The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #43 — Julia Chung: Human-Led Financial Planning

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Our guest this week is Julia Chung, CFP®, FEA, TEP — CEO of Spring Planning, President of FPAC and a Financial Planning & Family Enterprise Consultant with over 25 years of experience helping people navigate complex financial decisions. In this episode, Dave and Julia explore what advice-only financial planning really means and why human-led planning matters more than ever. Their conversation ranges from the challenges of implementing financial plans to the rise of niche specialization in the industry and how retirees should think about the mosaic of retirement income. Julia also shares her insights on difficult but critical topics like planning for when one spouse passes away, choosing the right executor/POA and why adding kids as joint owners can be risky. Whether you’re building a plan, managing a family business, or simply thinking more deeply about your financial future, this thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation is packed with insight.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Julia Chung (03:38) What Advice-Only Financial Planning Really Means (05:46) What Type of Clients Are Best Suited for Advice-Only Planning? (09:30) Human-Led Financial Planning (12:03) Cooperation in the Advice-Only Planning Community in Canada (13:16) Challenges with Financial Plan Implementation (17:25) The Growth of Niche Specialization in Financial Planning (20:55) The Mosaic of Retirement Income (24:09) Retirement Planning for When One Spouse Passes Away (26:43) Julia’s Views on “Competitors” in the Financial Management Industry (28:21) Choosing the Right Executor (30:35) The Pros and Cons of Corporate Executors (31:50) Beware of Adding Kids as Joint Owners (34:57) The Critical Importance of Powers of Attorney (37:17) Financial Institutions Are Resisting POA Documents More and More (39:27) Qualities to Look for in Your POA for Personal Care (41:46) Debunking RRSP Misinformation (44:05) Why Disability Insurance is Underrated (47: 31) Paying Off Your Mortgage or Investing (49:34) The Evolution of Family Business Transitions (53:42) Recommended Reading: “Designing Your Life” (55:17) Financial Pet Peeves and Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragon's Dent. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making this subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a doubt payment, save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever, will be here to help you. You do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken

as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber with the wealthy barber podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. We've been very fortunate with all the momentum we've been building with the show. And the credit goes, as I've said before, to our wonderful lineup of guests. It's interesting when we first got this idea.

We said to the public, we were going to have the top minds, the top communicators and the Canadian personal finance space on week after week, show after show. It sounded like marketing. It even sounded like marketing to me. But you know what? We have had the top minds and the top communicators and the personal finance and the investment space in Canada on week after week after week. They've been so open-minded and so helpful coming on the show, sharing their knowledge, sharing their wisdom.

It's been fantastic. I've enjoyed it immensely. I've learned a lot and love all of the listener feedback. Everywhere I go, people are talking to me about the podcast. So it's exciting. Today's guest, Julia Chung, very well known in the industry, not to you normal people at folk at home who weren't following this. But in the industry, one of the big players, known for her communication skills, how nice she's supposed to be. Let's see if that plays out.

I don't know that personally, but let's just see what we feel in 45 minutes or so. She's the president of Beth Pack, the Financial Planning Association of Canada. She's the co-founder and lead at Spring Financial Planning Corps, but that's an advice-only financial planning firm. We'll talk a lot about that model in a moment. She, of course, has her CFP. She has her TEP. That's trust and estate practitioner. She also has her family enterprise advisor.

She's on the board there, and she's on the board for the Family Enterprise. Family Enterprise, what's the last word there? Family Enterprise Canada. Family Enterprise Canada. One of my favorite groups, by the way. In fact, I was saying to Julia Offer, my favorite group probably to speak for her because it's a mixture of financial planning and, of course, entrepreneurship and everything else.

Wonderful person. I was drawn to her for a lot of reasons. She was highly recommended to us, but I've seen her speak online. And some of what she's saying just resonated with me so much. She talked recently in a speech about how the industry, the practitioners, the financial planners, we need to make all of this more inclusive, more rigorous, and more human. And I thought, what a great way to summarize what this is all about. So welcome to the show.

Thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been delightful to hear from my clients. Oh, I heard this on the Wealthy Barber podcast. Oh, that's a friend of mine. He said that. It's been really cool. Yeah, it's good.

And all the people have come on. honestly, your name up was come up a tremendous amount. Everybody's saying you've got to get her on. And we were truly thrilled that you responded so quickly when we reached out and eager to talk a lot about this. So let's go forward with looking at your model. You're an advice only model. I used to call it fee only. I think everybody called it fee only.

But advice only is such a better label than fee only. So someone comes to you and they pay to be $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, whatever. It may change depending on the complexity. you give them an unbiased financial plan that includes estate planning, etc. Tell us a little bit more about the model. And what are the strengths and weaknesses of that model in your mind? Well, the model is really, it's consulting, is the way that we kind of want to think about it. I think part of it is that we're doing truly holistic financial planning.

So a lot of times when people get a financial plan or a financial planning experience, it's very focused on the product, whether that's investment or insurance, that the financial planner is selling. And it often misses a bunch of the other pieces that are vital and required for a fully holistic financial plan in the advice only pure consulting space because we don't get paid any other way. We better be really good at bringing all of these pieces together from looking at your income tags and your insurance and your investments and your cash flow and your estate. We better be good at that. That had that better add a lot of value because it's It's not like we're making money in your portfolio or managing your taxes or your insurance or anything like that.

So what I like about that is that I think it's hard to be good at everything and it's really focused. It's very clear what we're doing, soup to nuts. And because we're not paid on selling a particular product, the incentive for us to push you in a particular direction just doesn't exist. That doesn't mean we're entirely free of conflicts because we are human beings and we all have biases, but those biases will be more around our own preferences. So I think the model is incented. It incensed the financial planner to think holistically to do the best possible job because it's the only job we're doing and to be coming from it from the perspective of the client because that is the only way we get paid. What do the clients look like generally? Are these kind of middle income Canadians, high income? Is it all? all over the map. Do you specialize in any one demographic or occupation or anything along that line? So it is all over the map. A lot of people were under the impression that the only people

who would come to advice only financial planners would be the lower end of the income and asset scale and only people who do DIY investing. And that is fundamentally untrue. It's everybody from every walk of life. I specialize in basically if it gets real complicated and other financial planners are going, oh, man. This is got, we've got corporations, we've got trust, we've got international assets, we've got U.S. people, we've got disabled people, we've got people experiencing incapacity. Like, it's starting to get wild. That's where I come in. Interesting. Good for you. I was saying in a previous podcast that when I was young and starting out and helping a lot of people, I knew nothing about the cross-border rules. And my friends will say, can you help me with that?

