share here. I have appreciated your blog site so much!!

    Reply
    2. Mark · Edit

      I meant to add this post as well…too eager to reply!
      https://www.myownadvisor.ca/how-to-dump-your-big-bank-financial-advisor/

      Thanks for the kind words about the site. It’s great to hear it’s helping others gain more money confidence.

      Have you considering opening the accounts and simply transferring assets/funds “in kind”?

      This is really a fancy term to say please keep my funds invested in the same stuff, same accounts, just move those accounts here e.g., BMO, TD, RBC, etc.

      Mark

      Reply
  5. Cheryl · Edit

    Great post! Gives us something to think about, different options.

    “nobody will ever care more about my money or my financial well-being than I do.” – That is so true! “Financial advisors” might pretend but I find that bloggers like yourself and places like the Canadian Money Forum care more about my money that any “financial advisor” I’ve used in the past. These people are more encouraging and offer way better advice and aren’t trying to make any money off me!

    Reply
    1. Mark · Edit

      I think fee-only planners have a big role to play in the industry but they should have fiduciary duty (i.e., client first). Many other financial planners are compensated based on the products they sell. Not a good duty for the client!!

      Bloggers have a bias too Cheryl but I certainly know where most of mine lie = dividends 🙂

      All the best and thanks for the kind words.
      Mark

      Reply
  6. unbalanced · Edit

    I have been reading your site since time began. This is by far, your best post. Keep it up and THANKS. By the way I have Mawer balanced and Global Equity

    Reply
    1. Bernie · Edit

      @unbalanced,

      Well done, you picked two excellent funds. An equal weight Mawer Balanced Fund (MAW104) / Mawer Global Equity Fund (MAW120) would have returned an annualized 11.5% since Oct 2009, the inception date of the later. Over the past 5 years they returned 10.3% annualized.

      Mawer Balanced Fund has been a pretty steady performer since they began in 1988 with a lifetime 8.4% return but they’ve been outpaced by Mawer’s Global Balanced Fund (MAW130) which incepted in 2013. The outperformance probably is due to Canadian Equity content, ie; MAW104 = 15.6% while MAW 130 = 4.3%. Mawer’s active management clearly knows what they’re doing. I have Mawer Global Balanced Fund in my RRIF.

      Reply
      1. Mark · Edit

        Thanks Bernie. Like I wrote to unbalanced, I wouldn’t hesitate if someone really wanted to own Mawer Balanced and “be done” with their portfolio in terms of stocks and bonds and what-to-put-where. You could do FAR worse than with that type of professional money management.

        Reply
    2. Mark · Edit

      Geez, thanks very much 🙂

      Mawer Balanced is a stud of a fund and I wouldn’t hesitate directing folks in that way if they still wanted some professional money management for a great all-in-one product.

      Reply
  7. Lloyd · Edit

    Just to add to the TD e-series segment. There are no purchase/sell fees (there is an early redemption fee if sold within 30 days of purchase). Minimum order sizes are small usually $100 or less (especially if pre-authorized). This can make them attractive to small/new investors.

    Disclaimer: I use some of these and own shares in TD.

    Reply
    1. Mark · Edit

      Great, more granular details to add for sure Lloyd. Would you agree TD e-series are good for beginners and long-term investors as an option. I would! Their cost structure is great overall.

      Reply
      1. Lloyd · Edit

        I’d have no problem recommending these products. The ease of use between my TD accounts and TDDI accounts is incredible. It also likely helps that I’ve been banking with TD since 1994 and my local branch knows me very well.

        My nephew uses BMO Investorline and I can’t figure that platform out at all. I suppose I’m just too lazy to really try to get into it but I find the TDDI platform heads and shoulders better than BMO. I haven’t seen anything comparable to the e-series with other Banks (not that I’ve looked).

        Reply
        1. Mark · Edit

          Once you have all those zeros in the bank, the bank tends to like you and know you very well 🙂

          Kidding aside, TD has a great set of products (e-series) and based on recent assessments/reviews – TDDI seems to rank very well against BMO or any other big bank discount brokerage – if not the best of the bunch.

          Reply

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