Advice-Only Financial Planning

Who It's For: Those who want professional financial planning and expert guidance but prefer to implement and manage investments themselves, or don't yet have assets for ongoing management.

Pay for expertise, not products. You stay in control of your accounts.

  • Federal pension & benefits planning

  • RRSP, TFSA & tax strategy

  • Retirement income and tax modelling

  • DIY investor plan reviews

  • RSU / stock option planning

What's Included:

COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL PLAN‍ ‍

✓ Complete analysis of your financial situation
✓ Cash flow and budget optimization
✓ Debt management strategies
✓ Investment portfolio recommendations (specific asset allocation)
✓ Retirement income projections and CPP/OAS optimization
✓ Education savings strategies (RESP maximisation)
✓ Tax optimisation recommendations
✓ Insurance needs analysis and policy recommendations
✓ Estate planning guidance and referrals

DETAILED WRITTEN REPORT

✓ Current financial snapshot
✓ Strengths and areas for improvement
✓ Specific, actionable recommendations
✓ Implementation roadmap with prioritized action steps
✓ Projections and scenario analysis
✓ Asset allocation model and specific investment recommendations

PLAN PRESENTATION MEETING

✓ Walk through every recommendation in detail
✓ Explain the reasoning and research behind each strategy
✓ Answer all your questions
✓ Provide clear implementation guidance

IMPLEMENTATION GUIDANCE

✓ Step-by-step instructions for executing recommendations
✓ Account opening guidance (TFSA, RRSP, RESP, non-registered)
✓ Insurance application guidance
✓ Tax planning implementation steps

FOLLOW-UP SUPPORT

✓ One follow-up meeting (60-90 minutes) 3-6 months after plan delivery
✓ Review implementation progress
✓ Answer questions that arose during implementation
✓ Make adjustments if circumstances have changed
✓ Email support during the implementation period

What You Do:

  • Implement the recommendations yourself

  • Open and manage your own investment accounts

  • Execute trades and rebalancing according to the plan

  • Apply for insurance directly with providers

  • Make ongoing financial decisions based on the roadmap

What I Do:

  • Provide a comprehensive financial plan with detailed recommendations

  • Recommend specific investment strategies

  • Calculate insurance needs and recommend policy types

  • Explain everything clearly so you can implement confidently

  • Support you during initial implementation

  • Provide a follow-up check-in to ensure you're on track

Who This Is Perfect For:

1. Conflict of interest in benefit elections

Federal public servants face irreversible decisions. Choices like: survivor benefit elections, commuted value vs. monthly pension, PSHCP coverage in retirement. Nurses face similar high-stakes choices around defined benefit pension elections through HOOPP or CAAT, and group benefits continuation at retirement. A commission-based advisor has a financial incentive to steer both groups toward products (annuities, insurance, segregated funds) that may or may not be the right answer. An advice-only planner has no dog in the fight. The only goal is the right decision for that specific person's numbers.

2. "I have a pension, so I don't need a plan" A dangerous assumption

Both federal employees and nurses often underestimate how complex their retirement income picture actually is. A PS employee with a PSSA pension still needs to coordinate CPP timing, OAS deferral, RRSP/TFSA drawdown sequencing, and the OAS clawback risk. None of which the pension itself handles. Nurses retiring from a hospital with a HOOPP pension face the exact same layering problem. Advice-only planning is ideal here because there's no product to sell. The value is entirely in the modelling, the sequencing, and surfacing decisions the client didn't know they needed to make.

3. The DIY gap: competent but missing the blind spots

Many public servants and nurses are financially literate, follow their own investments, and don't want to hand over their portfolio to someone else. But they have large, complex benefit systems surrounding them that generic financial content doesn't address. A PS employee can research ETF investing all day and still not know that their pension adjustment is quietly limiting their RRSP room, or that retiring in November vs. January has a meaningful tax impact. A nurse may understand index funds but have never properly stress-tested what happens to their income plan if they're off work on LTD for 18 months before retirement. Advice-only is the perfect fit for this client. They get expert eyes on the blind spots without surrendering control of their money.

4. Equity compensation complexity: RSUs, stock options, and the tax ambush

Tech employees are often sitting on significant wealth in the form of RSUs, employee stock options (ESOs), or employee share purchase plans (ESPPs) and most have no idea how the taxation works until the bill arrives. In Canada, RSUs are taxed as employment income the moment they vest, not when they're sold. Stock options have their own set of rules around the employment benefit deduction, the timing of exercise, and whether the shares are from a Canadian-controlled private corporation or a public company. A commission-based advisor has an incentive to move that money into products they get paid on. An advice-only planner focuses entirely on the vesting strategy, the tax minimization, and how equity fits into the broader financial plan.

5. High income, high lifestyle, low financial clarity

Tech salaries in Canada can be substantial, often supplemented by bonuses and equity. But high income doesn't automatically produce financial clarity. Many tech employees are maxing their TFSA and RRSP on autopilot without a coherent strategy behind it, carrying large mortgages in expensive markets, and have never stress-tested what their financial picture looks like if a layoff hits during a market downturn. The tech sector has demonstrated is very real. Advice-only planning is well-suited here because the value isn't in managing the portfolio, it's in building a plan that actually connects income, equity, debt, and savings into a coherent picture.

6. The "my company's financial advisor" problem

Many tech companies, particularly larger ones or those backed by private equity, offer access to a financial advisor as an employee perk. What employees rarely realize is that advisor is typically a commission-based or AUM-focused advisor with a business interest in acquiring the employee's assets, not a neutral guide to their total financial situation. They'll help with the RRSP, but they're unlikely to tell you that the RSU vesting schedule is creating a tax problem, that your ESPP participation is inadvertently concentrating your financial risk in the same company that pays your salary, or that you'd be better off paying down your mortgage before investing further.