And I say, no. And I don't want to look into it. It didn't interest me. And you can't be a specialist in every area. You can't know everything. And I would say to people, if that's where you are, you need to go get advice from someone more competent and more intelligent in that area than I am. So it's interesting. You cover off a lot of that and good for you. So you come in, do you help the other planners as they develop their plans too? Are you also doing plans on your own? Yeah. So I help other planners all the time. It's actually one of my favorite things to do, which is why I'm involved in FPAC. And I help people find the right planner for them because that can be confusing as well. So I like to help people deliver certain components. So if, you know, someone's a

planner and they're in this niche, but they need a little bit of help, say, on something like cross-border or corporations or disabled individuals or something like that, then I can help them by doing just that component and helping them figure out how to integrate it. I think you're bang on when you were describing the fact that there's a perception out there that it's X group of people coming in and it's not that way at all. In fact, lately, I've seen a lot of people pre-retirement, people who are quite affluent in many instances going to a fee-only financial planner. They want a more holistic approach, not just about the investment end. And they also want to make sure they're getting good advice on how to build the retirement

income in the most tax-optimized way. And also they want a second opinion to be perfectly honest. They're looking for another set of eyes to come in, a fresh set of eyes. And so they get the plan. They don't necessarily leave their current advisor. And they don't necessarily think poorly of their current advisor. They're just looking to add value and make sure they're on the right track. You seeing more of that as time has gone on?

Yeah, that's really what I tend to see. And it's fair because when somebody's spending their whole day paying attention to the markets, which I'm delighted to not do, and they're good at that. And it's like, great, be great at that. And maybe they have some financial planning jobs and they can help people to a certain point. But then they get to the next point where it starts to just get a little deeper. The clients are asking questions that need a lot of time and need a lot of focus. then that's when they might call an advice-only financial planner.

And it's not even just on the investment side. A lot of times I'll get clients who are saying, my accountant is giving me this advice about maybe how I take income from my corporation, or my lawyer said this about how I set up my structure or put together my will. But then I think there's this thing that's going on. And maybe I didn't talk to them about it or they don't know enough about it. So there are situations where even if the person is drafting the will or doing the tax return, they might not know enough about this really unique thing about you that a financial planner would know because it sits in the gaps between those expertise. You said all that very well and I couldn't agree more.

Let's go back to my example of trying to build your retirement income in the most optimal way from a tax perspective. You have to know it all to lay that out. You can't be doing it in silos or different components. It all meshes together. And so you need somebody overseeing that whole process. Do you use a lot of software? Yeah, I do. I use software.

And I also use spreadsheets. There's no software that's perfect for designing anything. And there's no software that exists that can handle cross-border planning. And there's very few of them that actually understand how a trust might work. And how would you develop software around that? So we can use software for a good chunk of project. that help us determine certain things. But I think a lot of people lead with things like software,

whereas you should be leading with all the information that comes before about the humans and what they're wanting and how we get there. And then we put the plan together, the financial planner thinks about, okay, what are the particular strategies? And then the software is a test run. The software is not the decision maker. And sometimes I see where it looks like the software has been the decision maker. and that I think is really problematic.

You know what? You and I agree 100% on that. And you can actually see it when you look at some of the plans people have developed, where somebody's led with, again, the human element, taking in all the questions you need to, getting the priorities right, meshing in the tricky things. You use two very good examples with trust and cross-border issues and then using the software to complement, to affirm you're heading the right direction,

to test all of those different types of things. I agree with you completely. In fact, I think that's one of the things that's separate. some of the better plans I see from the less good ones. That being said, I want to say something very positive about the advice only industry. You're going to like this. And I'm not saying, because you and I aren't friends, we don't hang out. Man, I've seen some good plans from the advice only industry in the last few years.

And I'm not that easy to impress. I'm really not. But geez, I've probably seen 15 to 20. Produced by different people in your industry, you would know a good number of them. And I have been really, really impressed at how thorough they've been. been how they've paid a lot of attention to the subtle nuances. They've given different options depending on different ways things could play out, et cetera. The communication has been strong, almost across the board. Maybe a couple exceptions were average, not poor, didn't see any poor

ones. But I saw some of the mind what these are really well done. Oh, that that makes my day, David, you have no idea because the advice only planning group in Canada, there's not a lot of us. There's definitely more than there used to be. And we do all know each other. And one of the things that I think's been great is we started when there was maybe five of us during that. I think our viewers think you're kidding, but you're not kidding. No. At one point in Canada, not that long ago, there were five to ten advice only planners who really had any kind of legit business going. Yeah. And that's when I started in 2012. And we all found each other. Right. The magic of the internet. And we started talking and saying, how are you doing this?

What does your model look like? What are ways that you can support what I'm doing? What questions are you getting asked? So we, from the beginning, didn't act like we were in competition with each other. We said, this is an important part of the profession. And this model actually needs to survive to support Canadians going forward. So how can we set aside any weirdness that people get about competing and say everything that I'm doing out there when I say I'm a advice-only planner?

on you and vice versa. So let's make each other better. And we've been doing that for 15 years. No, that's good to hear. Okay, let me get to the criticism that the industry grits. And that is that sometimes implementation doesn't take place because I come to see you, you and do indeed give me a wonderful plan. But I've now got to walk out the door and either through doing it myself or through finding my own group of advisors, I've got to make it happen. I've got to implement it. And there's a fall down rate there that's fairly high. What are your thoughts about that? My thoughts about that are we do need to find the commitment. So sometimes people just fall down on plans altogether anyway. So when I work in regular industry and I created financial plans for people, I was one of those

specialists that they'd fly in. You do a financial plan and let I go away and I leave them with their brokers to implement. And you know what? Most of the time it didn't get implemented then either. And that irritated me no end because I'm like, oh, this is a pointless work that I'm doing. apparently. But what I have found is I think that when people pay for it and they pay a reasonable amount of money for it, that does indicate their commitment to doing the implementation. And I think it is important that the financial planner is saying, okay, so how are we going to implement this? There is so much ongoing work in financial planning, which is why it is a verb, not a noun. get a financial plan in your life is settled because nothing changes ever.

