The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #44 — Meagan Balaneski: Opportunities and Challenges in the Financial Planning Industry

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Our guest this episode is Meagan Balaneski — Portfolio Manager and Certified Financial Planner® with Aligned Capital Partners in Vermilion, Alberta. Meagan earned a place on the CFP® President’s List for top exam performance in 2013 and recently won the FPAC 2025 Financial Planning Award. In this conversation, Dave and Meagan explore both the opportunities and challenges shaping the financial planning industry today. They dig into what a great financial plan actually is, why meaningful planning starts with deep, thoughtful questions and the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional Assets Under Management model. Meagan shares her perspective on the growing advice-only movement, fiduciary standards under the new RFP rules and whether products like cash value life insurance are being overused. They also tackle practical topics like disability insurance, insuring children and why there is so much misinformation around RRSPs. Whether you work in financial planning, are seeking advice, or are simply curious about how the industry is evolving, this episode offers a thoughtful, insider look at where financial planning is headed.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Introduction to Meagan Balanski (04:54) Meagan’s Recent Financial Planning Award and Flow State (08:46) What is a Financial Plan?  (10:09) Why Great Financial Planning Starts With Deep Questions (12:29) The Assets Under Management Model (15:30) Challenges of the Advice-Only Model and Implementation Gaps (20:03) Reasons for Concern and Optimism About the Financial Planning Industry (26:25) Fiduciary Responsibility and the New RFP Standard (29:27) Is Cash Value Life Insurance Overused? (34:15) Disability Insurance (37:31) The Pros and Cons of Insurance on Children (41:31) Is the Media Too Harsh on Financial Advisors? (45:08) The Opportunity for Micro-Modular Financial Planning in Canada (48:34) Debunking Misinformation About RRSPs (50:42) 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 down 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 Chiltern, the wealthy barber with the We're up at episode 40-ish or so. The viewers should, keeps growing and growing. The feedback is through the roof. And we appreciate it, by the way.

A lot of people reaching out saying, can you cover this subject? What about this person? Have you taken this angle? Trust me, we love all that. We incorporated it into our guest requests. We try to weave it into the questions. So we are paying a lot of attention.

I never would have believed, by the way, that a Canadian-only financial planning podcast could end up having the success this one has. It shows you there is a thirst for information out there, but also there's a third. thirst for credible guests, trustworthy guests, people who come on and are very competent, know what they're talking about, can add a lot of value. And boy, do we have somebody from that camp today. I said to her off air, there's tremendous pressure on her about to double after this

introduction. I mean, we have a star. We have an industry star. Megan Balaneski, I can't tell you how many people told us to get you on, by the way. It was remarkable. Let me give our audience a little bit of your background because it is quite astonishing. You went through your undergrad for math and did very well there. You have pretty much every designation imaginable. You have the CFP, you have the RFP, you have the CLU, you have the CIM, I think you have the estate practitioners as well. You have it all. A tape. Yeah, you have the TV. It's amazing how you put together all of these designations and done such a wonderful job there. You finished number one in the country. in the CFP course, number one in the country. That's amazing. You also won the most prestigious

award in the entire industry, financial planning industry last year. Like, why are you on our show? We do not deserve this kind of excellence. As an introvert, I asked myself the same thing. And friends of mine who are passionate speakers are like, why are you on this show? I'm like, I don't know. This keeps happening to me. I'm not sure. No, honestly, what a great job you've done. That's a really interesting background. When I went through all your designations, again, the CLU, the CFP, the RFP, etc. It reminded me of a friend of mine, Neil Aitchison. For years, I had known him, and I'd seen him speak many times. He's a gifted speaker. And he always had GtNF under his name on the slide at the front of the room. And he had it on his business carts. And I didn't know what it stood for. And I finally

said to him, GTNF, I've never heard that designation is it for speakers? And he goes, no, no, that's my educational background. And I said, what does it stand for? And he said, grade 10, no French. And he actually had that on his business cards and put on his slide. And he said I was the first person who never asked him what it stood for. It's just accepted as a credentialed. Exactly. So he went forward with that. And then you and I were laughing off there because I was talking to you about your math background and you said your best subject was calculus. And I was telling you that at university, my nickname was truly calculus Dave. That was my real nickname. Yeah, I love that so much. I got no dates. Basically, I just sat at home myself every night. It was

quite pathetic. Now, before we get into the financial. planning. I should also mention to our audience, you are a very talented artist. In fact, in the background right now at your house, I assume you're at your house, are you at your house or office, is art that you put together. And everybody says you're brilliant at that too. Yeah, there's something about flow state that helps me think. So I do sketch throughout conferences, not as a slight to the presenters, but I sketch to engage thinking. And this just comes out. when I'm done. Well, it's beautiful. Now, please tell me you're not also a great athlete. That's just going too far. Yeah. So I, I swim, I dive. I was in a gymnast as a kid. My children are

starting to overtake me, and it does drive me mad. So the competitive spirit is there. Skill set is waning as I get a little bit older. But yeah, I was, I was it. No, good for you. Seriously, before we launch into the questions, I do want to say that winning the top spot in the CFP, and then winning the top spot at the Financial Planning Awards. Those are incredible honors. You're obviously a very intelligent person, but the Financial Planning Award you won, the way they process that,

the way they make that decision, it's really rigorous. This is not taken lightly at all. In fact, I was blown away by how seriously that was taken, how much work is involved on behalf of the judges, and you're up against nothing but the very best. Nobody's going into a competition like that

unless they also are outstanding financial planners. So you should be very proud of that. I was so pleased with how that competition was run. Like it was run with the highest level of standards. It was blind. So you're assigned a competitor ID. And I felt so comfortable being able to put out my best work without worrying about, oh, well, this person knows me by my first names.

