The account most families open — and few use to its fullest.
The RESP is one of the easiest registered accounts to start, and one of the easiest to leave money on the table with — at both ends. Here's how the rules actually work, from the first deposit through the last tuition cheque.
For most Canadian families, this is the highest-return account they'll ever own.
The government adds twenty cents on every dollar contributed — sometimes more. Investment growth is sheltered while the money is in the plan. And for families on the lower end of the income spectrum, the government will contribute even if you don't.
It starts with a Social Insurance Number.
An RESP can be opened the day your child has a SIN, which most parents apply for shortly after birth. The account is opened by a subscriber (usually a parent or grandparent), names a beneficiary (the child), and is held with a promoter (the bank, credit union, or investment firm). Contributions are allowed through the year the beneficiary turns 31, and the plan can stay open until the end of its 35th year.
You'll be asked to choose between an Individual plan and a Family plan. The Family plan is almost always the better choice when you have more than one child — contributions and grant room can be shared across siblings, which provides real flexibility later if one child needs more than another. The Individual plan only lets you name one beneficiary, and once it's set, that's where the money has to go.
A word on Group or Scholarship plans: these are sold heavily to new parents, often door-to-door or at maternity wards, and the contracts are riddled with restrictive rules, hidden fees, and forfeiture clauses if you stop contributing. We've yet to see one that's the right fit for the kind of family we work with. If you're not sure what kind of plan you have, that's worth a closer look.
The government matches twenty cents on the dollar — sometimes more.
The Canada Education Savings Grant matches twenty percent of your contributions, up to $500 per child per year and a lifetime maximum of $7,200. The basic match is the same regardless of income. On top of that, there's an Additional CESG for families in the lower and middle income brackets — paid on the first $500 contributed each year.
Adjusted family net income is line 23600 of the tax return — after RRSP contributions and other deductions, not gross salary. CESG is paid through December 31 of the year the child turns 17. There are special rules for ages 16 and 17 that catch a lot of families off guard — covered below.
For lower-income families, the government contributes even if you don't.
The Canada Learning Bond is paid directly into the RESP for children from lower-income households. No contribution is required — only that an RESP is open in the child's name and tax returns have been filed. Eligibility is tested annually based on the primary caregiver's adjusted family net income and the number of children in the household.
The CLB can be claimed retroactively, all the way back to the child's birth year (for children born in 2004 or later) — and youth aged 18 to 20 can apply for their own. From April 2028, the federal government will start automatically opening RESPs and depositing the CLB for eligible children born in 2024 or later. Until then, it's still a manual application that most eligible families miss.
See what's possible.
Adjust the inputs below to model what an RESP could look like over time. The calculator applies 2026 rules, runs forward through the year the child turns 17, then projects growth on the balance until the age you set.
Getting the money out — and into school.
This is the part most families don't think about until the acceptance letter arrives — and it's where the real planning starts. RESPs don't write a single cheque to the school. The subscriber chooses, every year, how much comes out and what type of withdrawal it is. The wrong sequence means unnecessary tax and grant money returned to the government. The right sequence means almost no tax at all.
The 13-week window.
The government caps how much EAP can be withdrawn during the very start of a program — a holdover rule designed to prevent abuse. Most families bump into it without realizing.
PSE withdrawals are not subject to the 13-week limit — if the student needs more than $8,000 in the first three months, the extra can be taken as a PSE withdrawal from the subscriber's contributions. The limit only applies to grant-and-growth money.
The order that usually works.
There's no universal rule, but for most families the goal is the same: get all the grant and growth out before graduation, while the student is still in school and still in a low tax bracket. Once the plan closes, anything left in the grant or growth bucket gets harder to use. So the playbook tends to look like this:
Take EAPs first.
In the first 13 weeks, that's capped at $8,000 — so request the full $8,000 of EAP and supplement with a PSE withdrawal if more is needed. After the 13-week mark, keep EAPs flowing each semester to drain the grant and growth into the student's low-tax-bracket return.
