I view my paycheque as a sort of wind tunnel. The money, in twenties, gushes from the blower end, while at the far side, sucking up all my twenties, are the mortgage, the car payment, the utilities, insurance, groceries and the like, and boy do they suck! Every once in a while, I reach into the meagre flow of twenties and pluck out one or two for beer and other necessities but mostly they just fly by. I won’t say it’s a perfect system but it has got me this far. However, with tax season approaching, as unstoppable as another Simon Cowell produced TV show, everything’s changed.
Financial questions invade my mind which had previously been occupied with foraging for food in the fridge, cajoling Cupcake into connubial goings-on and....uhhhh... foraging for food in the cupboard. Seemingly overnight I am pondering such deep issues such as, should I buy RRSP’s to offset my tax burden? How much? Which ones? How long a term should I sign up for? What is my maximum allowable contribution? Why aren’t those Triscuits still up on the top shelf, behind the spaghetti canister, where I hid them?
The problem is that I have just watched my company RRSP’s go through a phase where they were losing money faster than a rube at a pickpocket convention. My quarterly financial statements sent by the financial institution had profit and loss charts that looked suspiciously like they were borrowed from an automotive manufacturer... except I didn’t get a bail out. I was leery about pouring more money into an apparently insatiable monster but felt I had a better chance of getting something decent out of it than if I just mailed it off to Revenue Canada. My odds may be lousy with the stock market but money sent to the government is gone forever.
I decided to ask an expert. I booked an appointment with a finance fellow at the credit union. Some might say going to an RRSP salesman to see if I needed an RRSP was like going to a used car lot to see if I needed a 1974 Gremlin. Nonetheless, the credit union had treated me as fairly as I ever expected a financial institution to and felt they deserved a chance to convince me.
The financial guru, Ian, (not his real suit jacket) is a tall earnest man with an amiable disposition and a shrewd mind for money. I suspect he’d been a nerd in school.
As Ian crunched the numbers of a retirement formula on his computer screen, a line graph of my projected income after retirement based on my current investments began to appear. If it had been my electro-cardiogram readout and not my financial picture, I would be in ICU with hoses in every orifice. “Okay, let’s look at your investments,” Ian said heartily. “Maybe when we plug some of those numbers in, the graph may perk up a bit.”
“Well,” I began nervously, “there’s the 12 bags of empty beverage bottles by the shed... I donated them to the grad’s bottle drive,” Cupcake whispered. “And if you bring up the change in the sofa, I’ll smack you.”
The brief stab at levity aside, I enumerated my sources of income I could expect, based on the various pensions and RRSP’s I currently have. Although I had been with the same company for almost thirty years, along the way it changed hands a few times and new pension plans appeared with each new logo on my paycheques. One parent multinational conglomerate only owned the company I toiled for briefly, and the pension from the short fling is anticipated to be worth a whopping $29.47 per month. The company threatened me that if I retired earlier than 65, they would cut it back to $21.63. I’m working until I’m 65 now just to tick them off.
Finally, after examining the bones of my financial future, Ian came to a stunning conclusion. “Based on what’s already invested from payroll deductions, you probably don’t need more RRSP’s to maintain a reasonable tax rate,” he proclaimed. “And with help from CPP and OAP and your umpteen pensions, your retirement is more promising than you first thought, too.”
“Boy,” I blurted out, “you sure make a lousy RRSP salesman!” Cupcake kicked my leg.
“Just to be sure,” Cupcake told Ian after shushing me with her patented ‘shut the puff up while I do the talking’ look, “We’d like a five-year principal-guaranteed investment product as outlined on your website.” She stated the amount and Ian quickly tapped out the transaction on his computer.
“Apparently he’s a better RRSP salesman than I gave him credit for,” I chided Cupcake outside the credit union doors. “Actually, I think you made an astute financial decision.”
“Not really,” confessed my child bride. “I noticed a sign saying that if you buy an RRSP, you can win a big screen TV!”
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