They know my dietary habits. Like, how are they going to think about this? I absolutely appreciated the competition. It was hard. And it gave me a lot of room to really see what my potential could be. Where can I take this? How far can I go? And I wouldn't have done that if it was not as rigorous as it was.

I just can't say enough about how that competition was run. It is a phenomenal process. No, I agree. And we'll talk more about those governing bodies involved in that in a few moments and how I think they continue to evolve and improve and add tremendous value to the industry. you, but I want to give you a little credit before I do that. I watched your acceptance speech. That's how geeky I am and what a social loser I am. I'm watching acceptance speeches from financial planning conferences. I mean, really, you can see why I sit alone a lot. But it was wonderful.

It was wonderful. It was very different. You're articulate, you're passionate. It really came through well. One of the things you talked a lot about, you referenced a few moments ago, flow state. And that's not something people normally associate with the world of financial plans. planning. Expand on that a little bit for us. So flow state is this concept of you have overthinking on one side where you're completely within your brain and your analytical. Flow state is where you just embrace the experience for what it is. You are doing your best job for the love of the job and in that you lose track of time. You're so excited and the next inspiration just keeps coming and you could spend your life there. But it's so organic and so natural.

One of the consequences is you kind of wake up from it and have no idea what you've done, no idea what you said in a speech or what, like, what breaststrokes you use. It's just this pure embracing of creative energy and your highest ethical self. Like you're just pure within the moment. I think listening to you in that speech and seeing the kind of success you've had, I think your unique combination of having an analytical mind, but also being very creative and very passionate and bringing a lot. Yeah, so I think when I look at you, you're an unusual individual, and you're bringing all of those

skills, left mind, right mind to use the old-fashioned terminology, although I don't think accurate, if you're accurate anymore, you're bringing them all together. And that's one of the reasons that these plans are so, so good. Yeah, I appreciate that. I used to have a struggle being the outside of the outcast, the guy at home sitting there doing calculus, just being like, this is delightful. But now I've come around and stopped worrying about the external validation as much. and really embraced. This is who I am. This is what I can do. Like it, don't like it. And it might be unusual, but now I stand by that as, you know, I'm not willing to change. I'm not willing to lower who I am to fit somebody else's box. I'm not meant to fit the mold. I will break it and it'll be

colorful and beautiful. But I think when I listen to you that day and I listen to you now, you know, obviously you have the technical background, look at your designations, but it's very holistic the way you approach this. It's very human. You have empathy for the client. You see where they're trying to go. If it's the wrong path, I think you would be the kind of person that would speak up and say, hey, I'm not sure that's the right way to go. But in general, you can see that you're really listening to their wishes and their desires. From your perspective, what is a financial plan? A financial plan is the realizations of one's effort and self so that you can get some insight into, the opportunities, the drawbacks, the consequences, and the person that you will become so that you can make a choice now that will help guide you along that path. So the way I do planning, I don't ever just do one solve. I've set different pathways in motion. I talk about financial hedonism and scarcity mindset, and I build plans for that, and then I do a syphrosine contentment pathway, so that the person can understand, realize who they are, realize who they are, realize who they are

coming and make that choice for themselves. So I think a plan is a presentment of your future self. It's the classic Christmas Carol, right? Here's the ghost of Christmas future. And allow people the choice and the opportunity to become who they've been destined to be. And how does the process play out? So I'm the client. I come and see you. I would think that listening to that answer, it must be a fairly rigorous interview process. You must really get to know the people, just be on their math, but know what their dreams, their hopes, their goals, their background even is because it colors their judgment to some extent. How do you walk them through all of this? Yeah, I do a lot of provoking questions. I like to understand who they are, who their values are, and behind the why. So not just why they're

making these choices, but what happened in their life to bring them to this place where that choice is important to them. So it's time consuming to do a full financial. plan. And I do hope we talk about this later because it is one of my tie-ins to ethics and professionalism and why we have to raise the bar is it takes time to know somebody without thinking about who you are in that engagement. And I would suggest it's easily two hours of asking them provoking questions. It's an organic and dynamic conversation because you have to have questions built along what their responses are. Oh, what is that? That's very interesting tell me more. How did that come? Let's unbox that. Let's unravel that. I don't use those kind of words.

Those are very, I think, patronizing words. Yeah, and therapy like words, yes. But I think that getting to know someone and allowing them the opportunity to express who they are to you, what their fears are, and really just have it out there, because the numbers are super easy. That's the easy part. It's really understanding who someone is and how the goals then fit to their person. Any, goal set, any solve could be suitable. It could meet a suitability standard. It could meet a best interest standard. But it doesn't necessarily connect back to who they are. And if they don't feel connected to the plan, they won't follow the advice. I agree with that completely. That's why I think when you're dealing with a financial planner, you're dealing with an investment advisor, that person's

communication skills are vital to the relationship. Because you have to feel that connection. You have to buy in. To your point, you have to understand the why is behind the what. otherwise you won't implement the plan much less stick with it. So couldn't agree with you more on all of those fronts. You in your case, you run your business assets under management. So for our listeners, that means that the people are bringing the monies there. They're getting the financial planning, the estate planning. All of it is part and parcel to the monies they're charged, whether it's 1% or whatever it is.

