it sounds like you are just getting investment funds together. If you can get into a regular savings regime, living below your means, then for the first few years a half a percent of MER difference is not a hill of beans. Once you get perhaps 50k or so together, start to look to doing ETF's and drop the mutual funds.

Until then, look at buying a US denominated or Canadian hedged of s&p 500 via Vanguard. US Vanguard index funds usually have very low MER.

 

I use both iTrade and TDDI and am pretty happy with both of them. It's possible to do more or less the same things at either of these two brokerages.

There are certain things that I think are better at one brokerage than the other, but probably nothing that would affect you. iTrade has better GIC and bond selection than TDDI. I also feel like TDDI is slightly more refined and reliable (in platform reliability and behaviour) than iTrade, but this might just be a matter of taste. TDDI has better phone hours and is pretty much always accessible by phone with very good, knowledgable representatives -- however, as you might see in another thread here, recently TDDI has become impossible to reach. So I can't say whether that's a TDDI advantage any more.

For me, those are differences between the two, but have no hesitation recommending either one. If it's going to be easier integrating with your existing banking at Scotia, I think it makes most sense to stay with iTrade. When you log into Scotia Online, in addition to your chequing account you will see the iTrade account. You can easily transfer money in/out too... those are big advantages.

What kind of account will you be holding these investments in? TFSA or RRSP are preferable, and you absolutely should use your TFSA to the full extent possible.

iTrade offers you another option besides their Scotia US Index Fund BNS182 (0.85% MER). iTrade offers several ETF, exchange traded funds, that can be purchased with no commission. One of these is the Horizons S&P 500 index fund, with ticker HXS. The MER is 0.12% and I think that with the second internal trading fee, the overall fee works out to something like 0.35%.

After writing this I realized you asked a similar question earlier. I'll repeat the advice that this really does not matter too much and iTrade is perfectly fine for these kinds of investments, whether it's Scotia US Index fund or HXS. The earlier thread was:
http://canadianmoneyforum.com/showt...6569-Should-I-buy-VFV-index-fund-or-the-Scotia-US-Index-Fund-Series-D-(BNS-182)

 

Personally, I wouldn't go to TDDI just because of the e-series funds. Ultimately, you will want to be in lower MER ETFs once you build enough funds to make the commissions worthwhile, or buy one of the commission free ETFs.

P.S. I would have thought as a Scotia employee, you would get a break on commissions..... as an employee perk. They might cut it back to their high volume $4.99 rate, or give you other certain cost breaks. Ask!