A recent study found over 8 million working Canadians are at risk of going into debt, delaying retirement or downsizing their home in order to cope with a critical illness. When a critical illness occurs, the primary financial impacts are loss of income and inability to meet living expenses.
Critical illness insurance was created (by a doctor, not an insurance company) to help address these issues. It provides a lump-sum payment upon diagnosis of any one of up to 25 serious illnesses, including heart attack, stroke and cancer. Read more
To Split or not to Split…That is the question.
Income Splitting Strategies
So what is Income Splitting, and who is eligible to quality for the benefit?
Income Splitting is a way for families to split up their income so that if one spouse earns more than the other, the higher-earning spouse can allocate some of their income to their lower-earning spouse’s tax return. Since our tax system has graduated tax brackets, Income splitting is a great strategy to pay less household tax, and keep more money in your pocket! Read more
The way we look at it, if you’re going to own something you might as well get paid for owning it. The more things in life that can produce cash flow, the closer you will be to subsidizing your income as we prepare for retirement. Take real estate for example – you own a piece of land, you have the option to rent it out, and not only does your property have the potential to appreciate; you get paid while you own it through rental income. Any viable investment should produce some sort of income. That income values you, the investor, for putting your hard earned money into it. In fact, many of you are getting paid on your investments right now, without even realizing it. The way you get paid to invest is through earning dividends. Read more
Unfortunately, unlike many of our childhood heroes, we aren’t invincible… we can’t all be Superman or Batman, yet we still pretend like we are. The thought of an injury is the last thing that’s on our mind; yet we still have no problem helping a friend move, playing sports on the weekend, or doing chores around the house from the never ending “Honey Do- List”.
But what if we were to become injured off the job? Read more
Planning On Selling Your Business…
Are you approaching retirement and planning on selling your business?
As an entrepreneur, you dreamed of building your own successful business. After all those years of hard work, you plan to reap the rewards in the form of a successful business sale. Sounds like a great plan! But, making the sale is not as easy as it may appear. Read more
It’s Not That Much Anymore…
Is a million enough? It used to be that having a million dollars was a big deal, right? You were set for life with no cares or worries financially. When did that change?
Have you ever made any statements such as; I remember when gas was only 25 cents per litre. As my kids remind me, yes I am getting older but it also means that inflation is slowly affecting the cost of living.
If you had a million dollars saved to provide for retirement, how much income would you have? Read more