RDSP the Completion of Initial Work

I have written a great deal about the RDSP (registered disability savings plan) over the years, and this was written as I was setting up my son’s account (with TD).

For a while I have been writing about my on going journey for setting up an RDSP for my son, with TD Waterhouse. It has been a long journey, where I have learned a great deal about my ability to deal with complicated government and banking systems (I have more patience than I thought), and I hopefully am helping folks who might be thinking about using this savings vehicle for a disabled loved one (or for themselves).

Yesterday I finally got up the nerve to attempt to actually move the cash that we have placed into the account, so any delay for now has been me procrastinating (for full disclosure).

A while ago, the government did kick in a 50% Grant on top of the money we had placed into the account. This happened about 1.5 months ago, so the money has been sitting as cash since then in the account (and thus accumulating effectively no interest).

My decision for investing the money was to take a passive fairly mundane approach for investing this money (not a large amount of money, but hopefully something that will have a chance to grow over time). The investment vehicles used were:

• 1/3 of the funds into TD Canadian Index – eTDB900 which tracks the performance of the S&P/TSX Composite Total Return Index (S&P/TSX Composite Index).
• 1/3 of the funds into TD Dow Jones Industrial Avg Index – eTDB903 which tracks the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Total Return. (but is in Canadian Funds).
• 1/3 of the funds into TD Canadian Bond Index – eTDB909 tracking the performance of the Scotia Capital Universe Bond Index (SC Universe Bond Index)

These are my interpretation of the Canadian Capitalists Sleepy Portfolio, and I can pretty much leave the money here and occasionally check in on it’s performance, since this is a very long term investment. I can also add more money to this over time, and possibly tweak the percentages for each investment vehicle (given there is no international flavor to this investment group).

To do this, I had to use the TD Waterhouse Phoneline interface (no for some reason or rule I am not allowed to do any trading on this account, with TD’s on line system). The entire phone call took a while, as I had to remember how the system worked, and then the nice young lady I spoke to didn’t know what the Index Funds were and whether I could purchase them in the RDSP (yes, when she said that my stress level went up 300%), however, it turns out all was well and the actual purchases were straight forward.

Thus Endeth This Round

With these transactions, I have completed round 1 of the RDSP game. I have set up the account, put money in it, and moved that money into some savings vehicles. The next step or round of the game will be to add money to the account (again, remembering I cannot simply go on line and transfer money into the account, I must do this all by phone), and then balance the investments in the account.

RDSP Background

For those who have not been reading along with my saga, I include links to my previous posts to help you understand the steps you need to take when setting up an RDSP:

• Registered Disability Savings Plan an introduction to the program.
• New Financial Programs are Never Easy I outline the steps we took to actually set up the account with TD
• No You Are Not Married to Him outlines the issues we ran into with my wife’s identity that got tripped by applying for the program
• RDSP the Journey Continues continues the saga of attempting to put money into the RDSP.
• RDSP The Journey Continued is me ranting about how long it took to actually transfer money to the account (while watching the Monaco Grand Prix).
• RDSP: The Other New Government Savings Plan which is a guest post written as an overview of the program as well.

I supply these for those who need or want more info on this program and the lessons I have learned from my interactions with the Banking System.