You get a financial plan and that's our starting point. And now we need to figure out how we're going to carry this down the road. And so the work of the financial planner, regardless of what model, is going to be, so how are we doing this? How are we implementing this next piece? If I'm doing a handoff to your investment manager or to your accountant or your lawyer for any of these pieces, I want to be in contact with them and say, hey, this is the next piece and they're incented to make sure they follow up with the client to get that done

because they get paid to do that. So I think that's, it's just about building that out in the model. You know, on the states, you see a fair amount of the model where someone does the advice only plan and then they farm out the implementation to colleagues, trusted partners in essence, people they've done thorough due diligence on. They get the follow up back saying, yes, it's in place, but they don't get a referral fee. They don't get a commissions, but they don't get anything because they think that would color the judgment or at least have the potential look of bias. I like that model. And I've seen it a fair amount in the States.

Are we going to see more and more in that of Canada where I come to you and you actually make sure I'm going out and seeing the right people and getting it put into place? I would say that there are a fair number of us who are doing that. So by and large with most of my clients, that is what I'm doing. And I'm working together with all of their team to make sure things get implemented. and then on things like annual follow-ups or quarterly follow-ups, we're having sort of an advisory team meeting ahead of the client meeting saying, okay, what are you doing? What are you doing?

Okay, we've got all the right information. And let's work collaboratively to make sure the client's getting very thorough advice from all of the experts and they know, like, they can just say yes to this and no to that. And then we'll just get it done. And how are you received? So instead of you farming it out to people you've established relationships with, and done due diligence on, you're now working with their already existing team, probably in place before they walked into your office. Are you warmly received or is there sometime a little bit of

resentment or iffiness about all of this? I'd say definitely depends. Some people, and I get it, you might feel insecure about your relationship with your client. I do a fair bit of work with people to let them know, I am not here to steal your lunch. And I'm going to make the job actually so much easier because you don't have to answer these questions. You don't even have to even worry about what those questions are. And the ones who get it are delighted. They're like, great. So the account comes to me, the investment manager comes to me.

They heard something from the client. I'm like, oh, yeah, no, wait a minute. I need to have a conversation with them. Or note, you're on the right track. I think it can be really relieving for those professionals to know that they don't have to worry about this piece and they can concentrate on what they're great at. No, that does make a lot of sense to me. Going back to the U.S., we're also seeing down there a lot of the advice only planners focusing on a specific occupation or a specific demographic. I think we're going to see a lot

more of that in Canada too. One of my colleagues is now going in and focusing on a certain occupation that's in Canada. And I'm also seeing Canada a fair number of the advice only are focusing on pre-retirement people trying to prepare them for retirement. Do you think that's the trend we're going to see pick up a lot in the next few years? I think so. I mean, with any business being really focused on your niche is great for your business and it helps people figure out which sort of planner might be the right person for them. So definitely we're seeing that in the advice only space where people are getting quite granular about who they work best with and where they can add the most value. And that's how we talk about it with each other collectively is like, who's your best

client? Where can you do the best work? And we've got folks that are just all about cross-border planning. Like that's the only thing they touch. We've got folks who are really, really, into physicians, doctors, chiropractors, lawyers, tech folks. Like, there's somebody for everybody now in advice only. I love that. Years and years and years ago, back in the old days when everybody was basically through commission, there wasn't the AUM and there wasn't this model AUM as assets under management for listeners.

There was a fellow in Canada who did very well, and all of his clients were divorced women. And that's all he dealt with. And he would have a lot of lunchearns where they got to meet each other and develop social connections. He would have speakers come in, but he had that single-minded focus. And what I thought was interesting about him was he was so disciplined. If someone came from the outside world, even with a lot of money, and they weren't a divorced woman, he wouldn't take them on. He wanted to say, that's my practice. That's my specialty. That's what I'm best at. That's the market I

connect well with and have learned the most from and about, et cetera. Again, I think that's a trend we're going to see a lot more of going forward. And I think it's important because financial planning is actually enormous, right? The scope of what it can cover is really big. And it's hard to be good at everything. It's basically impossible to be good at everything. And, you know, for instance, people have come to our group quite a bit and they're looking for help with people who are low income, which is great. And we do want to help there. But also that is its own niche. It is. You have to know a lot about the government grants, everything. Yeah. I'm not actually great at what people would call a simple plan because it's very confusing.

brain. I'm like, where's the trust? Where's the corporations? What's going on? Like, how I'm thinking all the time is focused on the highest level of complexity. That's not going to serve those people who are asking for something without those kinds of complexities, but they have different ones. And I think it's really important that we not only stay within our wheelhouse technically, but also the people that we vibe with. This is, it's like a counseling relationship. We don't connect, even if I know lots of stuff, we don't like each other. This isn't going to work. No, I agree. It's a relationship. And communication, obviously, is the key component of the success of all of this. And you can't communicate effectively with somebody who doesn't like and respect

you. And your word vibe is a good word here. There's got to be some sort of chemistry that sets in and it enables relatively quick trust and openness and all of that. And so, yeah, no, it's really fun stuff in a lot of ways, much more than numbers, obviously. Oh, so much. And I think. Yeah, and I think, again, people are starting to get a good feel for that. Now, one of my big pet peeves, and I talked about a lot 10 years ago, was that the industry in general, not this slice of the industry, but the big picture industry was doing a horrible job. I don't think it's unfair to say that, helping older clients figure out how to optimize their cash flow from a tax perspective in retirement. Yes. It just wasn't, that service wasn't really being provided at all.

