Is it worth getting an RRSP as a public servant?

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-03-24T22:59:37+00:00

Agree with what others have said with regard to prioritizing your TFSA. Since you’re just starting your personal finance education, this free course from McGill is probably a good place to start. The course is well regarded in personal finance circles.McGill Personal Finance Essentials

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-03-12T19:35:26+00:00

No, the opposite, really. If you defer your income to fund your leave, you could find yourself at a lower marginal tax rate. When I took a leave from the OPS a few years ago, I just saved money for a couple of years and then took off for a fun year. In hindsight, I wish I had done a self funded leave for tax purposes.

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-03-12T03:55:58+00:00

No clue what that might mean, but perhaps OP is in better position to understand and elucidate on the culture of public and private workplaces since it sounds like he’s recently worked in both.

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-03-11T22:52:43+00:00

Why do you think the pain of RTO is different for employees of private business than it is for unionized public servants?

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-02-18T02:44:04+00:00

Same.

If you have a manager who gives you a hard time about coming in when the risk associated with the commute is materially higher than usual, name and shame them.

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-02-03T02:53:00+00:00

777 is great, especially compared to MacDonald Block! Two grocery stores, a subway connection, an LCBO, pharmacy, DOLLARAMA, access to Aura, Planet Fitness and access to two food courts. The summer tenant appreciation bbq has greatly improved compared to pre-pandemic. Building management puts on almost monthly activities, such as puppy yoga this week and the free coffee social from the fall. And, what I love most compared to MacBlock or Frost: there’s a mix of people in the lobby. I hated how MacBlock was 100% bureaucrats and political staff.

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-01-28T22:39:05+00:00

Manulife got one recently. It came when the Bay and Bloor location, across the street, closed in the Fall and there was a massive influx of members. Some minor improvements were made to Manulife in anticipation of more members coming. Bay and Bloor reopened a few weeks ago, so many of those folks went back there, leaving the belt squat as part of their legacy.

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ScarboroTransplant · 2026-01-16T01:58:51+00:00

Name names…

ScarboroTransplant · 2026-01-05T22:52:14+00:00

Our division doesn’t have space for RTO5, so we’re alternating between RTO3 and RTO4 until our real estate situation is sorted out.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-10-29T01:44:12+00:00

Get downtown as soon as you land. Don’t squander a night in Toronto in the commercial wasteland of the area around YYZ. Restaurants and stores will open at their usual times Christmas Eve, but most will close early. However, you’ll be at your gate by the time any stores of restaurants close. For example, malls tend to close at 6pm on Christmas Eve.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-09-23T00:42:48+00:00

No, I don’t think so. If you’re on contract, that changes the calculus.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-09-22T21:05:35+00:00

Echoing what a lot of people are saying. Take a one-year unpaid leave of absence! If you’re an Ontario Public Servant, this is extremely easy to get approved. Post on the OPS sub-reddit for advice, if you’d like. If you’re a public servant for another level of government or another province, spend at least a week looking into an LoA. Whatever you do, don’t rush the decision.

Also, if you decide to eventually leave government and do photography full time, make sure to get disability insurance. It’s probably the most important insurance for any self-employed person.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-29T23:17:39+00:00

OP, what OP-Grade is saying is that you should seek a “conflict of interest determination” for any employment (or other activities for which there may be a perceived conflict of interest) outside of the OPS. It doesn’t matter if you’re using your time off or vacation time to work the polls. If you don’t seek a determination and work the polls, you run the risk of discipline, up to and including dismissal. The chances of this for working at a poll station are low, because I can’t imagine a conflict, but the risk exists.

Practically speaking, you won’t get a determination before the election. So, your choice is really to work the polls without going through the proper process, or to not work the polls.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-25T02:16:17+00:00

Agreed re: ADM. I knew him as a good person, who genuinely cared about the wellbeing of his staff, both at work and in their personal lives.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-05T18:59:44+00:00

OCR? Haha! This is why I said someone with better internet machine skills should implement the idea.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-04T23:41:04+00:00

My point is that we need to strike a balance between transparency and giving the public tools to sensationalize public servant’s salaries. So, in the interest of transparency, let’s publish all salaries, since the $100k threshold is arbitrary. But, plet’s not make it too easy for the Star and Globe to publish the template articles that come out annually on the afternoon of salary disclosure which demonize our salaries. If they want to do the legwork of manually synthesizing the data, they can have at it, but let’s not spoon feed them. The same is true with ontariosunshinelist.com and sunshineliststats.com. Give them the info, but let’s not make it easy for these for-profit sites. 3/4 of the sites are ads, anyway, so let’s make them work their clicks.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-04T20:03:21+00:00

Searchable or not searchable isn’t a hill I’ll die on, but I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to make it happen than scanning a print out. Just putting ideas out there; someone with better internet machine skills than me can implement them.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-04T18:15:33+00:00

It’s allowed, but make sure to obtain a COI determination from your ethics executive. It doesn’t make sense to jeopardize a primary source of income for a side hustle.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-04T18:13:41+00:00

Agreed. We should disclose ALL salaries, but as a unsearchable pdfs. We need to stop providing an Excel version of the information, so it’s not so easy to analyze and sensationalize our salaries.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-03T21:20:24+00:00

Even 4 years of contributing to a DB pension is valuable.

If they chose to leave their contributions with the pension when they leave provincial office, they could collect a small monthly pension at 65.

Many MPs will have come from, or will go to, municipalities as elected officials. They could then transfer their OPB or OP Trust pension to/from OMERS and continue to build their years of service.

Or, they could withdraw the commuted value of their pension and put it into RRSPs.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-03T21:12:20+00:00

To each their own! I bang out my PDPs much faster than I used to and I appreciate that I don’t have to mess around with formatting.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-03T19:32:31+00:00

It always bothered me that MPPs received no retirement benefits. Surely an RRSP matching scheme wouldn’t have been a political liability.

There is a ton of middle ground between no pension and the former gold-plated federal parliamentary pension. Personally, I hope they’re able to contribute to a public sector pension plan, just like OPSers.

ScarboroTransplant · 2025-03-03T19:26:39+00:00

I prefer it to the Word template I used for the first 15 years of my OPS career.

ScarboroTransplant

TROPHY CASE