You charge on the AUM. I'm sure it's tiered to some extent based on how much they're bringing in. But that means you also take care of the implementation. So you help them to develop the financial plan. plan, but then you go out and make sure they have the proper insurance, that they have the right portfolio built to get where they want to go based on that plan, et cetera. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. We're in a really interesting industry in terms of when you are AUM-based, you get paid regardless of the work you do. And so we do have a tiered structure because it doesn't cost me twice as much time to

manage twice as large of a portfolio. And so there's some economies of scale there. But what we do is we give back in a servicing model with the financial plan and the AUM helps to dictate the level of intensity that that plan is. So whether it's a general projection, whether it's a micromodular or a comprehensive plan. And it's interesting because it's directly related. So when you have somebody with very little assets, typically and not always, they'll have a lower level of complication and lower level of ability to implement. So if you have $5,000, It's not IPP versus trust. It's, okay, well, you only have $5,000 because you're in the early stages of your career.

Let's do TPA for now. We can always roll it to RASP, get the contribution room later. It's a simplified structure. So the AUM basis allows us to not just take that plan, understand the client, know their own movements. So we'll talk about risk tolerance. How do you judge a client's risk tolerance? Part of that is their own understanding of risk. What is medium to them?

You can see their cash flow. You can understand that. You know the phone calls where they're panicking even if they didn't act. So we have that ability to implement and take care of them and give it a frictionless process. So I'm saying to somebody, hey, you've got a non-registered account. There's your lowest capital gain. We're going to roll $7,000 over the calendar year just ticked. And now you're maxed out in your TFC.

And they go, you do you. I trust you. And good. it gets done. Whereas if you tell someone, go and identify your lowest capital gain or, you know, taxes isn't everything. So maybe there's a fund that really needs to be cleared out or a stock that really needs to be cleared out because it's had a great running. Taxes, sometimes take care of themselves. If you don't take care of them and trigger them, you could have a corrective issue there. Yeah. No more gains, no more problem. So when they're asked to go and do that on their own,

now they have several different tasks that they have to go out of their day, not their professional realm and go and implement it and understand the advice and potentially the implementer has different advices. So now the client's at a conflict. What do they choose to do? Sometimes nothing. This is all interesting because, I mean, there's parts of the advice only model. It used to be called the fee only model and I still accidentally call it that, but the advice only model that I find very appealing. And we have some tremendous practitioners in Canada. But your point is, if you go and get the advice only model, you get the plan at several thousand dollars, often extremely well done. and there's no bias built in there.

But then the person has to go, they have to implement it. So they have to either DIY it through one of the platforms out there or they have to go to another person, another advisor. And as you say, they may get contradictory advice. And often the execution breaks down. How do we solve that problem with the advice only business? In the states, I was mentioned to you off air, that you're seeing more people in the advice only business partnering

with different people out there who do the implementation, people they trust, people they know will honor the plan, but they're not taking a kickback, they're not getting a referral fee, they're able to look the client in the eye and saying, this is remaining completely unbiased, I'm earning nothing from sending you on to these people. Do you think we'll see more of that in Canada with that model?

You know, I really hope so. I think when I started in the industry, I found a lot of advice that's very combative, very territorial. And so the practice that we have now, my business partners at CFA, he can do all of the money things to that. the highest level of money stuff.

We also have a full-time insurance advisor on staff who gets paid salary. There's no tie into this bias issue of compensation. So we have this connected ability to implement and to plan, whether we're leading with the plan or whether someone transfers in because they need to get out of their other. We can adapt it. And it's a very mobile environment. But what I worry about is the demographic capacity. So we have a lot of advisors who are going to be.

retiring their clients or state planning their clients at the exact same time that they're retiring themselves and estate planning themselves. Agree. And so one of the things that we need to consider is that person able to have that advisor, able to have the lifestyle that they want to have because there's not really a halfway you can do this, not effectively and not for everybody. You can, I knew a guy in the UK who had his 10 clients and he was just waiting until they died off one at a time.

but he engaged with them. They were everything. He was everything to them. So you could stage down that way. But if you don't become part of a team, you're missing out on some of the aspects of the industry that maybe are just beyond your reach from a time capacity point of view

and suffering the consequences of being mediocre through it. And I would say even not just time, but even expertise. When you get up to the complicated sets, it's tougher for even someone with all of your designations, even all of your training, to be on top of every aspect of all of this. I've admitted many times, all the webinars.