No. And you get very basic generic advice, like leave your RSP slash RIP, a loan as long as possible, et cetera, which wasn't even the right advice in some instances, but that's about all you ever heard. Now we've seen a good shift. Now all of a sudden a lot of people are specializing in that. I think that's one of the reasons your end of the business has picked up momentum because that particular flaw led a lot of people to saying, I've got to go to somebody who's

going to look at this from a big picture perspective. Do you get a lot of people asking you about that specific aspect of their financial plan? Yes. I'd say most people lead with that regardless of where they come from. And I think it's reflective of demographic change. Right? Yes, for sure. We've got this group of people that were really focused on this certain aspects of their

money. And that's what advisory practices lean towards. It's like, who has the most money, demographic really, and what services are they asking for? And that's what the industry provided. And now we're in this place where it's harder, what I like to call the mosaic of retirement income, right? We've got, oh, there's a little bit over here and there's a little bit over there and the

timing and the rules and the tax treatment. And there's all these little pieces that we have to put together. And then we have to take care of it over time because things change and they shift. This is intricate work. And it's not work that a lot of people have been taught, first of all, in our industry, which is why we have been good at it. And also not that many people were asking for it. No, and now that people have figured out it can make a huge difference on an after-tax basis if you do this right and you're not taking on any additional risk. It's one of the best services you can be asking for and can be receiving. You make such an important point for listeners.

I think people forget when you're working, you tend to have one source of income. A few people have passive income from rental units, etc. Some dividends. But one primary source of income, when you retire, you've got the CPP, you've got the OAS, you've got your pension of work in some cases, your RSP slash RIF, you've got TFSA monies available. You mentioned trusts earlier. You could be taking money out of corporations.

and it's just absolutely wacky. And then in a lot of cases, you have obviously two spouses. And you could have 14, 15, 16 different sources of income. Some you control when you take. Some you don't. Use the word mosaic. Bang on, putting all of this together and optimizing. It is tricky stuff.

You may have heard me on one of the other podcasts. I said, I've only done it once. I did it per colleague, friend. And it took me 50, 60, 70 hours. I was doing it all in Bristol board. And you're not using software and you're mapping out all the different possibilities and permutations combinations. combinations and then you made it keep what it can all change.

Yeah. Something that can happen that can throw all of that work out. Oh my gosh, you have to get help. Software has to be used in some way, shape, or form with this. There's no way anybody's going to do what I did. And so I think that's something all of our listeners as they get to that age, recognize that's a huge value add. And it's a mistake not to be getting that service from people.

And to your point, a lot of times we're starting retirement with two spouses. It's also important that we remember that we're often ending retirement with one. And thinking about that possibility is vital to the long-term retirement plan. This isn't something that we think about when we lose a spouse. We need to be more about that long before. And I mentioned to you earlier that I live in White Rock, which I like to call the single woman capital of Canada. It is. It is. It is. Because the demographic leans senior. And so there is enormous number of single widowed women where the planning, if there was any planning done, was planned around the idea that there would be two tax returns forever. And I like to say to clients,

unless you have very specific plans, that's not what's happening. We have to think about that possibility and we have to, particularly when it comes to arse piece and riffs, right? We go from having, being able to share the income tax on those things or maybe a if you've got shared ownership in a corporation, now we're only have one person. How are we optimizing that for the person who's last left standing who now is paying a lot more tax on the same amount of income, doesn't have OAS from the deceased partner,

and has a clod back level of CPP because the survivor incomes only, like how are we building around that? People don't think about it that much. Now, a lot of moving parts. And by the way, you joked about White Rock. I was saying to you off air that my first wealthy barber speech outside of Ontario was in White Rock. And the average age of the crowd was deceased.

And, you know, the book is written for 20 to 45. You know, it's saved 10% et cetera. Pay yourself first. This crowd was too old for riffs. And I was making all of these old people jokes. And of course, they didn't get upset because they couldn't hear me. I mean, it just, no, it was kind of a disaster's first speech. But they were great.

But I think back in that, it's 36 years ago, almost all those people sadly would be gone now. It's just the nature of the beast. But you're right. And all of that, you would laugh with this podcast, how many comments we get from people who are mad at me because I'm not talking enough about income splitting opportunities and other things you can do when you're single. And I have to point out that you can't do income splitting.

And I always say I live alone. Like I don't have a spouse or a common law partner either. It's just not as many options available for you. And you nailed you. You end up paying on the same amount of income. You end up paying a lot more tax. That's the nature of the beast. No, these are all excellent points.

Before we move on to just general financial planning, when you look at some of the other models, let's go to the AUM, the assets under management model. I call it the Carolina model. That's where it first took off in the States. And they're charging, let's say, 80 to 100 basis points. And they're dealing more or less with the affluent, half a million, million, five million, whatever. A lot of those firms are really quite good now.

Yeah. You know, they've really added good, solid financial planning expertise, insurance expertise, and so on and so forth. Do you view them as competitors or how do you think about that end of the industry? I don't view anybody as a competitor. Interesting. But that's because I have outrageous levels of confidence. I like it.

As you should. As you should. But no, I really don't. And as a lot of people who have worked in the industry that I've come across who have been a bit like, oh, she's here to steal my lunch. I'm not. There's so much work that can be done. And it's great. If the best model for a client, and I've run into these, the best model for a client is that they have their financial planning and their investment management and their insurance all in-house, that works the best way for them, I can suss that out in a conversation and say, you know what, I think you actually need to have a different model than the one I work under. I think you're going to struggle.

And then I will refer them out to somebody who I think does a good job because there's no one right model for anyone, just like there's no one financial plan. There's the thing that works for you, and there's probably a model to fit it. Now, I agree with that. And again, it's a good trend that we're seeing that end of the industry also really improving. Like I see some plans from that end of the industry, and they're very well done too. Okay, I'm going to throw a lot of financial planning things at you relatively quickly. We can chat about them. I'm going to throw some of my opinions at you. And then you, front line, you're dealing with clients all the time.

Tell me what you think. So I don't think people in Canada take their executor choice seriously enough. you've hit the nail on the head right there. Also, I am currently an executor. Oh, don't do it. I say no. I say no to everybody who asked me. Yeah, well, this is family. So. I say no. No, I do. I say don't die because I'm not doing it. Right. Yeah. There are some situations where, yeah, this particular one, it is actually a very small estate. And I did the planning for it. And I knew what was going to be involved. It's still.

