Financial Planning: Looking Beyond Your Investments

Financial Planning: Looking Beyond Your Investments

by | Jun 30, 2026 | Blog, Financial Planning

When people think about financial planning, they often focus on savings accounts, investment portfolios, or retirement funds. While those are important, a comprehensive financial plan is much more than a collection of accounts and investments.

A successful plan looks at every aspect of your financial life and helps ensure all the pieces are working together toward your goals.

Follow the Money

Every financial journey starts with understanding where your money comes from and where it goes. Whether you’re earning a salary, running a business, or drawing income from multiple sources, tracking cash flow helps identify opportunities to save more, spend wisely, and stay on track toward your objectives.

Many people are surprised to discover that their actual spending habits are different from what they assumed. Understanding these patterns is often the foundation of long-term financial success.

Preparing for Life’s Detours

Life rarely follows a straight path. Illness, injury, disability, or the loss of a family member can dramatically affect financial stability.

Building protection into your plan helps create a financial safety net for you, your family, and your business. Having appropriate insurance and contingency strategies in place can help ensure that unexpected events don’t derail years of hard work.

Creating Your Future Lifestyle

Retirement isn’t simply a date on a calendar—it’s a lifestyle goal. The decisions you make today will influence how comfortably you can live tomorrow.

A thoughtful plan considers when you may retire, how much income you’ll need, and the most efficient ways to draw from pensions, government benefits, savings, and investments. Proper planning can help transform retirement from a financial concern into an exciting new chapter.

Protecting What Matters Most

The wealth you build throughout your lifetime represents more than dollars and cents. It reflects years of effort, sacrifice, and planning.

Estate planning helps ensure that your assets are distributed according to your wishes, that loved ones are cared for, and that unnecessary costs, taxes, or delays are minimized. It can also help address unique family circumstances, including blended families, business ownership, or charitable goals.

Making Every Dollar Work Harder

A good investment strategy isn’t about chasing headlines or trying to predict the next market winner. Instead, it’s about creating a disciplined approach that reflects your goals, timeline, and comfort level with risk.

When investments are aligned with a larger financial plan, each dollar has a purpose and a strategy behind it.

Keeping More of What You Earn

For many Canadians, taxes represent one of the largest lifetime expenses they will ever face. Yet tax planning is often overlooked.

A well-designed financial plan looks for opportunities to improve tax efficiency, reduce unnecessary tax burdens, and make better use of available strategies and accounts. Over time, even small tax savings can have a significant impact on overall wealth.

Bringing It All Together

The real value of financial planning comes from seeing the complete picture. Rather than treating investments, taxes, retirement, insurance, and estate planning as separate issues, a comprehensive plan coordinates them into a single strategy.

Whether your goal is retiring comfortably, helping your children, growing a business, purchasing a vacation property, or leaving a lasting legacy, a financial plan can help provide direction and confidence.

At its core, financial planning is about more than money. It’s about creating a roadmap that helps you make informed decisions today while building the future you want tomorrow.

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Preparing Your Heirs for Wealth

Preparing Your Heirs for Wealth

by | Jun 4, 2024 | Blog, Estate Planning, Family, financial advice, Financial Planning

If you think your heirs are not quite old enough or prepared enough to discuss the wealth they will inherit on your death, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, this way of thinking can leave your beneficiaries in a decision-making vacuum: an unnecessary predicament which can be avoided by facing your own mortality and creating a plan.

Avoiding the subject of your own mortality can also be an extremely costly to those you leave behind.

If you have a will in place you are ahead of the game. However, authors of the 2017 Wealth Transfer Report from RBC Wealth Management point out that a will is only a fundamental first step, not a comprehensive plan.

“One generation’s success at building wealth does not ensure the next generation’s ability to manage wealth responsibly, or provide effective stewardship for the future,” they write. “Knowing the value (alone) does little to prepare inheritors for managing the considerable responsibilities of wealth.” Overall, the report’s authors say the number of inheritors who’ve been prepared hovers at just one in three.

Two thirds of the survey’s respondents say their own wealth transfer plans aren’t fully developed – a critical barrier to having this discussion in the first place.

