It was a dark and stormy night... on Burnaby Hill. Simon Fraser University's beautiful hilltop campus site comes with a downside. If it is a rainy winter day in Burnaby, which it often is, then it is often blowing sleet up on the hill.
One such slushy evening, while making my way up to study at the SFU library, my old Dodge decided to stall half way up, then my chronically-temperamental starter-motor wouldn't re-engage the engine. It was one of those nights where you cringed at stepping out in to the wet, semi-freezing wind, knowing it would chill you to the bone.
Mustering up my courage, I crawled under the beast to see if I could whack the starter back to life. There was a steady stream of slushy water running down Gaglardy Way, which I had to lay in to get to the right spot.
Once I was completely soaked, and my efforts proven futile, I got up, gathered my books, and started pressing against the dark wetness toward campus. Up hill. In the snow.
Fortunately for me, the maintenance supervisor, on the way up the hill for the late shift, took pity on me and drove me up to the campus. Noting what a mess I was in, he suggested that I come down to his well-heated boiler room to dry out for a while.
His abode in the dimly lit underworld of the university library was all pipes, concrete, and heat. The blessed, abundant, and soothing warmth was as comforting then as a wood-heated ski cabin, though not nearly as well appointed.
He gave me a fresh pair of overalls while my wet clothes hung over some hot pipes and we sat and chatted for a while. When I verbally pined for the work I did in the summers (as a maintenance worker like him) he had some fatherly advice for me: "You seem like a guy who should be working with his hands. Maybe you're just not made for
university. Why not stay in maintenance?"
I actually seriously considered it. I'd spent more than a moment or two gazing out the library window at the guys cutting the grass on sunny afternoons, wondering if I had missed my calling. Even when I worked a semester as a co-op student in downtown Vancouver, I often envied the bicycle couriers more than the swanky bankers and lawyers.
But I was driven toward a higher education by something bordering on a spiritual quest, and I would not drop it so easily, tempted as I was by the sweet juxtaposition of a hot boiler room on a dank, chilly Burnaby evening.
A couple of hours later, I was rescued from the cement castle on the hill by my princess of a girlfriend, who took pity on me, fed me, and told my sad story to her family. A few days later, her adoring mother lent me the money for a newer car.
Rather than a change of direction, I got a much-needed sponsor.
A Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) is a program that builds structure in to sponsoring your starving students as they face the financial challenges of
getting educated.
RESP advantages include flexible family plans (or individual plans) that allow for tax-sheltered education savings for multiple children, with government subsidies of up to $7,200 per beneficiary. Earnings on the savings will grow tax free, and are then taxed at the impoverished student's lower rate once drawn upon. If the targeted youth doesn't end up pursuing further education within the required 35-year time span, there is an orderly and fair mechanism to unwind the fund.
Chances are you are going to help these kids one way or another. You might as well do it with all the tax-advantages and subsidies available.
Mark Ryan is an advisor with RBC Wealth Management, Dominion Securities (member CIPF) and can be reached at [email protected]
