RRSP Season
Well it seems RRSP season has struck with a one-two punch, my mom must be thrilled as RRSP season is the closest thing the bank has to a busy season. On the same day commercials began to run I received my receipt for last year’s contributions which were about 13% of what I contributed the previous year. I’ll admit I’m worried about tax time. I used to look forward to it, a settling of the previous year’s accounts and generally a refund of some kind.
This year is different because it’s all a great mystery right now. The tax breaks of having a child but penalties for living with my family are largely unknown at t is point, not to mention the government’s fiddling. Only once before did tax time bring bad news but what bad news! I owed $1,000! Only a bail-out from my mom kept that from being a problem. Thanks to her intervention it went from a problem to jump-starting my retirement savings.
I can’t expect similar intervention if things go south again. It’s such a question mark right now. I could owe a grand again or I could have as much coming back to me. I loathe uncertainty, particularly when we’re talking about this kind of money, even moreso given the recent depletion of my savings. It’s not like I can drop 4 grand into my RRSP to make any potential tax debt go away.
To put this in perspective though I’m only about 10% as worried about tax time as I was about day care.
What’s that you say? ‘Was’? As in past tense? Did you read that right? Yes you did. Thanks to some work and figuring by my partner day care is looking like it might not be crippling afterall. I’m not getting my hopes up as I won’t completely believe it until we’ve got a couple months under our belts but I am letting go of some of my fear. Seriously, my biggest fear since finding out I was going to be a dad was day care costs.
Global warming, criminals, conservatives, terrorists, rabid dogs, cancer, heart attack, car accidents, electrocution, airplane turbulence didn’t have anything on day care costs in terms of fear. Amusement park thrill rides had a muted effect on me because they didn’t have the same likelihood of hurting me as badly as day care costs. So suffice to say I’m sleeping a lot better.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
How much room have you got left for contributing to your rrsp for 2007, anyhow. You have until Feb. 29th to make any additional contributions to be used on 2007 tax return. Then, the day care expenses should be deductible on next years’ taxes, but I think that your filing will have to split with your partner’s taxes to even things out so-to-speak.