The UnRESP

The smart & reliable plan to pay for your child’s university fees - with someone else’s money.

We created a way to get someone else to pay for your kid’s university fees.

IT IS POSSIBLE. WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW…

The solution is NOT the RESP. It has nothing to do with the government savings grant. When you really drill down into that plan (and this site does elaborate on all of that - keep reading), you’ll see that the RESP is full of holes. In the 18 or so years that you spend contributing to an RESP, you are more likely to fall well short of the money you’ll need when your kid is ready for university than to be able to fund it. That’s a FACT.*

All the online RESP calculators tell you that you can expect to need anywhere from $105,000-145,000 to fund those university years. Per child. We don’t know of any RESP plans that can possibly achieve that.

The UnRESP is a real method - it’s not at all hypothetical. We can make this happen in a hurry. Let us explain —

In its simplest explanation, the UnRESP is a plan to buy an entry-level condo with the absolute minimum down payment needed and to not contribute anything beyond that each month. Fund it once, and never again. We really scrutinize for the right property that meets a bunch of quantitative and qualitative measures. If you do nothing but (have your tenant) pay your mortgage, we guarantee a wonderful return on investment (ROI).

How does someone pay for your kid’s university fees? Simple. After a number of years of owning the condo - when your child is ready for his/her freshman year - we’ll help you set up a plan to rework the financing of the condo, and without contributing a single cent of your own, you’ll access all the money you’ll need to pay all the university costs, AND your tenant will be the one making all the monthly payments to cover it all!

We’ll show you how when we get to meet.

*Run your own RESP calculator test here: https://www.cibc.com/ca/tools/resp-calculator.html

How well do you really understand your RESP?

Sitting in a meeting with your RESP advisor, it's easy to find reasons to be sold on that savings plan. You put in some money and our government GIVES you free money. Together, that money builds and BOOM!, you have the money you need when your kid is ready for university, right?

Hang on a  second... have you ever really run the numbers to see how your money actually works? Can you realistically expect to earn the money you need to in order to fund your kid's education? Short answer is: likely not. Want to see how we came up with our projections?

Check for yourselves: www.getsmarteraboutmoney.ca/calculators/resp-savings-calculator/. When you look at the RESP, it really doesn't seem like the ultimate solution that we're being sold on. The UnRESP is the real solution. It's everything we expect it to be and more.

  • What exactly are you investing IN? Do you understand the underlying investments? You know you're contributing to your RESP monthly or yearly, but what is your money doing? What is it earning? How does money actually come out of the RESP? What if your child doesn't go to a qualifying post-secondary institution? You need to know the answers. These are all serious questions that you need to personally understand so you can assess how these stack up against your goals.

  • We're human. We can't help but look for the easy way out. We hear "FREE MONEY" and fireworks go off in our brains. Sign me up! We're told that this free government grant of $500/year is magical. Basically we're guaranteed 20% return on investment. We'd be stupid to ignore this, right? Wrong. This trick blinds us from making REAL money.

  • If you own your home, you already get it. You've seen the gains you have made from owning. The price that you bought your home at and the value of it now are probably very different, yet very real. You've also paid down a lot of your mortgage over the years. That all goes right into your "equity pocket".

    We'll explain everything to you, hold your hand as long as you need us to, and it doesn't cost anything to get started. The one thing we can't do for you is just the very first step - and that's for you to reach out to us and ask for help. We've got you covered for the rest of it.

The RESP vs The UnRESP

Both of these plans are about saving for your future.

The RESP is a Savings Plan. Nothing more, nothing less. The UnRESP is a savings plan. And, oh, it's so much more. It's also a retirement fund, an insurance policy, an appreciating asset, a personalized pension, and so much more. It's what you need it to be to fit your life. It's not a plan designed to pay your financial advisor. This plan encourages you to buy and hold a small real estate investment (likely a condo) rather than contribute to an RESP.  

We've been through this. We've seen the results. We look at the math over and over.

Every single parent we’ve spoken with in our research has been unable to rely solely on their RESPs to fund their child’s education. Wasn't that the point of starting the RESP in the first place?

The solution to funding your child’s education is NOT the RESP. It’s the UnRESP. 

Have a look at our detailed comparison between the RESP and the UnRESP. If you put down $2,500/year for 18 years and max out the government grant each year, you need to earn 7% each and every single year on your investments (this is not easy to do, NO DOWN YEARS ALLOWED!) in order to break even on the costs you need to cover - let’s call it $120,000. If you put your money into our UnRESP, it's not unreasonable to expect equity gains of $600,000 over those same 18 years.

Donny's "real life, this actually happened" story of his personal experience with the UnRESP

How I turned $60,000 into $300,000

I'm always on the lookout for investments. You know, the ones that you make and you JUST KNOW that it's the right thing to do. I mean, I love spending my money as much as the next guy, but I've always deferred the use of money if I know I can make it work magic for me. There's something about creating passive income that really, really excites me. Much more than anything else I can buy in that moment. 

I've seen it all, and I've tried it all. There are some really complicated investment strategies out there and not all of them pan out or are achievable for the majority of us. Real estate ownership, though, isn't complicated and IT JUST WORKS!

When my first daughter was born - along with starting her RESP - we bought a pre-construction condo in downtown Toronto. Let me assure you, we didn't buy this condo at a bargain. We paid market value for the place. Rounding it off, we paid $300,000 years ago for the condo. We had to put down 20% over the course of a year -> so, our investment was $60,000.

It took a few years before the building was completed, and when it was we had it rented pretty quickly. We were careful and found a glorious tenant. We agreed on a rental contract at the lower end of the rental market value, and we never really increased her rent. She kept amazing care of the place, never really called us for any issues and so we wanted to reward that by not increasing her costs. We were probably out of pocket $100-200 each month. However, we were paying down A LOT more than that per month, and the place was appreciating. It really was a win-win scenario.

Fast forward a few years later, and here we are 7 years after we first put pen to paper to buy that condo. The condo had appreciated from $300,000 to $520,000 and we had paid down $20,000 in our mortgage there. When you add that up, that's $240,000 in value. Our $60,000 investment had just returned us $300,000! That's a $240,000 gain!! 400% return on investment in those 7 years. 

Astonishing results right?

Remember that RESP we started at the same time, way back when? Well, we have maxed out our contributions in those 7 years ($17,500) and maxed out the government grants of course. The grand total of those savings? A whopping $27,000. 54% return on investment over the 7 years, or just under 8% return on our contributions (which includes the government grant). At this pace with our RESP, we wouldn't have enough money to fund our daughter's education.