[trancehead]

[i am ETF low MER biased at the moment, so reader beware]

^Regarding specialists, i am sure there are a couple out there who would genuinely help, but these are also the car salesman of the Financial world. I believe their profits are directly related to what things they can sell you (such as their Bank's mutual fund) and this mutual fund will fuck you with about 2%+ of management expenses. Tough to say if, on average, a mutual fund with such high fees can out perform some security that just tracks an index (s&p, barclays) with minimal fees. But right now I lean to no.

Regardless of the product, you want to minimize your fees on the security as well as the platform you are using (TD, RBC GAM, Tangerine, Vanguard, e-trade, fidelity)

Regarding TSFA
- probably not a wise idea in most peoples circumstances to place conservative securities in there. as it again is a tax shelter, you want to put your highest earning securities in here

[usa rant]
I miss the TSFA (i moved to the US for work. If i try to contribute anything to my TSFA, i will be taxed at 1% each month). Also, USA would not respect that it is a TSFA anyways and tax the damn account.
Although there are retirement funds (analgous to the RRSP in Canada) there exists no TSFA equivalent.

to OP:
- I would just open a Vanguard account (low fees and i think ETF trading is free in Canada too). ETFs are like bundles of securities that are traded (so its like a mutual fund + stock) so you get instant diversification.
- Since you mentioned you wanted short term investments (you want liquid money in the short term future), I would put at least 75% of your current cash into short term bonds ETF or some equivalent.
- Take this opportunity to also start investing long term with a small portion of your money. Since you are new to this, see "Dollar cost averaging" as this would slowly ease you into it. When going longterm, you can pick something that is more volatile (like the s&p500 indexes) but over the long term (5-10+ years) they make money
- Pick one with low fees (IIRC, the lowest fee for any Vanguard is 0.06 MER. But this that was for their S&P index.) IIRC I see some bonds with 0.3 MER.
-stick your investments in your TSFA. like the previous poster said, you have 46,500 of room (damn you lucky Canadians)