When I used to help people out 30 and 40 years ago, I was very at front. I did not understand the cross-border issues at all. It's just one area. I stayed away from it. Like my friends would ask me and I would, yeah, and I would say I'll probably give you a wrong answer. It's like no one person can be an expert in all of it. You mentioned earlier having an insurance specialist on board. I'm a big believer in that because there's some complicated things that insurance can be,

used for and some mistakes that can be made. You want somebody who knows that and lives at 40, 50 hours a week. So you and I are on the same page. It's tough for one person to do it all. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Should you want to? So the identity of who you are, I identify if it's a financial planner. I'm portfolio manager licensed on the zero side. I'm insurance licensed on the insurance side. That's not who I am. And so for me to be able to dedicate myself to the things I enjoy the most, I need other people around me of equal levels of trust and what would you say, like your vibe connects and their experts in their way. I trust them completely.

And that's how I can do my best job is because I don't have to worry about those other day-to-day factors that are necessary for the plan to really come through to fruition. Yeah, I agree. And so tying that response back to the question about the advice-only industry, I think you are going to see them partnering with more or more. more people on the implementation run. People they trust to use your word, people they vibe with. Because again, the flaw is we're not always getting the execution of these very well done

plants. People check that box and then they move on and they don't put it into play or even worse. They go to somebody who doesn't follow along and it gets off track, et cetera. So it'll be interesting to watch how all that plays out. When you look at the industry right now, what are your concerns? So from a consumer's perspective, we just have the average people listing out there, all age groups, What should they be worried about and what should they be pleased with as the financial planning industry is evolving right now? My honest concern is that we may not be working fast enough or hard enough to self-regulate.

And in the absence of grassroots, advisor-led, SRO style, this is what we stand for. People get hurt. And when enough people get hurt, somebody is going to step in, government level, and restrict. And the issue is that regulations are built for the lowest common denominator. They decide what could go wrong and they create rules about it. Whereas in a more organic industry, when you have a higher level standard to the individual, then it's a lot less burdensome regulatory-wise. The consumer has a higher level of trust because they can recognize what you're capable of. they can recognize what you do, where you hang your hat.

I have so many designations that somebody seeing them wouldn't be able to describe me. So we need to be able to build it. So when somebody recognizes that designation, they know not only what that person's educational background is, but what services they have and what ethical standard they adhere themselves to. My honest fear, I'm honestly concerned about this. So I turned 40 in about a month. I've got 35 years left to go, not all of it full time, and I'm not sure that I'll see this come in time to rest back into trust with my own profession.

If we don't step up and start actually carving out as an industry, this is who we are, we're going to end up with regulatory oversight that doesn't come from the advisor standard, doesn't meet the client goals. It's based on pain and the absence of pain. And when you are just trying to get the absence of pain, you get mediocrity. When you're trying to say, what can we build, who can we become? That's where you become a true profession. So that's my fear.

The other side of the question was not fear. What am I optimistic about potentially was the word? I love how many small grassroots are coming together to talk about this. So I'll give a shout out to my buddies at FPAC. they have junior advisors, they have experienced advisors, they come together and they are saying, how do we have this conversation and work towards building this better profession? You give a shout out to FB Canada. They have this educational standard that they've created to say, this is what we do,

and now you can call yourself a financial planner. And then I know that we'll talk later about the IEP, the Institute of Advanced Financial Planners, trying to say this is the standard of somebody who acts as a planner in their vocation. So that differentiator from the other organizations or this trifecta coming together. I'm very optimistic about the collaboration within the organizations and also the organic nature of it. It's advisor-led. You have to read one single F-PAC post. You know it's for the benefit of the clients.

that it's that there's a chance for us. There's a chance for us to build a profession to what it needs to be. And it's a bit of a shakeup from how industries are normally built. But I think we can do it. And so that's the optimism there. I think we can do it if we try. I share that optimism because you've come into a group of leaders right now. You mentioned FP, Financial Planning Association of Canada, the IEP, etc.

You've got, there's always been good people. involved in those organizations. And they tend to gravitate to the top because by nature they're very passionate about the subject, about the career, about the industry. But geez, right now you've got a lot of good people. People who are great communicators, people who want to help others, the connection, I think social media and obviously be able to reach out the way we can nowadays has help. But I'm getting to know a lot of them personally.

I'm amazed at their knowledge levels, number one. Like, it's crazy how smart a lot of these people are, how on top of every aspect of financial planning and investing they are. but also their willingness to share with others. If you're looking for help as you enter this industry and you want to become a very good financial planner, somebody who adds value to her client's lives, to his client's lives, you can do it.

The education is there and the people are there to help. It's your responsibility to get involved in these different organizations. And I don't mean register for them. I mean fully involved. Nothing but good things will happen. All we need is the infrastructure to support it and proof that it works. And that's everything. You have the people, you have the moment in time where regulation is, generally speaking, non-existent for financial planning.

And you have the passionate leaders who can take it to where it needs to go. We just need the infrastructure and that we can declare ourselves a profession and a success. And consumers will know what they're getting, the reduction of charlatanism or the feed-based guys. A lot of them are the smartest guys or what we don't say fee only, advice only guys. but they are completely outside of any regulatory body right now. So you get such a risk of people who aren't to that level. Or you get this idea that financial planning's value, I think, is in its moment. Like people recognize the value of planners.

They seek a planner. But now we get this. Okay, well, if I call myself a planner, which I'm entitled to do, I can use it as a sales tool to increase my AUM side because that's how I get paid. So it's this obscure backwards cycle where the people who are at the top of the industry and pushing the hardest to make this an industry actually have a lower opportunity for compensation in a lot of ways than someone who's pushing the sales aspect. Absolutely. If we have the infrastructure and the trust, then consumers can vote with their wallet. Right now it's muddy. It is.

