With traditional pension plans covering less and less numbers of Canadians, RRSPs are supposed to take their place. But, a significant number of Canadians don’t even have a RRSP and only a tiny fraction contribute the maximum every year. One of the reasons for this sad state of affairs is a lack of awareness – even people who contribute to a RRSP are under the impression that it is an “investment” they have to buy to save some tax within the deadline. Preet Banerjee, a stock broker, financial planner and the blogger behind the Where Does All My Money Go? was motivated to write a valuable reference book on RRSPs (subtitled “41 Strategies Canadians need to know about our country’s single greatest tax planning tool”) when he couldn’t find an up-to-date book on the subject despite the role that RRSPs are going to play in the retirement dreams of many Canadians.
Preet sent me a draft version of the book that I managed to read over the weekend (to be honest, I did “skim” through some strategies because it is so hard to stare at the computer screen when you already do it for a living). The book covers an exhaustive list of strategies that you can implement with your own RRSP, whether you are a beginner, have been contributing for years or are close to retirement. Everything that I can think of (and some I didn’t) is here (Check out the Table of Contents for a self-explanatory list of strategies): from RRSP loans, over-contribution rules, spousal accounts, meltdown strategies, withdrawal strategies. I myself picked up a nugget of information or two that I didn’t know about.
The book is available from The RRSP Book website for $25 (including taxes and delivery). You can find some excerpts on the book’s website and a lot of content from the book is also available on Preet’s blog (such as this discussion on the eternal debate between the Save to an RRSP and Pay Down the Mortgage camps).
The Giveaway: Preet has generously offered four copies of the book for the readers of this blog. Participation is very simple – just leave your email address and a comment to this post. Deadline for entries is Friday, January 18, 2008 at 8 p.m. EST. One entry per person. Canadian residents only. Your email will not be shared with anyone. I’ll pick four entries at random after the deadline. Good luck!
