Building it
Financial planning while you’re still building wealth.
Business owners with cash piling up in the corporation and no clear job for it. Professionals earning well and taxed hard, leaning on a workplace plan that was never built to carry a whole retirement.
Different structures, the same unanswered question: what is all of it building toward?
Who this fits
Where this tends to fit.
The owner-operator
One company, a handful of staff, and retained earnings piling up faster than any plan for them.
The professional corporation
A physician, dentist, engineer or lawyer: high income, a high tax bill, and no pension at the end of it.
The salaried professional
A strong T4 income, RRSP and TFSA that need a real strategy, and a financial plan that has to work without a corporation.
The equity-comp earner
RSUs, options or an ESPP that have quietly become a large, concentrated, under-managed part of your net worth.
The partner in a firm
Partnership draws you don’t fully control, and a buy-sell agreement no one has walked you through.
Five to ten years from an exit
The ideal time to plan, while structure can still change the outcome. Two years out, most of it is already set.
Illustrative only
What a financial plan looks like on paper.
Building
Salary, dividends, corporate cash.
Income into the corporation. The compensation mix set each year, with surplus invested rather than left idle.
The turn
The day the financial plan starts paying you.
Contributions stop. The structure is already built, so nothing changes shape, only direction.
Drawing
What to take, from where, in what order.
Corporate, registered and personal accounts, sequenced so the tax is spread rather than bunched.
Illustrative only. Not a forecast, projection, or recommendation. Every financial plan is built to the individual.
If you own the business
The questions you already have, called by their real names.
How you pay yourself
Salary or dividends, decided for the year ahead, weighing RRSP room, CPP and the corporate tax bill together.
Cash sitting idle
What a corporate savings account is quietly costing you, and why idle cash is rarely the best use of it.
Where to invest it
Where corporate cash should go once it’s time to put it to work, and how to keep investment income from eroding your small business rate.
Insurance inside the corporation
Where it belongs, where it doesn’t, and how it lands in the estate.
Retirement income
Turning the corporation and your accounts into a steady, tax-efficient income once you stop working, drawn in the right order.
Exit and estate
What a sale has to produce, and the tax bill your family inherits with the shares, and how to bring it down.
Through your business
Two benefits worth running through the corporation.
Set up once, then they mostly run themselves. One looks after your team; the other looks after you.
For your team
Group retirement plans
One of the most cost-effective retention tools most owners aren’t using, and the one benefit staff see the value of every payday. I set it up and advise on the structure; the plan provider handles enrolment.
- Retention and recruiting, with a deductible contribution and no CPP or EI.
- Group RRSP, DPSP, Group TFSA, or the legal minimum, in plain terms.
- Once it’s set up, your part is a few minutes each pay period.
For incorporated owners
Health Spending Accounts
If you’re incorporated, an HSA lets your company cover your family’s medical and dental costs as a deductible business expense, received tax-free. It’s a Private Health Services Plan under CRA rules, and covers far more than a typical benefits plan.
- The corporation deducts the cost; the benefit reaches you with no personal tax (a taxable benefit in Quebec).
- Dental, vision, prescriptions, therapy, and most expenses CRA counts as eligible medical.
- I set it up and fit it into your financial plan; claims run through the platform.
If you’re a professional
No corporation, but the same real questions.
A high-income tax bill
What actually moves it: RRSP timing, income splitting where it’s allowed, and the accounts that shelter growth.
RRSP and TFSA, used well
Which to fill first, in what order, and what to hold inside each so the tax treatment works for you.
Equity compensation
RSUs, options and ESPP shares: when to sell, how they’re taxed, and how to stop one stock from becoming your whole financial plan.
A pension you build yourself
A group RRSP or DC plan is a start, rarely the whole answer. The retirement income still has to be engineered from the accounts you control.
The next dollar of surplus
Once the raise or bonus lands, where it should go: registered room, the mortgage, or a taxable account.
Protecting the income
The insurance a high earner without a corporation actually needs, and the coverage that’s just noise.
What changes for you
The result, in three lines.
- Each goal with money attached to it, and a date.
- Every surplus dollar with a job: corporate cash, a bonus, or an RSU vest.
- One financial plan the accountant and the accounts all feed into, instead of pieces that never meet.
Who this isn’t for
If you want someone to trade a portfolio, or a view on where markets go next, I am not the right advisor for you. If your finances are straightforward (a single income, no surplus to put to work, no equity comp or corporation in the picture), most of what I do is more than you need. Saying so early saves us both a meeting.
Let’s start with a financial plan.
Free, about thirty minutes, no obligation.