If you are looking at socking some money away in your retirement fund be aware of the March 1, 2018, midnight deadline.

Lisa Elle, Ellements Group, Financial Advisor and Author, says choosing to invest in RRSPs is really dependent on your personal financial situation. What may be best for some people is not necessarily best for all. "It depends on your tax bracket, your future goals, everything you want to happen in your life...you need to look at the big picture. I don't think it is something you do with a quick transaction it does take a lot more planning around it. However, there are places where RRSPs work well like higher tax brackets, other places where doing a TFSA makes more sense or a combination of both or even to pay down debt, there are all these different things to look at when investing."

When deciding how risky you should be, there are many factors to consider "It is your time horizon and your time left to invest; if you have lots of years you can go higher risk, where if you are in retirement you may want to be prudent. There are lots of different options for every investor."

If you are in a higher tax bracket, those paying between 40-50% in taxes, contributing to RRSPs can be a good idea. "For those people putting money into an RRSP will essentially give you a refund of about 40/50 cents on the dollar. But if you are in a low tax bracket you may not need the deduction. If you are a student, for example, maybe there's better ways to save like in a TFSA if you are only making $20,000 a year in a summer job."

Investing into an RRSP is not advised if you are not looking at the long-range future, cautions Elle. "You do not really want to be putting money into an RRSP if you are going to be pulling it out in a couple of years because there are so many tax implications and fees. If you want to do something in the short term there's a lot of even great online banks that offer 2% on your savings account, so maybe hunt those out. They are a great place to house your money or an emergency fund as well."

With tomorrow being the deadline you may want to consider setting up an RRSP-matic withdrawal moving forward. "Saving monthly is probably one of the best financial habits you can get into for so many reasons. Liquidity, if there ever is an emergency creating that emergency fund or having a place of assets/cash on hand. The other benefit if you are into more high-risk investment like investing into individual stocks or into mutual funds, your dollar cost averaging into the market, which means you're buying at all different market cycles so you are taking advantage of the highs and lows of the stock market."

If you are worried about your rate of return on investment try to keep in mind it's not always about what you are investing in but rather the tax planning side. "A million dollars in your RRSP is not a million dollars in your hand and pulling $60,000 out of you RRSP come retirement versus pulling $60,000 out of your TFSA has very different tax implications. Having the awareness and creating a plan around this will help ten-fold with building wealth and accomplishing goals."

Consulting with an accountant or a financial advisor is the best advice Elle can pass on, so you end up on the right track. If you have any questions regarding RRSPs or investments you can contact Elle HERE.