While the report focuses on wealthier beneficiaries in society, the lessons remain true for most: to make the best decisions about your wealth transfer, there needs to be planning and communication with your heirs.

1. Recognize that action today can help you create a better future

First, it’s important to acknowledge that creating an estate plan means contemplating your own death – an inescapable element of the process. It can also involve some awkward conversations, particularly if you’re not in the habit of talking about money with family and loved ones.

Without planning the outcome you leave may not be the one you would choose:

“Despite their efforts, parents don’t always succeed in translating good intentions into effective actions. They tend to resort to the informal, in-house learning methods they received in childhood,” say the RBC report’s authors. “Without intending to, parents repeat the lessons that contributed to the weaknesses of their own financial education. In the end, they are not equipping the next generation with the right skills to build lasting legacies.”

2. Understand the tax implications early.

To many, the taxes due on death will almost certainly come as a shock. In many cases, the single largest tax bill you will pay could be the one that your executor handles for you.

In Canada, leaving your assets to your spouse will defer these taxes until he or she disposes of the property or dies. However, if a spouse is not inheriting your assets and real property, planning for this “deemed disposition” is needed to allow your heirs time to make appropriate decisions about your property and legacy.

You may want to consider strategies that will greatly reduce the impact of the taxes to your estate. These strategies could include the use of joint last to die life insurance.

To illustrate how the growth in value of property can result in taxes payable at death, consider an asset which many Canadians own and enjoy – the family cottage.

Recreational real estate in many cases has “been in the family for years.” It often will have appreciated in value significantly since its purchase. Say you purchased the family cottage for $100,000. If the property is now worth $500,000, half of that gain – $200,000 is added to your income and taxed as such in the year you die. That will result in a tax bill of approximately $100,000.

If your family does not have the liquid funds available to pay this bill, the cottage or some other asset will need to be sold to pay the Canada Revenue Agency. Purchasing life insurance to pay the taxes due at death is one way to bequeath the family cottage to heirs. This will allow your children to continue to enjoy the property without having to raise the money to pay the taxes.

All capital property – except your principal residence and investments held as a Tax-Free Savings Account – is dealt with in a similar manner. If your stocks, real property, and other assets have appreciated in value since you first purchased them, half of that amount will be added to your taxable income in the year you die. If your assets included commercial or rental property against which the Capital Cost Allowance has been claimed, there may also be a recapture of depreciation. Again, deferral is available when assets are left to a spouse but if they are left directly to children or other heirs, the taxes become payable when you die.

As if this is not bad enough, the full value of your RRSPs or your RRIF must also be deregistered and included on your final tax return if the RRSP or RRIF is not left to a surviving spouse.

3. Get help to build your plan, then share it with those who matter.

Estate planning typically isn’t a “do-it-yourself” project. Instead, you’ll probably need to rely on a network of professional advisors who can bring their expertise to different parts of your plan.

Once you have your plan in place, it’s time to ensure that the people who are impacted by it are aware of your wishes.

Members of your professional network can help explain your plan to beneficiaries and help those who inherit your assets to understand your preferences and the decisions you’ve made.

Let’s get together to review or create your wealth transfer plans and discuss how you can get assistance in communicating those plans to the people who matter the most.

As always, please feel free to share this article with anyone you think would find it of value.

Impact of Higher Capital Gains Inclusion Rate on Financial & Estate Planning

Impact of Higher Capital Gains Inclusion Rate on Financial & Estate Planning

by | May 1, 2024 | Accountants, Blog, buy sell, corporate, Family, financial advice, Financial Planning, incorporated professionals, individuals, Investment, tax

One change proposed in the April 16, 2024 Federal Budget is raising the inclusion rate on capital gains from 50% to 66.7%. For individual taxpayers, the initial $250,000 of capital gains remains taxed at the 50% inclusion rate. However, for corporations and trusts, the increased inclusion rate applies to all capital gains. These adjustments are slated to come into effect starting June 25, 2024.

What does this mean for individual taxpayers?

Income taxes on realized capital gains are increasing. For example, in B.C. with a top marginal income tax rate of 53.5%, taxes paid on capital gains under $250,000 are taxed at 26.75%. Now, for gains over $250,000 the tax rate increases to 35.85%. For most taxpayers, many of whom would not realize over $250,000 of capital gains in a taxation year, this change will not have any impact. However, for those who do realize such a gain the additional tax could be significant.

