Registered Disability Savings Plan the Journey Continued

Overland Money Routes

Yesterday I wrote about the interesting twists and turns I have had to go through to set up a legal Registered Disability Savings Plan for my son, but today I will give a specific case study of what I had to do, to actually put money into the account.

First, let me preface this story with the statement, that I am not sure I have succeeded. I may have succeeded, and certainly some money has disappeared at one end, but I have not seen it appear, as of yet, at the end point. The end point is my son’s RDSP account.

I decided on this past Sunday to attempt (again) to transfer some money that I am currently holding in a savings account into my son’s RDSP account. The first step is to call up TD Waterhouse’s phone access system, and see if I was simply being paranoid, and maybe the whole thing was painless and quick (no it wasn’t).

After stumbling through various menues, I finally decided to talk to a representative directly to see whether it might be easier if I spoke to someone directly about the account (since the TalkBroker system kept telling me, You can’t do that). The first representative I spoke to was very patient (for having to work on a Sunday) and at first gave me the same answers that TalkBroker did (i.e. You can’t do that), however, she then decided to go talk to someone and put me on hold for a while.

Another voice came on the phone, that said, what I was trying to do was not going to work (i.e. you can’t do that!), however, there might be a way to do it, if I spoke to someone in the trading group directly. At that point I was informed I had been talking with the Technical Support group, but they said they would transfer me over (and gave me the number to call next time as well, which was good customer service (IMHO)).

I waited a minute or two, and heard a few clicks which made me think I had been hung up on, but, I was finally connected to someone in the trading group. I explained what I was trying to do, and his initial response was, you can’t do that! However, he decided to go find out how this might actually work, since it would be strange to have TD Waterhouse offer a trading account that you could not put any money in to (which is what I was suspecting I had set up).

I waited again for a while (this didn’t really upset me, as I had prepared and was sitting in a comfortable chair, had my computer beside me and I was watching the Grand Prix of Monaco on my PVR, so waiting was not a big issue), and then the gentleman came back on the line with a question for me, did I have another trading account with TD Waterhouse?. I pointed out that I did in fact have several accounts, as well as a straight trading account, and the gentleman sounded very happy about this, as he explained, he had found a methodology to get money into the RDSP account.

This news made me quite happy (and the fact that Red Bull was leading the Grand Prix on Monaco also had me in good spirits, so a bright Sunday all around), so I said, how do we get some money into the RDSP account?

“…First we transfer the money directly from your savings account and put that into your TD Waterhouse trading account. When that money is in place, we then put in a request to transfer the money from your Trading account into your son’s RDSP account and eventually the money will wind up in that account…”

This is pretty much exactly what I was told over the phone. At that point, I pause the Grand Prix of Monaco, picked up a pen and paper and asked the Customer Rep to repeat what he had just told me, and he calmly repeated the methodology previously outlined. I think I must have sounded a little peeved, because he apologized for the obtuseness of the system, but he assured me that this should work.

My next question was how we might make this all happen, and the customer rep did the right thing and told me normally I would have to do the transfer and then call back but because he had my accounts already open he could do it all for me right then and there. This was an excellent piece of customer service, because if I had been told I would have to call back, I might have thought seriously about changing my Trading Partners accounts. I again waited patiently and was given a bunch of meaningless numbers as transaction ID’s and now I wait patiently to see the money move.

The money has left my savings account, and has moved to my trading account, however, when it finally moves over to the RDSP, I am not sure, hopefully some time this week.

The next very interesting question is, how do I buy securities, bonds, ETF’s or index funds with this money (it is in a Self-Directed account, so I can buy whatever I want, in theory)? I will luckily be able to see the money appear in the account, however, I suspect I will have to make another phone call to actually buy Index Funds or the like inside of the savings vehicle.

The journey continues on, I will keep you posted.