Tim, your mother appears to have an ace in the hand, which is a responsible & thoughtful son who is obviously putting her needs & wishes first.
i agree with those who thought your mother would do best with ongoing financial service, albeit at a reasonable cost.
i hope you won't rule out what is described upthread as option #5, quoted here:
If she is not comfortable with the self-directed options, consider option #5:
Move to a low cost mutual fund company that also provides advice. The all-in cost might be a bit cheaper than option #3 (and obviously much cheaper than option #4). See this recent post by the president of Steadyhand:
The ETF Price Disadvantage
He has a point:
"The combination of ETFs and advice generally costs more than a low cost mutual fund, which also comes with advice."
a balanced fund or a portfolio combining a few funds from such a firm would not stray far in its underlying holdings from a properly-chosen 100% ETF portfolio that would also combine etfs for a balanced whole.
some time ago a similar cmf thread put together a small list of professional investment management firms in canada that are thought to offer sound investment advice, at the above-mentioned hard-to-find reasonable cost.
i'd define "reasonable" as something like 1% of AUM
including all costs such as portfolio trading fees (the TERs) plus custodial fees. These latter - custodial fees - can run as high as .50% per annum. Many private wealth management services will recite a 1% management fee, but often this does not include the all-important separate custody of the securities themselves, which then bumps the fee to north of 1.50%.
as i recall, there were only 4 nominations on the tiny cmf forum list. One was, i believe (hope someone will check this out) Philips Hager & North. Another one would be Steadyhand. These are vancouver-based firms but with toronto offices, i believe.
the name i proffered was Jarislowsky Fraser, also with a toronto office. Their fees seem to be the lowest of all - typically from .50-.60% of a portfolio, although for private wealth management i believe the threshold is $2M.
handily, jarislowsky offers 3 low-cost mutual funds, with MERs (including custody of securities) ranging from .65-.75%, ie not much more than your average ETF. In the middle range, they offer wrap fee services.
i recall that about 18 months ago, the jarislowsky equity fund was not much different from XIU with one important exception: J & F had just sold *all* of their barrick. What a brilliant foresight that turned out to be.
i once asked a jarislowsky representative why their fees were so low, apart from the frugal influence which legendary founder Stephen Jarislowsky - who was always severely scottish with his purse - would have had upon the operation. The partner's answer? the high volume of overall client assets under management opens the door to lower per-unit costs, he said.
here's their website. I see they have at least 11 CFAs in the toronto office alone; justin trudeau is a client of theirs; i better stop going on here or else people will start to think i'm being paid.
http://www.jfl.ca/Corp_Overview.html