I am someone who's an expert in this industry. I know the ins and outs. I know the people to talk to you. I know the back doors to get into the financial institution. So I don't have to wait at the branch. I know all of these things. You know what? It's still a lot of work.

And I'm not excited about it. And it's very hard to do when you're experiencing grief as I absolutely am right now. And this is the worst thing that you can do to someone. This is not an honor. It's mean. I say the same thing. It's a burden. And, you know, you made an important point.

By the way, I wouldn't have joked. I didn't realize you were actually acting as the executor. I thought you meant have been appointed. So I'm sorry for your loss. We'll edit all that out when I sound like a bad person there. That will, I assure you, that will not be going on air because I sounded horrible. Again, I thought you made you been appointed, not you were acting. I would not have made a joke.

But when you do it again, it's a lot of work. When people are reviewing their will, and I've always said you should review your will every couple of years, not every five, like the other experts say, because change happens so frequently. It could be a charity involvement, could be a step. So it could be so many different things. But when you review your will, review your executor choice. Often those relationships change over time too, and you realize that person doesn't live close enough. Or they've had a falling out with key people involved in this process, etc. Or they have U.S. tax filings to do.

Oh, can you imagine? Run into that. It happens to hold the time. It does. That's so commonplace. And I live in Sarnia. And so you have a lot of people who work across the border and all the U.S. tax filings come into play. I mean, this can be very tricky stuff.

What do you think about corporate executors for the more complicated, larger estate? Yeah, hard yes. First of all, like, let's give them that work. The tough thing is that there's not a lot of independent corporate executors in Canada and just understanding what that system looks like. And even if they aren't independent, do they actually have all the structures that you want to have in place? There's a lot of regulation around it. But understanding the structure of the corporate executor's base is also important.

like most of them are owned by large financial institutions. And even though they definitely hold out that they keep those two things separate, I will say that people have definitely told me that they do have a mandate to bring the money in house. So you want to be thoughtful about the relationships between your corporate trustee and the financial institution that they work for. Having said that, I'd much rather they did it than me. Yeah, no, I agree with you, especially on the tricky ones. I mean, come on.

some of these are amazingly complex and tremendous amounts of work. In fact, in some instances, even when I see the fees of the corporate executors charging, I'm not sure how they're making much money because the amount of time involvement to doing all of those things are really kind of odd. All right. Second thing I'm going to throw at you, people on the estate planning front now have gone loony tunes with joint accounts and just willy-nilly adding people's names on the joint front. Thoughts? I hate it. No, so do I. I find it really frustrating. And it's gotten much worse in the last five to ten years. And so I think some people have just so up against it and don't want to pay probate under any circumstances, don't understand all the ramifications here. Can you walk us through some of the downsides? Why wouldn't you just want to stick somebody's name on as a joint owner?

So first of all, probate, as much as everybody hates it, is generally actually pretty low. Agree. Right? Like in BC, it's about 1.4%. It's higher in Ontario. Just higher, not much higher. A little bit. But like, not a lot. So this isn't a big, the biggest number you're dealing with. The biggest number you're dealing with is tax. So solve that before you start worrying about probate.

Next thing is recognizing who you're putting on as joy. I can see why we would put a spouse on. That would probably make a lot of sense. I also think spouses do you need to have some separate accounts for independence, but that's a different question. But just adding, don't add you kids. So many problems here. I often see this with people talking about their principal,

because maybe that's the only thing that's going to get probated on last death. Oh, I'm just going to add my kid here. Don't do that. A couple of real ones. One, during your lifetime, if that person has ownership of your property, that means they have to sign off on everything that you want to do with it. And a very real example from many decades ago was a client of mine who had added her child to her home before I met her. And that child refused to let her sell that home because that was his and inheritance. But she wanted to sell it because she wanted to live her life. You don't know how people are going to behave. Please don't get someone control over your life. Also, the principal residence exemption that gives you zero tax from when you sold it till the end of your life or whatever, that zero tax doesn't apply if the other person, at least for their portion, if they have a principal residence somewhere else. So from the point that you add them until you die or the property is sold, there's capital gain accruing and that is taxable. So now we're paying more tax to avoid very small probate. That's super dumb. So between control and taxes and even the possibility that the

probate court could look at what you did and say, they weren't a real owner. In fact, that was a trust agreement. That person was holding that share of your asset in trust for your final estate and we're bringing it back into probate anyways. No, all of that. And I like the expression. super dumb. No, I got, I think that's, that sounds like something I would say, super dumb. I'm going to use that. And you don't even mention the fact that now you've got creditor challenges if they run into difficulties. Marital breakdown. Marital breakdown, which is a big one. That's one that's jumped up and bitten people who have actually pulled this off. And I love the fact that you're being pretty aggressive here and saying more or less hard no. Okay, we're in agreement on that one as well.

I would argue wills are incredibly important. You've got to have a will. I say that. that almost every podcast. But powers of attorney are just as important, maybe more so. Now that I'm getting old, a lot of my friends are even a little bit older than I am, hard to believe. Oh my gosh, this is jumping up and getting people over and over again. The carelessness on this front is kind of wacky. Thoughts. A lot of people believe that their spouse automatically has the right to take over their financial situation. They do not. So if you experience incapacity and you were joint on the house with your spouse and your spouse is, oh, I need to put you in a home for care. I need to sell the house to do that. It's incredibly difficult to make that happen if they haven't been appointed

as you're under power of attorney. On top of that, there's just every aspect of it. So the individual that I'm now acting as executor for, I was also his power of attorney. And he was in the hospital. He's actually not incapable, but he wasn't capable of paying bills, picking up his mail, getting all of these pieces done. Somebody has to do that. And with power of attorney, I could do that. Otherwise, everybody else, these financial institutions and the post office that I'm walking into are like, who's this lady? She doesn't look like a henry. This isn't going to work out.

Like, just the basics of the ability to keep your lights on in your house and collect your mail, it's so important. So we need that. Most of us are going to experience the need for that kind of help, whether we have mental or physical incapacity in our lives before we die. And we don't have to be old to experience it. Absolutely. Had clients who have had major head trauma in their 30s who are not able to take. care of their own financial situation and didn't have power of attorney in place. And so then we have to apply to the courts.

