CST - Beyond the Blue Line

Growing up, my brother and I were always involved in something.  Whether it was swimming lessons (both of us), skating (on our backyard ice rink). basketball (me), competive cycling (my brother) - and more - we were always on the go.  Education was also very important to our family.  My brother and I had to keep up our grades in order to keep up with our extracurricular activities - and going to College and/or University after high school was stressed as "an important thing to do".

In a time when RESPs did not exist (we were born in the 70's), my parents still saw the value of saving for our post-secondary educations.  In a recent survey completed by CST Consultants, 89% of parents expressed that they believe it is important to them to help pay for their childrens' post-secondary education. 
 
Families often struggle to try to balance paying for extra-curricular activites and saving for post-secondary education.  Now that I am all grown up and have a family of my own, I am sure my husband and I are having the same conversations that our parents had when we were kids.  My husband grew up in a hockey-playing family, and that love of hockey has been passed along to our boys.  We currently have 1 son in hockey, and our second not far behind.  Already we are feeling the crunch when it comes to paying for hockey and saving for our kids' educational futures.  For us, we do our best to split the expenses.  In the months when we need to pay for hockey, our savings towards education may be reduced, but in the non-hockey months, there is more for those education funds.  Check out this great info-graphic on the Cost of Hockey.
 
A lot of people wonder about "when" to start that education fund.  For us, we started saving as soon as our kids were born.  We figured this way we would have a good start on savings before the kids got into hockey.  Plus, there are many grants available to us for education savings.  Be sure to check them out!  We are also pretty realistic about our kids' hockey futures - even though hockey is in their blood, we have no expectations that either of them will make it to the NHL - all we want is for them to love playing and have fun doing it! 

The folks over at Canadian Scholarship Trust Plan love hockey and they recognize that our kids shouldn't miss out on playing sports because we were too busy saving for their post-secondary educations.  There is a balance to be found, and the folks at CST can help!

CST Consultants has launched a community education initiative for teams - learn how you can enter your team to win $10,000!  Yes, $10,000! Contest is open until December 31, 2013, so don't delay, enter today!


Disclosure: I am part of the C.S.T. Consultants Inc. – Beyond the blue line blogger program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own