<prompt> Human: A little about me first. Im 32, live in Canada, work a steady full time job i bring home around 1500 bi-weekly, dont have any debt, good credit score which i think was about 771 last time i checked about 4 months ago. Only monthly payments i have are rent, phone bill, utilities, car and home insurance, as well as food and entertainment etc. I do not have an SO or any dependents.I generally do pretty well and can live comfortably. However, I am pretty sick of working so hard for my money and think its long past due that my money start working for me. I just opened a TFSA tax free savings account this year and put 1000 in there just to start, but im completely unsure what to do with that. I opened my TFSA with TD canada trust, but a friend of mine suggested questrade as apparently their fees for trading are lower and i cant find any details about costs to trade from TD for whatever reason. Honestly I find it all kind of confusing.I would love to have my own place, but i feel like that might be too much of a stretch for me right now. A house is a big investment and i dont think i have enough savings for that right now, and have no idea how long that might take to get there.I want to make some longer term, low risk investments, but I think im mainly scared to take the risk. The money I have represents my life savings til now and id hate to lose it.What would some of you recommend as a good course of action to get things rolling?  <response>: First place to start, what are your investment goals? Time horizon? That will depend how your path forward will look. Then, you can start budgeting to determine your goal of what to save monthly. This q and a from this subreddit sidebar might helpAs a Canadian, if you start investing then the first thing to fill up is TFSA, then likely RRSP. Going with TD your probably looking at 10 a trade vs very low fees elsewhere, but if you bank there it can be an added connivence. My personal advice if your scared to lose it is to avoid investing much for now. Do some research to gain confidence in your strategy first. Your comment about losing your life savings would be concerning. The market is a wild beast, and you may invest this week and be down 5or like 1,000 if you say did 20k within two weeks. Youll immediately question yourself as to why and be more likely to panic. So read up, do research and if still tepid about investing, you can try dollar cost averaging strategy. This is where you buy small amounts over a period of time to prevent buying the peak and it dropping. You may miss a run up too, but its more conservative. Be wary though, this takes more transactions and will eat away quickly. Generally transactions of more than 1 of what Im investing are much too high for meremember same cost to take out too, so thatd leave you making 1000 lumps with TD at a time. Dont forget to check out rpersonalfinancecanada Subscribe and hopefully you can pick up on things, 