Mike and Jen are a young couple in their early thirties. They have a 5 year old son. Mike is a mechanical engineer working for a large Oil and Gas company in downtown Calgary earning $105,000 per year as salary. Jen is working as an independent contractor for an IT firm and makes around $45,000 per year. Mike has an employer-sponsored pension plan to which he contributes on a regular basis, and his employer matches his contribution. The pension plan calculates the retirement benefit based on the average compensation (salary and bonuses) of the 3 best consecutive years in the last 5 years of employment. Although Jen is working as an independent contractor, she has an option to contribute to the pension plan sponsored by her employer. She has been contributing to her pension plan since she started working for this firm. However, unlike Mike's pension plan, Jen's pension benefits, at retirement, will depend on how the contributions were invested. Both Mike and Jen have self-directed individual RRSP accounts. They have also opened an RESP to finance their son's higher education. Mike developed a lot of interest in investing after he had taken an Investment course at SAIT about 5