More Money Podcast - What Is RRSP Season? - Money Minute with Jessica Moorhouse

Episode Date: February 14, 2020

What is RRSP season? And why is every bank, financial institution, robo-advisor and discount brokerage telling you "Quick, the deadline is looming! Don't forget to contribute to your RRSP before it's too late!" That's because March 2, 2020 is the deadline for you to contribute to your RRSP to count towards the 2019 tax year (typically it's March 1, but this year March 1 is on a Sunday). So if you are trying to figure out to reduce your taxes owing for 2019, you may want to take this opportunity to contribute to your RRSP now before the deadline to use as a tax deduction when filing your 2019 taxes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to another Money Minute with Jessica Morehouse. That is me. Today, I'm going to share some important info about what the hell RRSP season is and why you should care. So we are close to the end of the season, RRSP season that is, and you've probably been seeing a ton of ads by the banks, even some robo-advisors telling you that the deadline is looming, so don't forget to contribute to your RRSP before it's too late. But what are they actually talking about? Well, what they're talking about is that March 1st is the deadline for you to contribute to your RRSP to count towards your taxes for 2019. And if you're listening to this in the future, it's currently February 2020,

and us Canadians are gearing up to file our taxes for 2019, the year that just passed. So if you have a bunch of RRSP room and you're trying to figure out how to lower your taxable income to reduce your tax bill for the year, even though 2019 is over, you still have 60 days into the new year to contribute to your RRSP to use as tax deductions. Now, what I like to do to see if I do need to do a lump sum contribution during these 60 days, in addition to my regularly scheduled contributions to my RRSP, is I punch in all of my tax and income information into a handy and free calculator by SimpleTax. So you can check it out at simpletax.ca calculator. No, this is not sponsored. I just personally use this calculator. It's free.

It's a handy tool. Do whatever you want with it or not. Just find another calculator. I don't care. So you may discover that you do not need to make any additional contributions to your RRSP, in which case you can just ignore the whole RRSP season chatter and keep on living your best life. Okay. Do whatever you want to do. But if you do need to make some other contributions to your RRSP to lower your taxes, well, go do it now. You have until March 1st. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started.

Now, I also want to share, in case you just need a little handy reminder, just because you make a contribution to your RRSP does not mean that you have to use those contributions as a tax deduction for the current tax year. If you want to, you can carry those contributions forward. This is actually kind of a great idea if you're contributing to your RRSP,

but right now you actually don't need those tax deductions, but in the future, maybe you'll earn a little bit more money, you'll be in a higher tax bracket, and you'll need some useful ways to reduce your overall tax owed. So just a reminder, you don't have to claim those contributions on your taxes this year. You can carry it forward into the future. And lastly, if you don't know what your RRSP contribution room is or your TFSA room is for that matter, well, make sure to check out your CRA My Account. And if you have no idea what that is, make an account. You probably have one and you just forgot the password, forgot you set it up. Just a guess because I've talked to a lot of people about this. So all that information is in your CRA My Accounts. Go check that out so you know what it is. Okay, that is it for me.

That is another Money Minute. Thanks so much for listening and joining me once again. I'll be back here Wednesday with another interview for the podcast. So have an amazing weekend and I'll see you very soon.