Canada Pension Plan

[Edward Doolittle]

Thanks, that's helpful. What I'm taking away is that despite the word
"pension" in the title of the program, the CPP is more like a tax than a
pension plan, in that the benefit is largely unpredictable and out of my
control. I treat tax as an expense, so I should treat CPP as an expense as
well.

Furthermore, if I want to do retirement planning well, I need to take data
out of GnuCash and put it into another application like a spreadsheet, and
combine that data with data from other sources such as the ServiceCanada
web site. I can't do everything in GnuCash. (Too bad.)


On 19 February 2015 at 22:42, Cam Ellison <cam at ellisonet.ca> wrote:

> On 19/02/15 06:01 PM, Phil Longstaff wrote:
>
>> I think treating the CPP as an asset is really the best you can do,
>> because
>> it is not an asset you own. It is a government program you pay into, and
>> then when you retire, the government pays you based on your salary over
>> your working life. It's not your asset.
>>
>>  Treat it as an expense, and do not show the asset.  As Phil says, it's
> not your asset.  It's deferred salary, in a sense. If you want to do
> retirement planning, it's better to use a spreadsheet and download the data
> from your account on the ServiceCanada website, and then dump the relevant
> data from Gnucash to the spreadsheet using a report.  CPP payments change
> year-to-year because of inflation and for other reasons over which you have
> no control and cannot predict (for example, if you and your spouse divorce
> and your spouse claims part of your CPP I doubt you'd have sufficient
> information to predict how the payment would change).
>
> Yes, I'm Canadian, and I run a business and have had to deal with all of
> the above plus the employer contribution part of it.
>
> Cheers
>
> Cam
>
>
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-- 
Edward Doolittle
Associate Professor of Mathematics
First Nations University of Canada
1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2

« Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents
et un ingrat. »
-- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI