01.01.70

CST Offers 10 Reasons an RESP Makes Sense This Gift-Giving Season

TORONTO, ONTARIO, Nov 21, 2012 (Menafn - Marketwire via COMTEX) --Stocking stuffers can be more than just trinkets and candy canes this holiday season. Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs) are becoming an increasingly popular gift from parents and grandparents. Still, over half of Canadian families don't save in an RESP. To help, Canadian Scholarship Trust Foundation (CST) is providing the top 10 reasons why giving an RESP makes sense:

1. An RESP can ease the burden of the cost associated with higher learning. Statistics Canada projects the price of a 4-year university education to be more than 145,000 if they choose to live away from home, including room and board, entertainment and book costs. 2. An RESP can help a child get an education. Your child is 40 per cent more likely to get a post-secondary education if they have an RESP according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada's Annual Statistical Review of the Canada Education Savings Program, 2009. 3. An RESP can help your child get a job. Two out of three new jobs in Canada require a post-secondary education according to the Council of Ontario Universities. 4. An RESP can help avoid student debt. On average, graduating students can have education related debt levels ranging from 13,600 to 25,600 according to Statistics Canada. 5. An RESP can help give your child a financial head start on life. It takes most Canadians 10 years to pay off their student loans according to the Canada Student Loan Program. 6. An RESP can help to take advantage of money from the government. The Government of Canada provides various grants to encourage families to save with an RESP, including the Canada Education Savings Grant and the Canada Learning Bond. Province such as Alberta, Quebec and Saskatchewan (Jan 2013) also have similar programs. 7. An RESP can help a child own a home in the future. Post-Secondary graduates who rely on a student loan to pay for their education were less likely to own their homes, according to Statistics Canada, and when they did, they were slightly more likely to have a mortgage compared to other post-secondary graduates. 8. An RESP can help your child succeed financially as an adult. According to the 2005 Survey of Financial Security, post-secondary graduates with student loans had, on average, lower assets and correspondingly lower net worth than those who did not have student loans. 9. An RESP can help minimize student stress levels. Post-Secondary students say that paying for school is causing more stress than achieving success academically. The annual survey, conducted by Pollara for BMO, found one-quarter (27 per cent) are very stressed about paying for school - more so than finding a job after graduation (22 per cent) or achieving success academically (20 per cent). 10. An RESP can help a child succeed in their academic studies. Studies have found a negative impact on academic performance after 15-20 hours of paid work per week. A white paper from Concordia University titled 'Rethinking Student Debt', shows 70 per cent of students receiving Quebec financial aid reported difficulty balancing both work and school.

Source: MENAFN.COM

Barrie police were dressed for the occasion when undercover officers nabbed nine people in a prostitution bust this week.

The Maple Avenue area in the city’s downtown caught the eye of city police again after complaints about prostitution spurred a two-day sting, Wednesday and Thursday.

“We did use undercover officers,” Const. Toni Dufour said. “We used females that posed as prostitutes and males that posed as johns.”

Officers surveyed the area and played the parts of both buyer and seller, resulting in seven men and two women being charged with communicating for the purpose of prostitution.

“We frequently receive complaints about prostitution in our city, not unlike any other city, mind you, and it’s important that we act on these complaints,” Dufour said. “People who work and enjoy our downtown shouldn’t have to witness and encounter these transactions being negotiated.

“It’s illegal and unappealing,” she added....

Read more...

Destiny Roy knows two things. What it's like to live in poverty and how to read.

Roy, now a 23-year-old Laurentian University student, was raised by her mother, a single parent with three kids. Roy's family needed welfare until she was 12. But they also depended on each other.

It was her mother who taught Roy to read.

"I read a lot of Disney books," she said, adding Cinderella was her favourite.

This is why Roy will spend the next week in a tent outside Laurentian's J.N. Desmarais library with McKenna Elsasser, a fellow third-year Laurentian student.

The two are participating in Live-In for Literacy, which helps raise awareness about literacy rates in developing countries and funds to build libraries overseas.

"I think education is a big thing (that) helps people ... get (somewhere) in life. I think (lite ra c y) should be a human right," Roy, a third-year Laurentian student, said.

So far, the group has helped raise money to build nine libraries in Nepal, five in India and a computer lab in Cambodia. Live-In for Literacy is a national program that includes universities throughout the country. It partners with Room to Read, a charity that promotes literacy world-wide.

Read more...