We've got to do a better job of teaching the consumer what the different designations mean, what the different places. players, roles are, etc. Feduciary responsibility. Talk to me a little bit about what does that mean? Why should my listeners care? And where is all that headed with the various components, the various designations you see in the industry right now? Yeah, absolutely.

So fiduciary standard is a legal term that is recognized as working for the client's self, almost as an agent for the client. So not only are you working in their best interests, you are working exclusively in their interests. So an example would be that if you had a best interest standard, you would be beholden to choosing the right option within this sandbox. If you have a fiduciary standard, you recognize that there's actually a tax problem. You're here to solve an investment situation. There's a tax problem.

And so you are compelled to recognize that issue and either bring in the professionals, just notify the clients or solve it yourself if it's able to be solved as a bigger part of the experience. So we're talking about the goals base and how does that connect to who the person is. Working in the client's best interests is typically defined as make the most money for the lowest amount of risk. Where that actually might not connect to who they are, maybe they don't want to work as long. Maybe they actually want to take a little bit of time off and maybe they want to give back to charitable organizations early on. It's a higher standard from the client's perspective and it's very, very specific. and detailed. Now in the industry, we have this disclosure of I'm compensated by AUM or on the insurance side, I'm compensated by the insurance company. A fiduciary standard goes forward and it says,

and this is about how much that I would anticipate that this product would pay my firm. So the fiduciary standard is tied to, and this is our first year for 2026, the IAFP, says that professional registered financial planners, RFPs, must attest being a fiduciary. And what that says is it follows me and my principles is a person. So in the CFA world, the CFA doesn't necessarily have a fiduciary standard as part of their designation. It is common law that says that when you act in a discretionary capacity, you are fiduciary to that client. And I think most CFAs, if not every CFA have ever met, embodies it. They embody that higher level of ethics and it comes throughout. But it doesn't necessarily have a standard in law that if they're doing insurance,

it doesn't mandate it. Whereas if you follow the designation and you say this is a fiduciary standard, now that's everything that you're doing. So that's following the person and not necessarily the role in the process. And so that started this year. Yeah, it was a work in progress, I believe, for the better part of 2025, if not before that. And finally, the renewals for 2026 when you renew your professional designation, you must attest to abiding by a fiduciary standard.

No, I love it. All right, let's move on to some specific financial planning talk. We mentioned insurance, and you talked about how tricky it is. I've said in the podcast a few times that I've been in arguments where two actuaries who were involved in a product development were arguing about how it worked. That's happened twice in my career. That tells you how complicated some of these insurance products are and the usage is. What are you seeing in the insurance industry now?

I've seen improvement in the 30 and 40 years I've been out there, but I still think a lot of the cash value insurance is overused, is put into spots that I would probably not put it into if I were the one giving the advice. Your thoughts? Yeah, so credits out to the insurance regulators where I think before, back in the DSE days, insurance was really far behind. The amount of oversight, the amount of educational requirements,

even just to become licensed, was pretty far behind. and they have pushed hard as the securities industry has moved into client-focused reform to sister up with that. So credits out to them, an honest effort, still work to do. It is getting better. The education standards are higher. The disclosure to the client because it's not ever that the compensation is a problem. Like back in the DSE days, it's not the DSE was a problem.

It's that it wasn't disclosed to clients. And the restricted, how it pays on the back end was never disclosed. So in the insurance industry, they're really stepping up to do what's right for the client in that way. In terms of the cash value policy, I think what we're seeing right now is enough media recognition that this is a problem. It's often sold to new Canadians. It's often sold to young Canadians. People whose priorities maybe needs to go in a different direction. And there are some cases where it works so well. So we're talking about estate planning. I think predominantly in this case. you've got a situation where there's an unknown tax bill with some variability for rates of return and whatever. You double that up.

You have a charitable foundation as the donation. In Alberta, we get 50% back. So it wipes out the tax bill. Most people actually don't want to wipe out the entire tax bill because they feel like having hospitals is nice. Having roads is nice. I do want to give back to the government in some way of fairness. But I don't need to give back all of it. So either to preserve an asset or to reduce the tax bill, you can use insurance for that.

And sometimes the math works out. You have to die within a certain period of time for it to really work out. And given that's an unknown, there's risks and rewards to it. But if someone's risk tolerance is a more conservative, it's a great option. But often when you consider the cash component being tax deferred in the UL policy and the limitation in terms of product choice, the TFSA would be a, a preferred fit. So everything in our industry is it depends. Like that is the universal answer. It depends. But in terms of cash value policies, there's a place for them. I think disclosure is the issue.

Do you see as though one of the big uses, somebody has a corporation and they have significant retained earnings that they know they're not going to need to draw down on for growth reasons, for example, and that from Canadians' perspective, there can be some significant tax advantages to using different types of policies in that situation? Is that one of the places? Is that one of the places you see them adding value? Yeah, if you don't plan to sell the corporation and have the UL policy trapped as part of it, because that can be complicated.