We have to have them declared mentally incapable, which on its own is actually really hard to do. And a lot of people aren't willing to do it. And very time consuming. Oh, and so expensive. Yeah. But you're looking at 10 grand, easy. Yeah, for sure.

You know what? I love these answers because they're all perfectly consistent with what I think. Oh, perfect. Yeah. This is good. Keep going. Keep going. Your honor.

You're honorable. Okay. I've got a tricky one for you. Okay. You get powers of attorney in place. They're properly done. You've done the things that you teach, the person's dot of the eyes crossed the T's. It's tough sometimes to get some of the financial institutions to accept them.

You take the power of attorney in. In the last 10 years, they've really gone, well, it's not enough. I need more. How can you give them more? What is happening here and how do we avoid this kind of constant problem we're running into? Well, they're trying to cover their own butts with life. For sure. understandably. So there's some of that. But what I would, what I often recommend is once you've created a power of attorney document and please have a backup, don't just name one person.

A great always got to have a contention for sure. Same with executor. Yes. But take the document in while you are capable to your financial institutions, introduce your person. This is my person. What things do you think that you're going to need when this comes up? Get, bring in their documents. It's still not going to. going to totally work all the time because it doesn't mean that information's passed down. But that is one way to help make it happen. But I think just recognize for the person playing the role of the attorney or the executor, just know that you were going to run into endless bureaucracy and an enormous amount of incompetence. Oh, and please don't keep these documents in your safety deposit box. Because getting at the safety deposit box without them is very difficult, if not impossible. Right.

So I had to walk this through with a family member of mine. And they're like, oh, I'm going to keep it in the safety deposit box. I'm like, oh, how am I going to get into that? And they're like, oh, you're my power of attorney. I'm like, well, power of a room document that proves that. They're like, oh, in the safety deposit box. I'm like, do you see the problem? What about this idea you're saying, again, a little bit more in the States?

People are appointing the powers of attorney and then they're filming it. So they're getting a film, them signing and the persons beside them, et cetera. And then they're giving them the film. I mean, that makes some sense to me because then you can actually show there now with AI, I guess people could say it mocked it up, et cetera. but I think that's better than nothing. Yes. Because the problem I brought up about the institution saying, no, that's not enough

and really being resistant to accept it just as the paper, that's becoming a fairly significant issue. It's the same sort of thing that I always say to people about, if you're going to appoint as your representative for health things, you've got to find somebody pushy. So find someone who's going to walk in and be very aggressive and say, hard no, unacceptable. I want to speak to your manager.

Do you need me to call a lawyer? All of the listeners have to take that advice to heart. I just went through this with a friend of mine in Sarnia and I told him that exact thing. You can make this happen, but you have to take on a different personality. You have to get much more aggressive. You have to get pushy. He did it and it worked. And so you have to take that on.

Speaking of qualities, you look for people, I've always said executors have to be quite thick-skinned. Nobody ever talks about that because they're going to put up with often some criticism and some second-guessing from other people. but the power of attorney for personal care has to be quite decisive. Yes. They're often faced with relatively quick decisions in a hospital environment, for example. If they're a bit wishy-washy or like to think things through from every angle, that's not ideal. No, and what would be great, too, is, okay, you do the paperwork and the legal stuff. Fantastic. And it says all the things you wanted to say.

Also, most people don't read legal documents, even the person you've appointed. Write them a letter. attach it to the document. Say what you want. Say what you need. Really put it loud under every circumstance. So a lot of times when I work with physicians, their documents are so incredibly severe about this. Put me out of my misery immediately. No holds bars under every circumstance. They've got it written and I'm like, okay, great. Also, talk to the person about it. Say it in front of their face. Repeat it to them at least once a year and make sure you've got that written note that says, I'm like, I'm like, okay, great. Also, talk to the person about it. Say it in front of their face. Repeat it to them at least once a year and make sure you've got that written note that says, I'm I am not kidding. This is all great advice. Now, you're going to laugh when I say this, but this is 100% true. My dad's instructions us are, never let me die. Resuscitate me at all times.

No matter how bad I am, do not let me go. That's my dad's, I'm not even kidding. This is what he's mean. He said, because maybe they'll figure out a cure later. Maybe they'll. What's a cryogenic reader? Oh, my gosh. Back in the holidays season, he says, Dave, you've been a great son.

The grandkids have been so great. I'm going to miss all of you when you die. This guy thinks he's going indefinitely. Oh, yeah, he's a character for sure. Okay, next one. I think RSPs are taking way too much heat. In fact, the number of people out there spreading misinformation about RSP in the last five years has been one of my biggest annoyances in all the years I've been out there.

And now you've got a lot of people in their 30 saying, I'm not getting involved in the RSP because my dad told me it's way too heavily taxed and I take it out, etc. And they're in the exact situation. would it would be better if they could only go RSP or TFSA to go RSP. How did all this happen and do you agree? I think RSP are the easiest magical tax efficient account that we have. People are always coming to me looking for the next best fancy tax strategy.

And I'm like, yeah, so RSP is like, oh, but I thought we, I'm like, that's the first place we go. It's so easy. It's so magic. It's an excellent tool. Where I think people get disconnected with it is that there's all. these different rules and they don't understand it and they're using it in ways that are how it's intended to be used. So I often say to people is your RSP is a pension. Imagine if your employer provided you with a pension, which is not available for lots of people. Oh, gosh, a pension would

be great. I'm like, yeah, wouldn't that? You know what the new thing is about a pension is when you contribute to it, you get a tax deduction. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's fantastic. And then it grows. No taxes, Until you start taking the money out. Yeah, that's great. And then when you take the money out, it's taxed. Amazing. That makes sense. It's the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. And usually at a lower rate, there's, again, a misconception out there that you're going to bring it out into a higher tax bracket. It certainly can happen theoretically. But like good for you, honestly. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's like I talked about my buddy in the podcast who said, should I be doing one of those RSP meltdowns?

