The Canadian Capitalist had a link to article by the Smoke & Mirrors guy, David Trahair, called "Don't Invest in an RRSP Before Paying Down Your Mortgage." He starts off by saying that the conventional wisdom of investing in an RRSP then applying the tax rebate to your mortgage every year is hard to do. Instead, he says, don't contribute to an RRSP, but put down more principal on your mortgage. If you want to talk psychology about what is "harder to do" I would suggest that contributing your maximum room to an RRSP is a better forced savings plan than applying an extra lump sum on the principal of your mortgage ever year, but that's just me. Or maybe he's suggesting you re-amortize for a much shorter period (after forgetting about RRSPs) but he doesn't say that explicity. His second argument is that banks just want your money for RRSPs so they can charge you "commissions and fees on your contributions" (doesn't make sense) and because the banks' ideal is for you to be in constant debt. I don't buy any of that as a reason to pay down a mortgage instead of an RRSP. What I care about is which one is better for me (regardless of whether the bank benefits). Just like I don't care about MERs in principle. What I care about is the returns after costs.

In the latter part of the article, he argues why you should pay down your mortgage before contributing to an RRSP by showing an example of a couple in two scenarios. Scenario 1 has them paying their monthly mortgage payment and contributing to an RRSP $4000 each per month and investing the tax refund generated. Scenario 2 has them paying their monthly mortgage payment and instead paying $4000 each onto the principal value of the home. 11 years into Scenario 2 the home is paid off so they redirect what was their mortgage payment into their RRSP (and they invest the tax refund generated into their RRSP). I'll give you the punchline:

The debt pay-down scenario shows a net worth slightly higher than for the RRSP scenario—a difference of $14,590. So, after 20 years, the Harts would arrive at a similar point
but would have taken a very different journey. The debt pay-down option, however, has two major advantages: it reduces the risk that the Harts could lose their house during the nine years of mortgage-free living, and there is less risk related to investment returns. How much confidence do you have that the markets are going to post better returns than the interest rate on your debt? Are you willing to stake your future on it?

This sounds very reasonable but I am very disappointed in his article for a few reasons. He assumes a rate of return in the RRSP of 5%. This seems unbelievably low to me. There might be a reason for that. Since paying down the mortgage (he assumes a fixed-rate of 6%) is low-risk he's probably trying to match the risk in the RRSP and the mortgage. I am not sure why you couldn't at least get 6% in the RRSP for almost the same risk. Secondly I would assume that the majority of people with large mortgages or any mortgage are younger rather than older. We can take on a little risk right? I mean we could at least put half our RRSP in equities and half in fixed income/bonds. A 5% return in an RRSP seems unrealistically low. And this is coming from someone (me) who sets his expectations fairly low (7-8%). Thirdly, he doesn't explain what would happen if the rate of return were even a bit higher but he takes the time to mention the measly difference in Scenario 1 over Scenario 2: "The debt pay-down scenario shows a net worth slightly
higher than for the RRSP scenario—a difference of $14,590." Clearly his cooked up his numbers just so that he can say that. Because it's not even a difference worth mentioning. He even says in the next line: "So, after 20 years the Harts would arrive at a similar point but would have taken a very different journey."

I tried to replicate his calculations in a spreadsheet of my own so I could try out some other combinations of rates. (You can now skip to the next paragraph if you get bored easily). I was pretty much successful, only off by a small percent. This is due to the complicated way that he decided to handle the tax rebates. When Joe and Karen each contribute $4000 per year to their RRSP they get a tax rebate equal to $4000 multiplied by their marginal tax rate (40% in this case). They take that $1600 tax rebate and contribute $4000+$1600 to their RRSP in the following year. Then they get a $2,240 tax rebate and contribute $4000+$2240, then the following year, $2,496 extra, eventually converging to some value. I already talked about this "snowball effect" before. Note that it is non-existent if you maximize your RRSP contributions every year anyways. (Do not NOT maximize your RRSPs just so you can get this effect. It's not that exciting.) Anyways, another way to handle this in the simulation would have been to just assume the max contribution room every year was $4000 for each of them or whatever, and contribute the excess cash available into a non-RRSP account. Personally I would do the latter since we maximize our contribution room every year. Any excess monthly cash (that might come available after paying down a mortgage) would go into non-RRSP investments.

Anyways, if you just increase the RRSP rate of return a little bit, as you can see in this modified spreadsheet, the RRSP case beats the pay-down-debt case. If you increase the rate it beats it by a wider margin but never by much.

I think the takeaways here are:

• That paying off a mortgage is a great low-risk investment.
• Make sure you look carefully at any assumptions used in calculations by accountants and financial advisors. Are they realistic?
• When looking at a return, never forget about the risk associated with that return.