And we've had that before. You can't wind down the corp because the UL's stuck in there. That's right. So again, it depends. But with the idea of a family corporation, like basically a farm corp fine, the UL policy held inside a family trust,

maybe for a farm corp shares, it bypasses the 21-year deem disposition rules, so there could be some benefit in more advanced planning there. But really, it comes back to the why. What are you trying to do? What is the plan? What is the end goal? Insurance is fancy and it's beautiful. And it is so important that everybody turns their mind to it at one point and has the look and say, where can my plan blow up?

Where can I get completely sidelined? Critical illness, disability, life insurance are the dominant ones in Canada. And so when we're looking at it. at this, it's just a matter of where could things blow up in your pathway to making this journey? And inside the corporation, that's the hardest thing too, because you hear so many statistics about it doesn't matter what planning you do. If the family is not on board with the plan, the corporation dissolved. Like, it's going to blow up. So all the fancy policies in the world can't make your kids talk to each other. There's a place for it. Whether it's inside a

corporation who has significant amounts of retained earnings and you want to get that back out. You've got the capital dividend. That's a huge player there. Decide who you want to become and then math it. Okay, let's go to disability insurance for a second. It's a subject that people tend to gloss over a little bit about. I think many Canadians are not sufficiently covered on the disability insurance front. I'm always amazed when I look at some of my entrepreneur friends how they haven't taken on disability insurance at all in many instances, I would argue a lot of the company plans aren't very good. And then when you look at them in an in-depth way, they probably don't pass muster. What is your thoughts on it? You've got a good

job in the past and kind of shining a light in this area. I think disability insurance is maybe the number one thing that you should look at. When insurance first came around Boyd to London, really cool story, if you're a nut in this case, insurance was based on a full loss. And we were then developing it into a common market area where you have heart attacks killing people. We're now at the point where beyond 80% people survive their first heart attack. That's right. And heart attacks are happening younger and younger. On the news this morning, there was something like 90% of Canadians have at least one risk factor for heart disease.

These are no longer death sentences. These are, they determine your quality of life. And often a disability policy will allow you. the time and space you need to recover. And if you have like a partial disability or a residual disability, they'll allow you a return to work plan. But what happens is when someone's disabled their mindset shifts and they start to recognize their priorities.

So you work, you work, you work, you work, you work, because we've been told by society that there's this one day where everything will be okay. And instead of enjoying the moment, you're pushing through to get to that point. But the disability happens and mortality becomes front and center. So even though you're pushing through, I'll use cancer as an example, I'll use heart attack, stroke, coronary artery bypass. It's becoming commonplace for people to take at least 90 days off work due to a medical incident. It's almost to the point where you can expect this to happen for you. In 2009, I got hit by a car.

I was crossing the street, blue car turns left, takes me out, I ragged all, I hit the windshield, I'm waking up on the street and hauling myself to the sidewalk. I was 21. So there is the moment that you don't expect. It doesn't have to, like most disabilities are medical, but it doesn't have to be where all of a sudden you don't know quite where you are and you don't know how you got here and your body hurts and your thinking is gone. And if you don't have disability insurance, you've got nothing. Like there's no income. Income stops. Income is tied to for most professions your ability to work. And disability. insurance directly looks at that compensates for it. You have to place it appropriately because

there's the 85% factor. You can't stack on so much disability insurance that you're better off disabled. And there are definitely return to work incentives for the insurance company. But if you're 21 years old and whatever else could have happened to you, that is a lifetime of unearned income. The need for disability insurance wanes over time. You realize that income and you no longer need to insure it. Whereas the opposite is. true for life insurance or critical illness insurance. Critical illness insurance, I have some of my kids. I know there's been discussion on juvie insurance, juvenile insurance. And if my kids got sick, our family shuts down that day. There is nothing that will prevent us from being at their bedside

in the hospital. Disability insurance isn't kicking in because I'm fine. Yep. And life insurance isn't kicking in because nobody's died. But there is nothing that will stop me from being at my child's bedside two hours away and for potentially months. That's actually a very interesting point. I made the same point in the updated version of the wealthy barber. We all blast buying life insurance on kids. But the one argument I do find compelling is if you happen to lose a child, the worst thing that can happen to anybody by far in life is to lose a child.

Often you need to take time off work and having some money's flow enables that. And so I think that argument, which you don't hear very often, by the way, you hear other arguments. I don't think whole water. but that one actually does make sense, and it's very similar to your argument about the critical insurance on kids. Life insurance on a child,

it assumes a single child's death, but what it doesn't consider is the siblings that are now at home, the mama bear instinct that now realizes I have children to protect and potentially now we're scrapping after school care. I am home with my babies. Interesting, yeah.

If there's a daycare situation, it's done. I am home with my babies because your priorities shift, your mindset shifts, when mortality becomes front and center. We're all invincible until we're not. And that moment happens. It's a catalyst. It's not a slow debilitation.

It's a moment that you realize that you're not invincible. And I think life insurance, I also have life insurance on my kids, not to bury them. This is in case they become uninsurable at some point in the future. They'll always have a basic level for their own families, get their own mortgage, that kind of thing.

I go back and forth on that because that's a very tricky one mathematically, in terms of the odds and priorities and everything else. I can see at least being a reasonable argument compared to the funeral costs, etc. when people buy insurance on kids. Two points of clarity on it. First is we max out our RESPs.

That's priority one for us. In terms of chances and consequences, these kids are going to school. My dad always said to me, I know you had a hard time growing up, but thank God you left. My kids will eventually move out. Right.