I've got $23 million in my RSP. And he was about 68. And I said, I don't think there's going to a lot you're going to be able to do here. or two of big tax on that RSP. We can look at it. I can maybe help you and send you to somebody, but I don't think so. So everything you're saying about the RSPs,

totally agree with. And again, I think that, yeah, they are. And again, are they perfect? No.

You could bring it out and get hit with the OAS clawback, which has to be added to your effective tax rate. But for most people, most of the time, they're an outstanding vehicle and all of this negative information's hurting a lot of people because they're buying into it.

Next one, disability insurance, you know, still underrated in Canada, still not used by enough people. Even a lot of my friends, when they're younger, I would tell them, I'll take the risk, or it's too expensive, et cetera. Why haven't we been able to get through in that front? That's question number one.

And number two, do you agree with the wealthy barber update when I say a lot of the plans that your employer gives you aren't good enough? Yes. To number two. Absolutely. They're really complicated. This is part of the problem. They're super complicated.

They're difficult to understand. Finding somebody who actually understand. them in the professions is also hard because also it doesn't pay very well. Yeah. Right? It's compensation side of things. So there isn't a lot of incentive for professionals necessarily to recommend disability insurance because it's really hard to design. It's very complex to put together.

It's more difficult to underwrite on the insurance side than life insurance and they don't get paid as much. So you can see why there's no incentive built for professionals to deal with this. I think if you are working and you need to work to live your life, disability is possibly the most important insurance that you need to take care of. You take care of that first and foremost. Because your number one asset, your earning power. I mean, it's in every book, but it's true. There's a reason it's in every book. The likelihood that you're going to experience a disability before retirement is much higher than the likelihood that you're going to experience a death.

So we need to chuck as much money as we could reasonably go forward into high quality disability insurance. But I think the reasons why people don't implement it is, first of all, there's nobody pushing it in their faces because there's no incentive for professionals to do that necessarily from any walk. And again, it's really complicated. Oh, OK, I've got a disability insurance. And it comes with 16 different riders and how much do I get? And what's the waiting period? And definitions, the definitions are complex too. Yeah.

And unfortunately, very important. Yes. And it looks really expensive. Oh, let's say you're so and you're 40 years old and you're. disability insurance is going to cost $238 a month, but your life insurance for your term 10 is going to cost $57. This now seems unfair because I think they're the same thing, but they're not. And the monthly premium that I'm paying on my privately owned disability insurance until my age 65

actually stays the same throughout my life. And so there's, it's hard to understand. It's also hard to imagine yourself disabled. That's never going to happen to me. Great. I'm a model. And, you know. No, that's very true.

That's actually a really good point. Yeah. It's hard to imagine and have empathy for that version of myself that I hope never exist. And then to pay money towards that person. Between that and wills, it's the same thing. And I like to say to clients, let's talk about Murphy's law. If anything can, go wrong, it well. So if you put time, energy, and money into these possibilities, it'll probably never happen.

This is your key to immortality, insurance and wealth. No, I'm with you in all of this. I mean, I think disability insurance is underused. I can't believe how many successful entrepreneurs you meet who have no disability insurance at all. And the risk to them is so much higher than almost anybody else. You're not paying into like the basics of EI. You are, you know, putting everything on the line for your business. You probably leverage to the health if you own a home.

Like, you've got nothing. And you're like, oh, no, disability insurance. That seems like a bad idea. Okay. Next one. Paying off a mortgage. So, I mean, one of the most popular questions when you're the wealthy barber and you're at an airport is, should I get involved my TFSA or pay off my mortgage? And there's no perfect answer because, of course, you're trying to project future returns.

And everybody's risk tolerance level has to be taken into account. But when you had mortgage rates very low, 2 and 3%, now even 4ish, you can make a compelling argument that investing for long term growth, let's say through ETFs, whatever, especially in the TFSA may be the better move. But paying off your mortgage reduces stress, freeze up cash full, builds pride and ownership. You can't screw it up. The after tax rate of return is reasonable. Some people sleep better at night. So the answer is different for everybody. Agreed?

Oh, so different. Yes. There's never any one right answer for anything. And that's what's so hard and frustrating for people when they're talking to people like me. Like I was saying, you know, we're FPAC, we should make T-shirts that just say it depends. Because it's just our answer because it does depend on you. There are people that I work with who maintain mortgages on their homes, pass retirement, and it's the right thing for them.

Absolutely. This is perfect. This is the best thing they could be doing because of how they've designed their lives and how they want things to work out. And there are other people where we're paying off mortgage much, much earlier, and that works for them. There's no one right answer. And even if we tried to make it about math, it's still not one right answer.

So it's got to be the right thing for you. I agree. You know, the best example I've seen to that was years ago. I was talking a very sharp person in the financial planning. I mean, more or less that I said the same thing. There's never one right answer, unfortunately, which makes being a writer quite tricky. You have to cover off a number of different scenarios. He said, well, I mean, at least you can always say to people your first move is to pay off your credit

card debt. And I said to him, what if you have a matching at work with your group RSP and you put a dollar and they match with a dollar? And he went, oh, yeah, good point. Like, even that one is not that straightforward because I would definitely go to matching before I went paying out of the credit card. What? So, yeah, there's always options you have to look at and getting a good feel for all of this.

Okay, let's go to the family enterprise quickly. I mentioned how much I love speaking for that group. I don't know if you knew I was in the M&A space for quite a while and had an advisory firm. You're seeing fewer second and third generations want to take on the family business than you did when I grew up 40, 50 years ago, especially in Kitchen of Waterloo, which was family business capital, quite literally. It was no one as being the family business capital. Why do you think that is? I'm going to give you one theory before I let you answer. I laugh now.

A lot of these people don't go to sell their businesses until they're 78. They stay with them forever. And then they say, well, does your son want to? The son's 53. And he's going, I want to retire soon too. I don't want to take it over at this age. And the daughter's saying the same thing. I don't want to get involved.

