Tag: GUEST POSTS

Our daily blog offers selected news of interest to SmartSAVER’s stakeholders and shines a light on the creative ways that communities are promoting the Canada Learning Bond. Stay up to date, read what others are doing and share your own story.

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We hope our blog will create conversation and support the exchange of ideas.

We’d love to hear from you! Tell us about your CLB promotion or share tips to engage eligible families. Do you have a question for the community? Submit your stories, ideas and questions to info@SmartSAVER.org and we’ll share it on our blog.


Build learning into kids’ summertime fun!

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Jacqueline and Son. Savings Selfie Winners 2015.

2015 Savings Selfie Winner: Jacqueline.

Unstructured summer play is great, but that doesn’t mean it can’t include learning!

We asked ABC Life Literacy to share some tips on how parents can incorporate literacy into kids’ daily activities. We were so excited by their ideas that we added a few of our own fun-ancial literacy suggestions too!

ABC Life Literacy Canada encourages parents to keep kids’ literacy skills sharp all summer. Research shows that children who read during summer retain their literacy skills and get a head start on September learning.

Try these fun activities:

  • Follow a recipe together to practice reading, math and comprehension all at once!
  • Traveling by car, bus or streetcar? Read signs, billboards and license plates together. Show your children how to find your destination using maps.
  • Send postcards from places you visit. If you’re vacationing locally, send one to yourself!
  • Build a summer book of memories. Tape in pictures and paper souvenirs and ask family members to write comments and captions.

SmartSAVER encourages parents to start conversations with their kids about what they want to be when they grow up, and to start education savings early. Research shows that children as young as 11 think about whether higher education will be financially possible for them, and that perception can influence their education goals and the effort they put into their school work today.

Encourage parents to consider these activities:

  • Take 10 minutes with their kids to complete the online RESP application at SmartSAVER.org with their choice of participating financial institutions. With an RESP account, children can start to receive government contributions for their future education, like the Canada Learning Bond that contributes up to $2,000 into each eligible child’s account.
  • Try SmartSAVER’s online calculator to check how much their child could get and show them how their savings can grow with the Canada Education Savings matching grant.
  • Visit the bank with their child so they can check on or even add money to their RESP.

Find more ABC Life Literacy activities at FamilyLiteracyDay.ca, and more RESP information at SmartSAVER.org.

 

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Alberta Success Story: RESPs, Social Housing & Assets Limits

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It was back in March of 2014 when we realized that families were having to make a tough choice between getting into social housing or keeping their family RESP account open. A Momentum staff member was doing a routine follow-up call with a participant named Crystal* who told Momentum that her Calgary Housing Company (CHC) caseworker said that she’d have to liquidate her family RESP if she wanted to be eligible for subsidized housing. This was a shock to the Momentum staff and after some research it was confirmed that the Alberta Housing Act stated that there was a $7,000 asset limit to get into any social housing programs in Alberta, and that this asset limit included RESPs.

This news spurred Momentum’s Public Policy into action leading to many meetings and phone calls with provincial government officials, including Lori Sigurdson, Minister of Seniors and Housing. By 2015, there was a small victory when the Alberta Housing Act was changed so that only contributions made by the family would be counted toward the asset limit and any government contributions in the accounts would not be counted toward the limits. Fast forward 9 months later and the Act was changed again to completely remove RESPs & RDSPs from the asset limit. This was a huge win for all families accessing social housing across Alberta.

Now we need to work closely with social housing organizations to make sure that all staff are aware of these changes. We also need to let the families who liquidated their RESPs know that they can re-open their RESP accounts and re-apply for the Canada Learning Bond (CLB). It’s important for those families to know that they can reapply for the CLB and get back all of the government money that they returned.

Momentum would like to acknowledge all of the people who worked hard over the past two years to make this change happen. Without everyone’s effort we couldn’t have made this important change in legislation.

By Olivia Tarasewicz, Financial Literacy Facilitator

StartSmart Program, Momentum

*name changed for privacy reasons

**This post was originally posted on our blog April 14, 2016.

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