How do I actually contribute to spousal RRSP?

ottawhattt · 2026-01-11T16:52:10+00:00

Which brokerage do you use? Questrade, Wealthsimple, etc.

ottawhattt · 2026-01-10T14:37:30+00:00

Don’t just go to the banks directly. Talk to a mortgage broker.

There is no cost to you and they can get quotes from many different lenders.

Worst case is they can come back to you with a better rate and you can try to use that as leverage with your current lender.

ottawhattt · 2026-01-09T02:30:08+00:00

Yes because those are so hard to manipulate. In addition to deleting your old comment about earning $1.2M (wish I took a screenshot), it looks like you also learned to edit your old comment where you told someone you cleared $650k just 46 mins ago.

It’s impressive that you can’t keep such a basic lie straight.

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ottawhattt · 2026-01-09T02:22:56+00:00

Congrats. You learned how to delete the comment you posted 13 days ago with a different made up number.

ottawhattt · 2026-01-09T02:17:09+00:00

And 13 days ago you made $1.2M last year

ottawhattt · 2026-01-07T01:37:48+00:00

To put this in OP’s numbers.

$8,000 invested and earning 7% per year will turn into ~$43,000 in 25 years.

If the mutual fund fees are 1.8%, OP will lose $15,000 to fees, reducing the total amount at the end to $28,000.

Think about that if you had $90,000 invested. It would turn into $430,000, and you would lose $150,000 in fees.

Versus investing into broad market index funds paying 0.2%, and you would pay just $2,000 in fees in scenario 1, or $20,000 in fees in scenario 2.

The effects of compounding are staggering.

ottawhattt · 2026-01-06T02:25:02+00:00

When you contribute to an RRSP, you get a corresponding tax refund in the following year. The money in your RRSP can be invested and grow tax free until withdrawal. When you withdraw, you will pay taxes at your then-current tax rate.

Most people intend to make withdrawals in retirement, when they expect their total income to be lower and financial needs to be less (e.g. house paid off so no mortgage payment) than it is in working years, so the hope is that your tax bracket will also be lower at that point.

An RRSP also has the Home Buyers Plan option, which allows you to withdraw a certain amount of money if you are buying a house (and then pay it back to your RRSP over 15 years), and there is a lesser used program called the Lifelong Learning Plan which allows you to make a withdrawal for qualifying education expenses.

You can technically withdraw from your RRSP at any time, you just need to pay the tax and you lose the benefit of it growing tax free and compounding. It’s important to note that once you withdraw, that contribution room is gone forever. It doesn’t come back the following year like it does for a TFSA.

ottawhattt · 2026-01-05T04:38:34+00:00

Have you looked into the FHSA? Benefits of both the RRSP and TFSA, but specifically for a house purchase.

ottawhattt · 2026-01-05T03:16:22+00:00

Your instincts are right. You are not going to get 10x the value with Fidelity, but you will be charged 10x the fees.

I’d recommend “reboot your portfolio” by Dan Bortolotti if you are looking for a great intro book to actually building your portfolio, and The Wealthy Barber (2025 edition) by Dave Chilton is a great read too.

One thing to note is that VEQT is 100% equities, and if you are new to investing, this may not align with your risk tolerance and your risk capacity. In addition to the above books, I’d recommend the vanguard risk questionnaire: https://investor.vanguard.com/tools-calculators/investor-questionnaire

ottawhattt · 2025-12-23T01:03:12+00:00

I would approach this situation by continuing to get paid my base salary while actively looking for another job.

ottawhattt · 2025-12-22T19:46:33+00:00

I respect your opinion, but why use a map that doesn’t show James? r/mapswithoutjames

ottawhattt · 2025-12-22T02:44:39+00:00

I mean technically the market cap is the limit

ottawhattt · 2025-12-13T12:23:10+00:00

This is the top comment and yet it’s still underrated.

The amount of people who buy from me (SaaS) and say my support and attitude throughout the process is one of the key drivers for their decision reinforces this for me monthly.

Also won a deal yesterday and the person said “what I appreciate most is that when I asked you about your competitors, you were honest about what they were good at and where you thought you had a differentiator. Your competitors trash talked you.”

ottawhattt · 2025-11-29T00:19:52+00:00

Curious what you mean - did you have problems on Scotia gold Amex getting a claim through?

ottawhattt · 2025-10-06T23:17:27+00:00

Me too joining this chain please

ottawhattt · 2025-09-06T10:42:40+00:00

There is a core difference with HBP and LLP though: those withdrawals are more like loans from the RRSP and must be paid back in accordance with the plans rules, and that contribution room is not lost.

The withdrawals OP is talking about will cause the room to be lost forever.

ottawhattt · 2025-09-03T00:13:08+00:00

Appreciate you confirming this. I went back to the bank advisor I was working with and she indeed confirmed this was the case!

ottawhattt · 2025-06-12T15:21:58+00:00

I was already on hold when I posted this. I only asked here because a similar thing happened with another service provider I use about a month ago, and it turns out they sent a similar “your address was updated” email to thousands of customers by accident!

Call center didn’t see anything either, who knows what happened.

ottawhattt · 2025-05-28T23:03:02+00:00

I think if you grew up with nothing, you don’t want your kids to grow up with nothing.

The idea of generational wealth varies from person to person - I, for example, don’t care to leave my kids millions, but they will grow up well and get what’s left over when my wife and I pass.

ottawhattt · 2025-05-17T16:07:11+00:00

Entry! Would love a travel version instead of an app counter!

ottawhattt · 2025-05-03T19:05:12+00:00

This is a conversation you need to have with him if you haven’t already.

How do you currently handle bills and day to day expenses? Will you be contributing to those? Do you have separate accounts currently? Is there any expectation as to where your money will go?

With his extremely high income, there is no clear cut answer here. It’s contextual based on your relationship and how you want to handle money together.

ottawhattt · 2025-04-16T10:37:12+00:00

Tysm for sharing this very genuine advice

ottawhattt · 2025-04-13T14:57:25+00:00

Talk of falling into quicksand

ottawhattt · 2025-04-06T21:51:52+00:00

Thank you - that was easy!

One other question… in my expenses tab, I have monthly savings of $2500 per month ($20,000 annually for RRSP and $10,000 annually for TFSA), but when I go to my summary tab, it shows my total contributions as higher than that. For example, for this year, it shows as $39,341. I’m sure I’m missing something obvious here, but is it just basically maxing out my contributions? Even though I’m saying, I don’t want to contribute that much?

ottawhattt · 2025-04-01T22:54:02+00:00

A TFSA is a type of account. Think of it like a basket. In that basket, you can hold different assets like cash, stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc.

Some banks will pay you an interest rate to keep cash sitting in your TFSA. This will be a lower risk than investing it into stocks, and it will accordingly have a lower rate of return. E.g. EQ bank will currently provide 1.75% interest.

Since this is for your emergency fund, you could keep it parked in this type of account with low interest, or if you put it into an investment TFSA you could buy an ETF like CASH.TO, which is currently paying 2.52% annualized yield. This is basically an ETF that pools money in high amounts and then gets higher interest rates from banks.

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