Thinking worth your time
Plain-language essays on the decisions that shape family wealth — written the way we advise: mechanisms first, products last.
All insights
The Insured Retirement Strategy
Most retirement accounts shrink every time you draw on them. There is a way to retire on an asset that keeps growing — by borrowing against it instead of draining it.
Passing the Business On
A family business changes hands once. The structure it changes hands through is decided years earlier — or not at all.
What Happens to Everything You’ve Built
Wealth transfers with structure, or erodes without it. The difference is decided while you’re here.
The Double Tax Trap
Why Canadian business owners pay tax twice — and what the well-advised ones do differently.
Planning Around the Client, Not the Product
Why a real financial plan starts with your life — and why advice that starts with a product is backwards.
Fair Is Not Always Equal
The hardest estate question has nothing to do with tax: three children, one business, one cottage — and one chance to get it right.
TFSA vs RRSP, Decided Properly
Two accounts, two different promises to your future self. The right one depends on which promise your circumstances need.
When Your Corporation Starts Investing
The moment a business earns more than its owner needs, the corporation becomes an investor — and the rules for corporate investors are different, by design.
Fund Selection Is a Consequence, Not a Starting Point
Goals, timelines, and behaviour decide what belongs in a portfolio. Everything else follows.
The Tax Bill That Arrives With an Estate
Canada has no estate tax — and yet the largest tax bill of most people’s lives arrives at death. Here is how, and what planning does about it.
Life Insurance as an Asset Class
Permanent insurance is more than a safety net — structured well, it behaves like an asset class of its own.
What a Trust Actually Does
Trusts are the most misunderstood tool in wealth planning — imagined as tax magic, actually something better: control that outlives you.
Capital Gains, Explained Properly
The tax on growth is the most controllable tax most families pay — because you choose when it happens.
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