Consider someone who has just sold recreational property. If the amount of gain on that Whistler ski cabin, for example, was $500,000, the tax payable on the transaction will increase from $133,750 to $156,500. If that same property had been held in the family for generations the increase in taxes, with the new inclusion rate, could be substantial.

The same will be true for BC residents who own rental properties or investment portfolios that they wish to sell and generate profit. For each $100,000 of capital gain over the $250,000 limit they will pay an additional $9,100 in income tax.

The biggest potential impact of the increased inclusion rate on capital gains will be in estate planning. When a taxpayer in Canada dies, he or she is deemed to have disposed of all their capital property at fair market value. For estates with a large amount of non-registered investments, rental, and recreational property as well as other appreciable capital property, the inclusion rate of 66.7% will increase the final tax bill considerably.

What does this mean for owners of private corporations?

For private corporations (and trusts) there is no reduced inclusion rate for the first $250,000 of gain. Every dollar of realized capital gain is taxed based on an inclusion rate of 66.7%. Using the ski cabin in the first example, if that property had been held in a corporation, upon its sale, the full $500,000 would attract tax based on 66.7% inclusion, increasing the total tax payable to $179,150.

Many successful professionals earn their income in a private corporation retaining surplus income not required for immediate expenses to accumulate corporately for future use. The proposed tax increases on both corporate investment realization and shareholder access to proceeds have been substantial.

There is a vehicle for Canadian-Controlled Private Corporations (CCPCs) known as the Capital Dividend Account. This notional account allows a tax-free flow of the non-taxable portion of capital gains to the shareholder. The amount of tax-free capital dividends has now been reduced because of the increased inclusion rate. For instance, if a corporation realizes a $500,000 capital gain (using the example of a B.C. company with a 50.7% investment tax rate), the corporation’s tax liability would be $169,084, compared to the previous $126,750 with a 50% inclusion rate. Prior to June 25, 2024, the tax-free capital dividend flowing to the shareholder would be $250,000, decreasing to $166,500 thereafter. Consequently, more tax paid within the corporation translates to fewer tax-free proceeds for the shareholder.

For corporations, capital gains will increase their Adjusted Aggregate Investment Income (AAII) more quickly due to the higher inclusion rate. This will have the effect of accelerating the erosion of the Small Business Deduction (low rate of tax on the first $500,000 of active business income) which is reduced by $5 for every $1 of AAII.

Planning Opportunities and Strategies

What are some planning tips and strategies that can be used to mitigate the effect of these new provisions?

  • If you are holding investments with more than $250,000 in deferred capital gains, consider declaring them prior to June 25, 2024. This will require careful consideration as it will require tax to be paid sooner than originally expected. It may also have some Alternative Minimum Tax implications so take this strategy under advisement;

  • Consider a further diversification of your investments to limit capital gain exposure. Cash value life insurance, in particular Participating Whole Life, has been growing in popularity for several years, primarily due to its stable growth and tax-exempt status. This product could prove beneficial in a re-allocation of current investments;

  • Permanent life insurance products have long been used in providing necessary estate liquidity to pay taxes at death. With estates now having a possibility of higher taxes due to the higher inclusion rates, the amount of life insurance held for this purpose should be increased;

  • For owners of private corporations holding capital investments, consider allocating some of those investments to personal ownership to take advantage of the lower inclusion rate for up to $250,000;

  • Corporations should also consider diversifying and re-allocating corporate surplus to a tax-exempt life insurance policy owned by the corporation. This will shelter those investments from high passive corporate investment income tax as well as help protect the Small Business Income Tax rate on the first $500,000 of active business income;

  • You may also want to reassess corporately owned life insurance to help provide for the estate liquidity needs of the business owner, since the death benefit of the policy in excess of its ACB can be paid to the surviving shareholder or family tax free from the Capital Dividend Account.

As in previous budgets, there is currently no draft legislation enacting the provisions of the April 16th budget. Once enacted, however, the terms of the budget impacting the inclusion rate of capital gains will be effective June 25, 2024. It would be prudent to discuss your planning and develop strategies sooner rather than later.