Are you seeing fewer people want to take over family businesses? Absolutely. And definitely for exactly what you're talking about. We don't see the same things happening age-wise. We see people staying in businesses as owners. and operators much longer than we used to. We also see the younger generations, once you get past Gen X, you get everybody younger than that, they're like,

you know what I want. More than money is a good life. And I love that. But that often means that they're looking at often dad, but also sometimes mom, who gave every ounce of their being to this business. And that person wasn't home to parent. That person didn't have.

fun and they seem stressed out all the time and there's bankruptcies and leveraging the house and that kind of stuff. And they're looking at the life that person led and it was what kind of thinks. That is so true. That is so true. The ups and downs, the all around, the hours. And as you just point out with the bankruptcy, nothing ever goes smoothly. Like it is always ups and downs. There's always big fallbacks. There's always new competitors or technological changes that throw things and a disarray, at least temporarily, just every day is a knife fight when you're an entrepreneur and you're running a business. And you're right, a lot of the younger generation, probably for good reason, want to strike a different work-life balance. They do. Yeah. And the requirement, I think,

particularly for men, they're more active parenting is a big part of what we see with millennials. And that's a wonderful thing. But that also means they're not willing to give that up to run this business the way that dad probably always ran it. And so then maybe I would want to take over that business because maybe I'd like it and it's meaningful to me, but also dad's still around. And his expectation about how I'm going to show up in this business is not how I want to be. And it's just not worth it to navigate that. Having said that, there are a lot of businesses that are passing down to the next generation. I'm seeing a lot of father-to-daughter transitions, which I agree. Yeah, I think that's working like a little bit better because the expectation when you're going across genders tends to be just a little bit lighter regardless of what gender it is it's not so much. That's interesting. Yeah, it's not so much.

You must be like me. They do see that there's a difference. Yeah, that's interesting. You know what else I've seen a little bit lately is the son or the daughter says, I'd like to stay with the business. I enjoy where I'm working the division. I'll even run that division. I don't want to run the whole business. Yeah. And so as it possible, we sell the business and I stay on. And if the person's very good at what they do. Of course the buyer's going to want them to stay on. It also gives them a nice segue to the future and keeps them in touch with the clients, etc. Do you enjoy that work with the family enterprise? I mean, that seems like a lot of fun to me. I love it. It's my favorite. I come from a family business background. I come from entrepreneurial people and I've seen all

the headaches and I've opened my own business and my son has opened a couple businesses of his own and I say it's a hereditary disease. I think I'm the same as you. Both my kids are entrepreneurs. Nobody will hire a Chilton. Yeah. That's basically we've a team. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're all, we're all have to work for ourselves. We can't get employment if we don't. Listen, you've been great. You've been exactly what, by the way, you were portrayed to be. You've got a lot of smarts. You're well-spoken. You like to laugh. I thought all your points were great. We agreed on every single thing, which could concern both of us probably. Yeah. No, that could

be very troubling, actually. I'm going to ask you one more question. What is your all-time favorite finance book? And by the way, I don't mean the wealthy barber. That wasn't a that of. What is your all-time favorite finance book? That's really hard, actually, because I've read so many of them, and they're all lovely in so many different ways. Oh, God. We're not editing any of this out, by the way. We're leaving you hanging in front of the audience. In fact, we might even extend it. How about I tell you the book that I recommend the most in my... Yeah, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. It's called Designing Your Life. Yeah, that's a good book. Yeah. And that I recommended to people at every transition point in their lives, designing your life. Because before we can figure out the money,

before we can figure out anything that we're doing, we really need to figure out ourselves and what we want out of life. And so it's not a finance book, but man, do I find it to be a finance book? I think that was an excellent answer. It took you a long time. Yeah. But when you came through clutch, when you got it, designing your life is a very good book. And I agree with you. Most people should read that book. And not even when they're going through the transition ahead of time. is even better. Kind of having a feel for the way you should be thinking and the way to angle on things, I think that answer was very good.

I do the worksheets every couple of years to just make sure that, you know, the person that I've become, because I'm a different person every couple of years, what does this version of me want now? And how might that change or, you know, adjust the things that I'm doing today? And, oh, okay, now I can see how that falls out in all the different ways. And I think it's just a useful check-in. No, I'm glad I asked that because I think that book will help a lot of our listeners. I said that was the last question, but I'm going to give you one more.

Do you have a pet peeve when you look at people's finances? Like, I've always been up front. I do. I don't judge except for what people spend on cars. That over the years has been the one thing where I've gone, how, based on your situation, can you be spending this much in your family on cars? But for the most part, I don't judge it all. But do you have anything when you see people's finances that kind of throws you a bit?

I think, you know, I honestly don't care what people spend their money. Like, I super don't care. With certain clients. Yeah, with certain clients who can take. the joke. I'm like, hey, you could spend it on heroin for all I care. All I, all that would tell me is we had a certain lifespan expectations. But you know what I'm going to do? We're going to take that as the clip. No context whatsoever. You really recommend heroin. We're going to take the line out where you said, I tell them and if they could take the joke, we're just going to have Julia

Chung came on the show and said, I don't care if you do heroin. End of clip. That's going out. I wouldn't be surprised if that's our number one viral clip in the history of the show. And then I'll come on after, I'll edit myself in and go, I don't know what's up with that woman. Like, but that, that surprised me. I did not see that coming from her. Anyway, go ahead. Finish your answer now. But the thing that bothers me probably the most when I'm looking at someone's financial

situation is where I can really see that tools and structures have been implemented by advisors that were not thought through. I will maybe talk to this client at this point, maybe once or twice, hour and a half, two hours. And I can tell by looking at this corporate structure or these five whole life policies that nobody was thinking about this client and what they really wanted out of their life. Like, I can just see that and it drives me bananas. I agree. I will say something positive. I take a lot of heat from the insurance industry because I'm also, I'm often a little critical. But we're seeing less at least of some of the craziness we saw 20 years ago

with the insurance stuff. I mean, I think the industry has improved. The training has improved. I know a lot of really good people in that field now who are doing an outstanding job. They're great people. It's just annoying to see the bad stuff. If you work in the insurance industry, you know what I mean when I say the bad stuff. It's, there's some terrible things that I sometimes see. And I'm like, you know what? That's not doing the client any favors. It's not doing the industry any favors. We got to stop that nonsense. And it just, it's annoying to unwind as well. No, I agree. Okay. We'll let you go. I know you want to get your heroin and have a good relaxing afternoon. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you.