smart investor retires early, are you one?

What Are the Benefits of RRSPs?

While designed specifically as a retirement vehicle, an RRSP has benefits throughout your lifetime.

By contributing to an RRSP throughout your working career, you'll realize immediate tax benefits at a time when your income is generally highest. The total amount of your annual contribution can be deducted from your gross income at tax time, reducing the amount you pay in income tax that year.

The income earned in your RRSP is not taxed until it is withdrawn. While your investments sit in your RRSP, their growth is tax sheltered and so the total value may grow more quickly.
By the time you begin to withdraw the funds at retirement, you will probably be in a lower tax bracket than during your earning years. Funds withdrawn at that time will benefit from this lower tax rate.

Special features of RRSPs allow you to do further tax planning or use your RRSP to fund specific life events.

Investing your RRSP in mortgages!
When you take the decision in your hand and turn your RRSP into a self-directed form, you will be able to be in control over the investments your funds will make. Private mortgage investments using your RRSP can earn your account up to 12% plus every year, thus enabling you to retire with dignity and in time to have some more enjoyable years left for you.

Self-directed RRSP is held by trust companies like Olympia Trust, Canadian Western Trust, however they are held by major banks trust divisions as well. Always pick the ones with local presence, personable service and to be available to you for personal consultation and help to manage your RRSP better.

Investing lessons from Benjaminn Graham, visionaire...

A dictionary will tell you that investing involves putting money into assets with the intent of making a profit. But that's not the whole story. Speculating, for example, involves the very same process.

The legendary "Dean of Wall Street," Benjamin Graham, differentiates the two approaches in his seminal work, Security Analysis, and in the process, he offers the best definition of investing I've come across. Graham says an investment is something that " upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. [Emphasis mine.] Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative." Given that definition, a lot of us who think we are investing may come to discover that we're engaging in what I would call intelligent speculation.

There is no investment withouth any risk. Mitigation of such throughout due diligence will reduce factor to managable levels.

Whether your goal is a comfortable retirement, a good postsecondary education for your children, a new home, your own business or even a holiday, the  sooner you begin planning, the better yor chances of success.