03: Registered Education Savings Plan
Today, we’re digging into the Registered Education Savings Plan. That’s the account you can open for your kids (or grandkids or niblings or just that kid down the street that jumps out from behind your van to scare you sometimes) to help them pay for post-secondary education costs - and not just college or university, either. There’s a whole host of programs that you can use RESP money to pay for, including apprenticeships, as well as rent, tuition, books, tools, and transportation.
If the kid has a Social Insurance Number and you have permission from their parent or guardian, you can open an RESP at almost any institution, including banks, credit unions, and online investment companies like Wealthsimple. You don’t get a tax deduction for contributing to the account, but the kid you opened it for can get up to $9,200 in government grants, depending on their family’s income.
Why is this important?
If it's important to you to help the kids in your life pay for school, using an RESP to do so makes sense. Whether you’ve already got an account opened, or you’re going to open one after this episode, here are a few facts you should know:
If there are one, two, or three children in a family with a combined net income (that’s line 236 on your tax return) of less than $55,868 (as of June 2025) the kids can up to $2,000 in free education money - called the Canada Learning Bond - without anyone contributing any money at all, just by opening an RESP (bigger families have higher net income thresholds)
You can open an individual RESP for just one kid, a family RESP for siblings, or a group RESP (but don’t open a group RESP - they’re the least flexible and usually the most expensive)
If you have some of your own money to contribute, every dollar added to an RESP gets 20% back in more free education money - the Canada Education Savings Grant - up to a maximum of $500 per year and $7,200 in total for each child
You can make up for lost years of grants by doubling up one year at a time until the child is 17. Contributions from age 18 on don’t get any grant money
The most you can contribute to any child’s RESP is $50,000
An RESP can stay open for up to 36 years after it’s been opened
The money inside an RESP can be invested or held in cash, just like money inside an RRSP or TFSA, and the investment income it earns isn’t taxed while it’s in the account
The money inside an RESP is subdivided into a couple of make-believe accounts:
Contributions
Investment income earned
Canada Education Savings Grant received
Canada LB received
When the time comes to withdraw from the account, these make-believe accounts are all treated differently, depending on whether the child in question is enrolled in an eligible program or not. There are enough special situations that could apply that we’re not dealing with them in this episode - stay tuned
What can this tell you or your financial planner?
It’s hard to keep track of how much money you’ve put into an RESP over time, but it’s important information to know. An accurate knowledge of what you’ve contributed and what free money has been received is knowledge you or your financial planner can use to decide what to do next. If education funding is super important to you - the history of your contributions to date will help you get the absolute most out of the program.
How can you access the information?
The RESP program is all-analog, all the time. There’s no handy digital platform you can access to check it. To find out how much you’ve contributed, and what grants have been received, you have to call the Canada Education Savings Program at 1-888-276-3624 with the child’s Social Insurance Number. After that conversation you can (and should) ask for a statement of account to be emailed to you.
RESOURCES
Call the Canada Education Savings Program: 1-888-276-3624
How the Registered Education Savings Plan and related benefits work together - Canada.ca