The Challenge

Dominic and Esther are in their mid-to-late 30’s. He is a successful engineer and she is a well-paid marketing consultant with an I.T. company in Toronto. They have been married for 12 years and have three children, ages 10, 7, and 5. As a working couple with three young children, they barely have time to evaluate their finances. They have very ambitious goals but have never found the time to map out how they will attain them. They have debts spiraling out of control and only save haphazardly. They are considered high-income earners, which puts them in a higher tax bracket, adding to their financial obligations. They know that they need to start saving for retirement beyond saving for their personal goals but they are overwhelmed and don’t know how to start. They knew they needed help but they didn’t trust their bank for unbiased advice, they reached out to us.

The Approach

Before helping the couple to identify how they could accomplish their financial goals, it was important to gain a clear understanding of how they were presently addressing it themselves. By walking them through our 360 Discovery Process, we were able to get a clear picture of their dynamic as a couple, their overall financial situation, and how they arrived there. The Discovery Process identified some key aspects that revealed how they could build on each other’s strengths to create working long-term solutions. Our comprehensive analysis helped them to understand:

• Their current cash flow, which revealed that they were spending 25% more than their monthly earnings
• The amount of taxes they were paying annually and how it was contributing to their cash crunch
• The interest payments on their debts and how that greatly impacted their long-term goals
• Their retirement shortfall and how to restructure their spending and saving patterns in order to catch up, get ahead, and exceed their identified goals

The Challenge

Tony is a young professional who has worked his way up the corporate ladder over the last 11 years. He now earns a six-figure salary and for the first time in his life, he feels that he can really start planning for his future. Tony bought a condo in Richmond Hill a few years ago, and also has some small investments but “nothing substantial”. He would love to invest in more properties to generate additional income. He would also like to get a second master’s degree, get married within the next few years, and begin to travel. Unsure of how to accomplish all his goals, he began his search for a financial planner. We were one of the three financial planners he interviewed.

The Approach

We could tell from our first meeting that Tony was a very bright and ambitious man. He had many dreams but less structure. During our first meeting, we performed an exercise that allowed him to get all of his thoughts down in writing, identify What Really Matters and prioritize his goals and objectives. This process also helped us to understand Tony better and how to design a financial plan for him that:

• Identified some of his weaknesses (including disorganization, misplacement of documents) and financial risks he was exposed to
• Addressed each of his goals and broke them down into measurable objectives
• Created attainable action plans and set timelines to achieve them
• Restructured and optimized his existing investments
• Addressed tax planning issues that were identified during the 360 Discovery Process which was costing him money annually