Do you pay into a pension?

For my entire adult working life, I have paid into some form of a retirement fund at work.

My first post-university gig offered a group RRSP, where the company matched up to a certain amount. Even though I didn’t know a lot about investing at the time, I knew enough to take advantage of that match.

And it worked out well for me — by the time I left the newspaper after close to six years, I had about $20,000 in RRSPs to take with me.

The plan at my current job is a little different: instead of RRSPs, it offers a pension.

It’s been three years since I started paying into the work pension fund. And for all three of those years, I have put off learning a single thing about my pension because….reasons? I don’t really have a good answer for why, honestly. It’s just one of those things that I have been procrastinating on for far too long.

So when the email went out about the annual meeting, I put it in my calendar.

Here’s what happened.