It's that time again.

Happy New Year!

The month of January rolls around once again and it will soon be time for hundreds of thousands of responsible Canadian adults to rush out and "buy" their RSP.

The yearly push to the deadline, the endless line ups at midnight at financial institutions across Canada and the insidious creaking as all those professional financial advisors resurface out of the woodwork in the next few weeks.

The financial guru's of the early 1990s, such as Brian Costello and Jerry White, had their own contribution to my personal financial development. It was also good to have our Scottish member, Jimmy, around who would interpret the musings of these non certified, don't call me a financial advisor, advisors.

Costello would always give good advice, such as, make sure you make use of a financial advisor, referring to a CFA or Certified Financial Advisor. It was probably an oversight that he did not mention that he wasn't one.

This blog entry, however, is not an attack on the NCFAs of the seminar circuit, as I have indicated before, advice is advice and your job is to sift out what advice is actually good.

The good advice, that both Brian and Jerry gave, was that if you shift your RRSP contribution deadline, your money will be tax sheltered longer. There's no need to wait until the end of February in 2009 when you can make that estimated contribution right now.

Yes, your February 2009 contribution, which is the contribution for this 2008 tax year, can be deposited into your RRSP account today, in fact a week ago. It will then be tax sheltered for that extra fourteen months.

I know, your going to wriggle on this one, as potentially you're just getting ready for the psychological hurdle of your 2007 tax year contribution. Imagine, you can contribute twice as much, right now!

There will be a chorus of perceived impossibility on this one, it's a struggle to maximise your RRSP to start with and now, this nutter on the interweb is suggesting that you double up.

You only have to do it once.

If your normal contribution is $10,000 and you can bring it forward the fourteen months (and continue to contribute early), earning seven percent, the impact of this one act over twenty five years of saving will add over $44,000 to your retirement nest egg.

You only have to do it once.