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RRSPs I'd Like To See

by Stephen Lautens

February 13, 1998

RRSP season is going to drive me crazy.

The Baby-Boomers have just discovered that they're going to get old, and that they'll have to put something away for their retirement.

The result is a frenzy of RRSP buying, driven home by endless TV commercials telling us to save for our future. I can't wait for the Boomers to find out that eventually they're going to die too.

And it's not enough just to save for the future. We have to go through endless choices about where to put our money - anyone lucky enough to have money to put away, that is. We have to pick an institution and a fund manager, decide whether we're going to invest here or internationally, and then pick from several thousand mutual funds.

Apparently you now need a business degree just to get old. You also need a strong back to carry the phone book sized information packets in from your mailbox.

No matter what funds I look at before I plunk down my couple hundred bucks, I never see the ones I really want. That's why I've decided to suggest a few new RRSP funds so they can be ready for next year:

THE BANK PRESIDENTS' SALARY FUND -

This RRSP-eligible mutual fund is geared to increases in the salaries of the Presidents and CEOs of the five (four? three?) major Canadian banks. Since their salaries are the only things guaranteed to go up year after year, this should appeal to the cautious investor.

THE "JE ME SOUVIENS" RRSP FUND -

Up until now this mutual fund has only been available to disgruntled Quebecers. The beauty of this RRSP fund is the payout continues to go up year after year, but other Canadians pay the premiums for you. And no matter how well this fund does, you still have the right to complain and ask for more.

THE BAD CORPORATE CITIZEN FUND -

Tired of those ecological, environmentally-friendly RRSP funds that only invest in responsible multinational companies? Putting your money into Peruvian weaving Co-ops and organic Soya farms may make you feel good, but you usually make squat on your investment. Now you have an opportunity to put your money where the real action is. Every company in this portfolio exploits mankind or mother Earth in some way - and we pass the profits on to you. Whether it's children working in a coal mine for less than minimum wage, leaky oil tankers or selling nuclear power plants to Third World dictators, you can watch your investment grow. If the world is going to hell in a handcart, you might as well cash in for your old age.

THE MILITIA RETIREMENT FUND -

While not a great performer, this is the fund for hedging your bets for after the apocalypse. Your money is invested in canned goods and explosives and buried in bunkers across the American mid-West. And you can collect your dividend when the forces of Freedom (represented by pimply, gun-toting twenty year-olds with a dozen children and stringy-haired wives) finally defeat the forces of Evil (represented by the UN, Disney and the Post Office, and other liberal-humanist conspiracies). The dividend will be payable mostly in tins of corn and peas, and in various calibers. This is of course tax free, because the tax collectors will be the first ones against the wall when the people, sick to death of RRSP season, finally rise up.

 

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