The other aspect to that is my son had a tongue tie and this is COVID, right? These are COVID-Bs. So he's taking speech therapy. He's not improving. We go to get him life insurance. He's denied. We cannot prove that he doesn't have a brain tumor. So in the end, COVID lifts. Some person sticks their finger and it's in his mouth. There's a whole situation there. He gets a phrenectomy. So he gets his bottom of his tongue carved back and then just improvement, improvement, improvement, improvement. But you never know at what point. And the boy was four years old. You never know at what point this happens. And so, just for myself, like that's the thing. Average Canadian, not your priority. I sit on the claim side. I cry with people at their kitchen tables. I see this happen. It hits me too hard.

I need to do and to experience the product. Like there's some value in what does this look like? How does a family feel about it experiencing that for myself? I would not suggest it's anybody's top priority. You're making a lot of very interesting points. And again, it shows you the it depends. Like every situation is a little bit different. And obviously psychologically, it's very important to you.

And the argument I've always made is it's not that expensive. And so when you do it, it's not like it's going to wipe out the rest of your plan or anything. Now, I do want to note that you've told us that the exact same year you were hit by a car, got up, didn't know where you were. You're a little bit out of it was the year that you bought a UL policy before maximizing your TFSA. So I think you can put all of that together. And that maybe explains that. behavior. I wonder what the chronological is on that. I can't remember, which I did first.

Yes, I could tell you. I could tell you without even being there. I could tell you. All right. Tell us, what are some of the mistakes that you see? The average person walking through the door, and I know everybody's dramatically different, but the average, what are the mistakes you kind of constantly see and you have to kind of work with with people? The mistakes that you would see is, I think a lot on the psychology side, you have people who have been told fees, fees, fees, index fund, index fund, index fund. They start to look at the advice that they're getting, what they're paying for it, and they think that they can DIY this.

That is not a feeling of the client. These mistakes are industry-based. This is us focusing too much on fees, not the value that you're getting for it. So if an index fund is the right product, that needs to be that the advisor has fully analyzed the index fund, knows which fund is appropriate, knows the underlying holdings, understands the macroeconomic impacts of it, and has selected this. They've done their K-Y-P, know-your product, and they've selected this as appropriate. I think that the mistakes that I see most often are clients who have become jaded by the lack of professionalism in their services, media that's specifically designed to put down advisors.

And not all advisors are created equally, fine, but the absolute attack against qualified advice, expensive advice, like, absolutely. But when we're looking at that and saying that that's the problem, you're scaring people away from understanding their own situation. And the implications of what you don't know, you don't know, become pretty significant. And so my thing that I'm seeing most often is the lack of planning because they can't trust that they know what they're going to receive and what they're going to pay for it. And I think the jadedness of that is appropriate. Like that's, That's where we are in this industry. That's the opportunity.

This is the central focus time where the problem has become so significant and the opportunity to fix it is right. I agree. I didn't necessarily agree when you said the media has been really hard on the advisors. I actually find a lot of the media has been quite fair to the AUM managers, the advice only managers. I think where you see the media attacking, and I think with justification in many instances,

is the people selling just the product. and how often the younger people are going into the bank. I'll give you an example. We're going into an advisor in a location. I don't want to be unfair to just the banks. And they're saying, okay, you should be using such and such a fund. It has an embedded fee of two and a half percent or whatever. It's really going to hurt the returns.

But they don't even ask whether or not do they have credit card debt. They don't even ask whether or not they have a potential dollar-for-dollar match with their group RRSP at work that they're not taking advantage of. And I think we've all seen enough of that. That end of the industry is taking a fair amount of criticism. and now there's some very good people, by the way, in that end of the industry. But broadly, they're taking a lot of criticism. But I think the media lately has been quite fair that the other models can add value.

The argument I hear a lot is that most the AUM shops will only deal with people when they've got a half a million dollars, when they've got a million dollars, and that the rest of us can't kind of get at those well-rounded services from highly qualified people. Do you think that's fair? Listening to what you said about what the media is focused on in terms of this is a lower quality of advice, it's mutual fund sales, I fully agree with that. That is 100% true. What they don't say is, but if you use this high quality professional with these, how do you find a high quality professional? How does the industry or the client base at large know to seek out these designations?

I agree that that's what's being targeted, but it's not clear what the alternative is. Yeah, how to get out of it. I mean, I think a lot of the young people I meet, DIYing are fine. They're buying the index funds. They're doing a little research in RSP versus TFSA, et cetera. are they're reading a few books. But you made a point earlier that as we get a little bit older, things get more complicated. You know, there's often more options.

You've got blended families. Some people have corporations. They've got whole codes. They've got all these cross-border issues can jump up. It's very tough for a person who's also working a full-time job to navigate all of these challenges and where do they balance out? How do they affect each other? They're not in silos without the help of a trained professional.

