Welcome to Million Dollar Journey! If you're new here, you can learn about me and even follow my net worth updates. A great place to start reading is with the popular articles located in the right side bar. If you would like to join thousands of others and keep up with the free daily updates, you can subscribe to the RSS feed via reader or E-mail.
Book Giveaway Winners of the Book RRSP’s
It's time to announce the 4 book giveaway winners of the new book: RRSP's written by Preet Banerjee. Out of the 105 entries, the 4 winners are summarized below.
Best Comment Entry
As promised, there is 1 book made available to what I thought was the best comment entry. After reviewing the comments, it was really tough picking just ONE best comment as there were many that deserved to win. Alas, there is only one winner.
The best comment was made by: Aaron.
Here it is again:
Since my (financial) life includes my husband, I’ll include his RRSP plan too. His RRSP plan was actually designed by me.
Amount of contributions
———————–
We are both contributing more than 18% of our wage. As we both have extra contribution room, I divided that extra in 36 parts to pay it off in 3 years. (In some strange way, I kind of think of it as a loan that we have to pay off.) This works out to be for me: 18% wage + $500/month. And for my husband: 18% wage + $700/month. Our workplaces do not provide pensions nor RRSP benefits of any kind.RRSP Allocation
—————
Because the total value of my RRSP investments are < $100,000, I am do a bi-weekly contribution into TD efunds. My split is: 30% Canadian Index, 20% bond index, 25% US index, and 25% international index.
My husband has more than $100,000 in his RRSP so he does a monthly contribution into his eTrade account. His allocation is in ETFs:
20% Canadian Index
25% American Index
30% Bond Index (with a split between real and long term bonds)
5% emerging markets index
20% international index
He recently switched away from iShares ETFs.We have both completed T1213 forms to reduce income tax from our pay cheques.
Goals:
(1) By paying off our mortgage faster, we have reduced the amortization from 30 years to 10 years.
(2) In 10 years, our total net worth will be enough to sustain us so we don’t have to work! (We will have to sell our house and downsize to apartment …. not a problem.)
(3) I’m 31 and my husband is 36. Retire in 10 years!
Stories like this always inspire me. Congrats on your financial success Aaron!
3 Random Winners
The next 3 books were drawn at random, the winners are…
- Michelle Dawn (comment #2)
- Kenny (comment #25)
- mike (comment # 71)
Win the Last Book
The last book is made available to the "top commentator" of Feb 2008. The current score is on the right sidebar of the main page. Looks like George has a healthy lead but there's still lots of February left!
Congrats to the winners and stay tuned for more giveaways coming soon!
12 Comments, Comment or Ping
1. George
Congrats to the winners!
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 9:47 am
2. WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com
Hi FT - thanks for running your contest and review. Congratulations to all the winners!
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 10:35 am
3. Dividendgrowth
FT, I like your way of getting traffic for the website by giving free books.
BTW Congrats to the winners.
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 10:38 am
4. FrugalTrader
Aaron already owns the book, so I chose the next best comment. The winner is… DOM!
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 11:07 am
5. CheapCanuck
Wow! That must have been a lot of work, filtering through all the comments you get here! Congratulations to the winners. Can’t beat free stuff.
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
6. Telly
That is indeed a very impressive story / comment. Aaron is a well deserved winner but it’s also not surprising that she already owns the book.
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
7. Aaron
Thank you for the comments. It is very encouraging to read these comments as it does take some guts to take control of your very own finances.
Telly: I actually already won the book through Canadian Capitalist’s blog. Oh yeah, I’m not a woman. :-)
Feb 15th, 2008 @ 11:19 pm
8. Dave
Great plan Aaron! I like the simple asset allocations you and your husband have. I been running through different allocation scenarios and wondering how to divide things between my wife and I.
My meager RRSP savings are on hold this year as my wife is going to teacher’s college in the fall and we’re saving every penny for it as to not go further into debt (we still have her student loan to pay from her university degree).
Oh… thanks for the clarification in your last comment, I was scratching my head wondering why your parents would misspell your first name. :)
Feb 16th, 2008 @ 1:50 am
9. neosaver
No kids? Did you ever create a plan to consider the fact if you did have 1 or 2 children? I wonder how much it would push out the retirement age.
Feb 17th, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
10. Aaron
Neosaver: No, I haven’t consider incorporating children into my financial plan as we do not plan on having any. While we’ve been “trying” for years, neither of us are pregnant yet. ;-)
However, I did consider different scenarios. While we haven’t completely committed to any specific scenario, it doesn’t make any difference in the short term planning.
Scenario 1 (current plan): 10 years to retirement
We very recently moved to Calgary from Saskatoon. House will be paid off in 10 years at which time we will retire. We will downsize to an apartment in Saskatoon (near family) and travel ~6 months/year. (Actually, two years ago we had a mini-retirement: We quit our stable jobs, sold our house, and travelled South America for 8 months. We’d love to travel like that every year. BTW, travelling can be much cheaper than sitting at home in a house in Canada just watching TV all day.)
Scenario 2 (possible alternative, depends on my parent’s health and on the needs of my disabled sister): 17 years to retirement
If we do choose not to downsize, then retirement will be ~17 years away. In 17 years, sell house in Calgary and buy house in Saskatoon (again, to be near family). Travel would be limited.
I can easily imagine that by adding kids into the equation that one would not want to downsize. In that case, retirement wouldn’t start for a lot more than 17 years from now.
Feb 17th, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
11. RacerX
Very impressive story. They are really on an amazing path to be totally free of the debt chains!
Feb 17th, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
12. Telly
Thanks for clearing that up Aaron! I know a guy whose name is spelled Erin and well, the rest was based on an assumption. Sorry…you know what they they say about ASSuming. ;)
Anyway, keep up the great work!
Feb 18th, 2008 @ 11:09 am
Trackbacks
Reply to “Book Giveaway Winners of the Book RRSP’s”