So it’s tax season in Canada and people are trying to align their finances before they file their income tax returns. One aspect of these finances is contributing to an RRSP or registered retirement savings plan. If you’re not from Canada, it’s essentially an investment savings vehicle for retirement. The immediate effect of contributing to such an account is the lowering of the amount of income tax payable for that tax year. Usually because of RRSP contributions, I receive a tax refund.
The deadline for this year’s RRSP contributions is the end of this month. As a Canadian citizen, I can buy RRSPs from a multitude of different financial institutions. Working for EA though, I have incentive to buy RRSPs from our group retirement financial product provider, Sunlife. That’s because contributions to that account are eligible for a company match, which is essentially free money from EA. Now in my situation, I have two separate RRSP accounts at Sunlife because when I left EA in late 2010, I had transfer the employee RRSP account to a regular one. When I came back to EA this summer, another employee account was opened for me.
Now since I want EA to match a portion of my RRSP contribution this year, I decided to contribute a lump sum of money last week. I guess I wasn’t paying attention because I contributed to wrong account, sending money to the non-employee account, which EA doesn’t care about. There was no easy way to transfer the money to the other account so I was stuck. Not wanting to lose out on the company match, I contributed an identical amount to the proper account just days later. I was extremely luck that I had the extra money lying around as the amount wasn’t trivial.
Wow, what a boring post. I hope you enjoyed reading about retirement investments and how I don’t know how to click on the right things on a web site. Tomorrow, I’ll explain how I observed some paint drying.