It's so good. It's so good. This is the part of the industry that we can really embrace. and work on. So as a financial planner, you say, oh, I do a modular plan for this client. Oh, I do a comprehensive plan for this client. There is not much talk about subscription-based, proactive financial planning where you identify an issue. You have all the client data and you laterally plan. You've got a kid turning 15 that has an RESP. What have the contributions been to date? Are they maxing out on their CESG? Let them know. You have a kid turning 17. This is the last year that

they qualify for. Like mine it out. Do it lateral planning. It's automated. It takes a bit of work to bind, but in and out of a week, you can have an entire issue identified who it qualifies for it. You have an instruction package for them of what their next steps to do. You have a strategy paper with their specific details. All of this can be automated out, sent out to the clients. There is such an opportunity for micromodular subscription-based financial planning that I think is

to solve. I think that's where we go. And you mentioned their subscription base in the U.S. And look to them. They're bigger than us. They have more creative engines than us and more abilities to implement. And we've got the fertile ground for this. Somebody could stake their career,

a micromodular subscription-based financial planning, and do extremely well. You don't have to have the exclusive technical knowledge that you require to put in 20 hours for this corporate estate. There's trust involved. comprehensive plan. But this proactive start to do a quick XIR function in Excel to say, this is your age, this is how much you have, this is the rate of return you require to meet your goals, and backtracking from that from your rate of return, we can use FP Canada's project

assumptions guidelines to tell you your asset allocation mix. Make sure you have that or more, or your plans, wouldn't. No, I agree with that. In fact, it's interesting. I met a fellow years and years ago. I don't know if he's still around, but all he did was the disability savings plans. He helped make sure everybody who qualified, understand all the rules and make sure they're investing the money well and so on and so forth. And so I think to your point, you can get segmented in some of these. Now, a lot of them you can't because they all relate to each other. And what you do in one area can ripple effect and over in others in terms of priorities. But no, it's an interesting idea. You know where I am seeing it a bit in Canada now is there

are some people coming up and helping people with retirement income planning. And so where's the best place to get the money from on a tax optimization front. It's been a weakness in the industry. Yeah, in the last 10 years, it's really improved. But 10 years ago, I was on stage saying, holy smokes, most people aren't getting any advice on this front at all, like none. And now it definitely is improving, but there's some specialists coming in there. But no, all of your points are interesting. And it's going to be fun to watch where all of this heads over the next 10 years. Wrap up with one thing. You mentioned the RSP situation, how a lot of people are speaking out against RSP's. I pull my hair out, like to the point that they're really doing a disservice to a lot of

young people. They've turned them off RSP's by arguing, oh, they don't work. Can you pay tax later? They don't understand the basic math. I even had to walk an accountant, by the way, an accountant through all of this and where he was wrong recently. And at the end, to his credit, he went, you're right, okay, that you're absolutely right with all the math you're giving me. But this has picked up a lot of momentum in the last few years and it is frustrating. Yeah, I think when we look at the basic math of it. You always differ to the math after. There's soft factors and there's not. The math suggests there is a minimum amount that everybody should have in taxable income when they retire. You have your basic personal amounts. You have your lowest marginal tax bracket. And you have

things like the pension income tax credit. So if you don't have a pension in a more formal sense, RIF income, not RISP, but a matured RISP qualifies for the pension income tax credit. So the idea would be that you can build up a minimum amount of retirement income that should be taxable. You also have a minimum amount that should be not taxable. You want to buy a new car. TFSA, screams TFSA. But you also need to look at what your taxation is during the contribution years because if it's key, that's pivotal. Yeah. If it's more than what you're going to pay long term, that RSP wins. Take out even like a loan for your vehicle in retirement rather than saving for the TFSA. If you can't get the TFSA, that level because you're gaining six to nine points in spread at the accumulation years.

You sound like Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber. That should scare you. That should scare you. That is the biggest compliment anyone's given me. No, I speak at length about this in the updated version of the book, but also in other podcasts and how frustrated I am because this is not that complicated, by the way. And therefore, I don't know how it's become so confused out there in the public domain. And again, a lot of that's come from people who should know better to be perfectly blunt. I'm normally very diplomatic, but I get a little hot about this particular subject. We've got to wrap up, but we've gone a long time.

You were great. I really enjoyed that. I learned a lot. I like the way you think about all of this. You can see the passion. You can see how much you care for the clients, but also for the industry. That really jumped out at me was how you want, in a big picture way, the industry to keep moving in the right direction.

And the right direction, quite simply, is how best do we help our clients? that everybody wins if we can get everybody on that page. The advisor will win, the planner wins, but of course the client wins. And when the client wins, ultimately, that's what it's all about. So you've been wonderful. I can easily see how you won the awards.

And finish number one in the country, I want to go back to that, by the way. You should be proud of that. That's a big accomplishment. How many people would write a CFP in any one year? I have no idea. Well, we're going to say over six million people wrote the CFP that year. So for you to finish number one, is absolutely incredible.

No, thank you so much for having us. And you, again, I want to remind everybody you painted that beautiful artwork in the background. It's fantastic. Montial Lake, Northern BC, if anyone cares to visit, it is cold. I am the least talented artistic person ever. Do you remember Ben Wicks, the illustrator? Do you remember him? He was huge about 20, 30 years ago before your time.

And he and I toured once together. And he was very famous in Canada. And he said, I can teach anybody to draw. He said, in fact, I wrote a book teaching people to sketch. He worked with me for two hours one night. He said, I can't teach you. He said, I can teach anybody except you. You're a loser.

And I was out again. So Calculus Dave signing off. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on. Hopefully we'll see you again. Thank you so much.