What are Individual Retirement Accounts?
Canada has many types of retirement accounts that are available. The most commonly discussed around the water cooler are the TFSA and RRSP. However, there are many more to note. You may even have one of these or end up with one in the future.
There are LIRA accounts which is a Locked-In Retirement Annuity. These get created when you leave a company or union and have a pension. The employer allows you to commute that pensionable value (based on years of service and contributions) into an account that you can control. It follows similar rules to an RRSP, except you cannot withdraw from it or begin taking income until a certain age. Canadians are often unaware of what they can invest these accounts in, but your choices are pretty vast.
Another Canadian personal finance account type is the RDSP. The Registered Disability Savings Plan is not specifically for retirement but rather an account to help disabled individuals. These folks also need help in retirement. Therefore these plans effectively form part of retirement for many of those disabled beneficiaries. This assumes, of course, it has been funded well, and money is still available.
A pension with an employer (defined benefit or defined contribution plans) are other retirement plans but are accounts you have no control over. Although very helpful for income stability in retirement, we wouldn’t call this a retirement account as you have no access to the plan or control over the outcome.