I wish I had an RESP
I wish I had an RESP. I just finished my post secondary studies and I am the first in my family to pursue post secondary. I think if my parents had known about RESPs, I would have felt more secure for the future.
Before joining the SmartSAVER team, RESPs and The Canada Learning Bond (CLB) were not in my vocabulary. Not only had I never heard of the CLB, I thought RESPs were some sort of trust fund.
Currently, I am an Intern at SmartSAVER. I was amazed to learn that SmartSAVER’s goal was to get children RESPs so they could get their CLB. That was it. No catch. I was so impressed I wanted to bring SmartSAVER to my neighbourhood. If I did not know about it, I thought there could be others in the same boat.
I live in the Lawrence Heights community in Toronto. I decided to walk around the neighbourhood and talk to my neighbours at the park and community centre to see what they knew about RESPs and the CLB. Some of my assumptions were correct. No one I spoke with really knew about the CLB or RESPs. Some have had RESPs with providers that required them to pay a monthly fee. Missing payments resulted in some percentage of their money being lost.
From what I could see, this was a community that could benefit from RESPs and the CLB, but that was nervous to accept it because of their fear of getting involved with banks. That fuelled my motivation to bring this to my neighbourhood.
I do not want any other child to feel the same way I did and to miss out on something. I am working on a project to bring awareness to families in my neighbourhood and to help them to open RESPs so they can receive their CLB.
In my next post I will share the outcomes of my project so stay tuned!
Ayan Samatar
Digital Intern, SmartSAVER