Layer PSE on top only when needed.
Contributions can come out tax-free at any time, but pulling them prematurely while leaving grant and growth in the plan is backwards. The smart sequence is EAPs first, then PSE on top to cover whatever the student actually needs that term.
Track grant balance through final year.
By the start of the student's last year, you want the CESG balance heading toward zero. Any grant left in the plan when it closes goes back to the government. Working backwards from graduation is how this happens cleanly.
Keep proof of enrolment on file.
The promoter (your bank or investment firm) will ask for proof of enrolment each time you request a withdrawal — usually a letter or transcript from the school confirming full-time or part-time status. This is the single most common source of withdrawal delays. Have the document ready before you make the request.
Five things most families miss.
The age 16–17 rule catches families that opened the plan late.
To receive CESG in the years a child turns 16 and 17, you need to have either (a) contributed at least $2,000 to the RESP before the end of the year the child turned 15, or (b) made at least $100 in contributions in any four years before that. Open the plan at age 14 with no prior history, and the last two years of CESG vanish. This is the single most common way families leave grant money on the table.
Catch-up only runs one year at a time.
Unlike RRSP room, RESP grant carry-forward is restricted: you can claim the current year plus one previous year in any given calendar year — no more. Maximum grant in a single year is $1,000 on a $5,000 contribution. So a parent who hasn't contributed for five years can't catch up in a lump sum. The math takes five years of $5,000 contributions to clear the backlog.
Family plans flex across siblings — individual plans don't.
In a Family Plan, contributions and CESG can be used by any beneficiary. So if one child takes a trade and finishes in two years while another goes to medical school for seven, the money flows where it's needed. Individual plans are locked — money in one child's plan can't easily move to another. If you have more than one child and you're set up as Individual plans, that's worth fixing.
If the child doesn't go to school, there's still a path.
Original contributions come back tax-free to the subscriber. The CESG and CLB get returned to the government. The investment growth becomes an Accumulated Income Payment (AIP) — taxable to the subscriber at their marginal rate plus a 20% penalty — unless the subscriber transfers up to $50,000 of it to their RRSP (or spousal RRSP) tax-free, assuming they have the room. The plan must be at least 10 years old and the beneficiary at least 21 (and not pursuing post-secondary). This is one of the best-kept tax planning secrets in the system, and most subscribers don't know it exists.
The grant ceiling caps out before the contribution ceiling does.
CESG maxes at $7,200, which is hit by roughly $36,000 in contributions. The lifetime contribution room is $50,000. Families who put in $2,500 a year from birth typically hit the grant ceiling around age 15 — and then keep contributing for two more years thinking the grant is still flowing. It isn't. Every dollar past $36,000 still grows tax-sheltered, but no more government money is coming in. Worth knowing if you're deciding whether to top up the RESP or redirect those dollars somewhere else.
Why this one matters to us.
The RESP is one of the few accounts in Canadian planning where the front end is simple — open it, contribute regularly, collect the grant — and the back end is where most families lose their footing. We see it constantly: a parent has saved diligently for fifteen years, the acceptance letter arrives, and nobody told them about EAPs versus contributions, the 13-week rule, or the order to take money out in.
Part of why we care about this program is what we've seen happen around it. There's a whole category of scholarship trust plans and group RESP providers — the ones that show up at baby shows, prenatal classes, and in hospital follow-up packets — built around signing up new parents into restrictive contracts, opaque fees, and contribution schedules designed to penalize anyone who falls behind. We've sat with families paying surrender penalties just to get out, only to discover they'd missed years of grant money along the way. The RESP itself is a great account. Some of the products built around it, frankly, are not.
Whether you're at the start of this — newborn at home, toddler, a plan being opened for the first time — or near the finish line with an acceptance letter on the fridge, we'd rather help you do this well than watch another family find out the hard way. The parents we work with are saving for their kids. We treat the work that way.