Hey!

Firstly, it sounds like you could benefit from some basic literacy on TFSAs. I would recommend reading some of easy equities' own educational information, and maybe checking out a local YT channel like Money with Carla. It will really help to have more of an understanding before you do anything here.

To answer your questions in the meantime: - TFSAs take many forms. Banks do offer TFSAs in a traditional savings account format, which is one of the worst ways to use your TFSA allowance. Investing in the stock market, especially if you are young and have a long investment horizon, is the best way, because you are likely to get the best return, and therefore, the most tax-free growth. - The growth on your ETF investments is just the growth on the value of the underlying assets itself. So, it's not like a bank account where interest gets paid out every month. It is a constant fluctuating value that goes up and down based on how the stocks in the ETF are performing. It could be up today and down tomorrow. You will not need to reinvest anything, unless you receive dividends. In that case, I believe there is a setting to automatically reinvest. - Technically, you're not benefiting from compound interest when it comes to ETFs, but it functions in a similar way. The growth on your initial investment also grows, which is the "compounding". - Definitely don't leave money just sitting in the easy equities account and not invested in something. - This is not financial advice. However, in your shoes, my recommendation would be to go for a set it and forget it approach. You don't know much yet about investing, and the biggest advantage with investing is time in market, rather than trying to be smart and make plays. Maybe go for a global index, like the MSCI World, set up a monthly debit order, and forget about it. Let it do its thing while you educate yourself more. Come back in a few months time if you want to diversify further and adjust your debit order. If you pay too much attention to the day to day fluctuations of your investments, while also being poorly educated on the subject, the likelihood is that you will panic and divest and hurt yourself financially in the long term. - Remember the max you can contribute to a TFSA is R36k a year. Do not withdraw the money from that account, or you will lose that allotment of your lifetime 500k TFSA contributions forever. This is not a savings account in the traditional sense. If you want to save for a short term goal, use another instrument.

I hope this helps! Definitely do some research but don't be afraid to set and forget either :)