Financial Planning
We can help you evaluate whether your financial plan is suitable for your stated retirement objectives, and whether there is a better alternative. If you are asking this question, you almost certainly have doubts about the plan’s performance, risk exposure or annual cost.
Perhaps you are managing the plan itself and want to know if you are on the right track, or maybe you are working with a professional and wondering if the plan is best serving your interests.
Our advisors will review your plan for critical mistakes and opportunities of improvement. When analyzing a plan, our team will assess the following factors:
Fees
We will calculate what your annual fees are and will assess their impact on the long-term performance of your plan. We will highlight what is included in these fees and whether there are any hidden charges you need to be aware about.
Strategy Selection
We are going to evaluate whether your plan is well diversified and will point out any unnecessary concentration or redundant overlap in strategies. Additionally, we will evaluate whether your strategy mix supports your stated objectives.
Account Setup
We will assess whether your accounts are set up appropriately to avoid or defer unnecessary investment income taxes now or in the future. This analysis will allow us to point out which components of your portfolio should be kept in each of your investment accounts?
Retirement Income Planning
If you are close to retirement or have already retired, creating a comprehensive retirement income projection is a critical task. Our advisors can help you assess your assets and retirement resources and figure out how to position them in order to create your desired cash flow once you stop working. As we help you prepare this plan, there are a number of considerations that you will need to think through. We can help you address these considerations by exploring the appropriate strategies applicable to your particular financial situation and circumstances.
Our advisors will review your existing financial plan and will suggest changes if necessary. We will focus on the following components of your plan.
Order of Liquidation of Savings and Other Accounts
When you retire your income will come from a variety of different sources. They will include government retirement benefits, employer pension plans, registered retirement plans and other personal savings and investments that are held outside your registered plans. Understanding how they will interact with each other, and which ones you should be triggering first is an essential part of a retirement plan.
Longevity and Inflation
With healthier lifestyles and improving medical care people are living longer than ever. There is a strong chance that for a healthy couple aged 65, at least one spouse will live until 90 years of age. Therefore, it is prudent to plan for a long retirement. Our advisors can help you understand how inflation will erode your wealth during this time as well as outline strategies that will mitigate its effects on your savings.
Withdrawal from Savings
One of your biggest challenges going forward will be to determine how much to withdraw from your savings and when to do so. You will need enough funds to live comfortably, but taking too much could reduce the ability of your assets to generate an efficient level of income in the future. Our advisors can help you find the most optimal withdrawal rate to avoid being at the mercy of the stock markets in the early years of your retirement.
Tax and Estate Planning
A carefully designed tax planning strategy is essential to grow and preserve the wealth you have accumulated while reducing your tax burden. Our advisors can walk you through the most common rules and tax planning opportunities that may be available to you. Investing the time to understand the basics can pay off substantially in tax savings and in the organization of your financial affairs.
Income Splitting
A well-accepted tax-planning method, reallocating income from a family member in a high tax bracket to one in a lower tax bracket can result in higher after-tax income. Even though income attribution rules restrict the number of income-splitting opportunities available, there are still a number of simple ways of splitting income with family members our advisors can explore with you.
Reducing Tax on Investment Income
Recognizing that capital gains from investable assets and investment income (interest, domestic and foreign dividends) are taxed differently is key to optimizing the after-tax rate of return of your portfolio. With this in mind, we can evaluate which types of income you should prioritize at different stages of your life.
Estate Planning
Once you have achieved your personal financial goals, your priorities might shift from accumulating wealth to protecting it and taking steps to help the people and causes you care about benefit from your success. It is also natural that the more one ages, the more important creating a meaningful financial legacy becomes. No matter what you want to accomplish, our advisors can guide you through the broad range of trust and insurance strategies and solutions that are available to you.
Risk Management
Insurance strategies can play a central role in a comprehensive financial plan. They can offer peace of mind, but researching the number of options available to you can be a daunting task. Our advisors can guide you through this process and work with you to ensure that you find the right product to address your particular needs. Building a well-designed insurance plan and understanding how it fits together with the rest of your assets can give you the peace of mind that you and your loved ones are well taken care of.
Family Protection
The most obvious need for life insurance is to protect one’s family and dependents in the case of a calamity. The insurance proceeds can be used to pay outstanding mortgage balances and other debt, replace income in order to protect current lifestyle expenses, or pay taxes due upon death.
Business Protection
The death or illness of an active business owner or a key person can have devastating financial consequences. In fact, the business may not survive it without emergency resources. The right insurance policies can provide liquidity in the transition period after the death or extended sickness of key personnel, fund a buy-sell agreement, or cover overhead expenses.
Legacy Planning
Under the right circumstances an insurance policy can generate an after-tax rate of return that is often difficult to match in traditional investment vehicles. Whether you plan to leave an inheritance, help a charity, or create an endowment for a foundation, life insurance contracts can serve as a tool in in a wealth transfer plan.
Group Solutions
Apart from payroll, the biggest labor expense a business has is the cost of health benefits and retirement plans offered to employees. Whether you are the owner of your business or in charge of human relations, administering these plans can be an overwhelming process. Unfortunately, it is not enough to just pick a plan and forget about it as your employees’ engagement in these programs will affect their work satisfaction and turnover. Our advisors can work with you to design the most optimal solution for your business in order to boost the productivity of your workforce.
Group RRSP/DPSP
A deferred profit sharing plan (DPSP) is a powerful tool employers can use to attract and retain talent in a business. Under this arrangement an employer can share business profits with employees. The RRSP/DPSP combination adds certain features to a regular group RRSP, such as withdrawal restrictions, vesting, and the elimination of certain payroll taxes. Our advisors can help you evaluate whether this structure is right for your business.
Group Benefits
Offering group insurance benefits allows employers to gain a competitive edge in talent acquisition. The proper plan will both ensure employees’ health needs are taken care of and serve as an important compensation tool. We have access to a complete range of flexible benefit management solutions that are comprehensive and cost efficient and that can meet the specific needs of each unique situation.