Common questions about
retirement planning answered.

A Certified Financial Planner® (CFP®) has completed rigorous education, passed a comprehensive national exam, and commits to ongoing professional development and a strict code of ethics. In retirement planning, this matters because the decisions you're facing — pension elections, CPP timing, RRIF drawdown, estate structure — have permanent consequences. A CFP® brings the technical depth and fiduciary commitment those decisions deserve.

Bank advisors work for their institution and typically recommend products within that institution's lineup. At Odyssey Wealth, we are independent CFP® advisors regulated through CIRO. We don't sell products — we build plans. Our fee structure is transparent, our advice is unbiased, and our process starts with your life goals before touching a single financial product.

The Life-First Blueprint™ is Odyssey Wealth's comprehensive retirement planning process. It runs across five movements and approximately seven sessions. It starts with your Life Score™ and vision for retirement, then builds a coordinated financial strategy covering income, tax, pension, insurance, and estate. Every client receives four documents: Current Life Score™, Life Vision Document™, Gap Analysis Report, and Life-First Financial Plan™.

Yes. Odyssey Wealth Inc. operates under CIRO (Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization) regulation through Designed Wealth Management, a registered dealer. Investment accounts held with us are CIPF (Canadian Investor Protection Fund) members, meaning your investments are protected up to $1 million per account category in the event of insolvency.

The right CPP timing depends on your health, other income sources, your spouse's situation, and your overall retirement income strategy. Deferring from 65 to 70 increases your monthly benefit by 42% — permanently. But that only makes sense if your other income can sustain you in the interim and the breakeven timeline works for your situation. This decision deserves proper modelling, not a rule of thumb.

OAS clawback — officially the OAS Recovery Tax — reduces your OAS benefit when your net income exceeds a threshold (approximately $90,997 in 2024). For every dollar above the threshold, 15 cents of OAS is recovered. Strategic income splitting with a spouse, drawing from your TFSA instead of your RRIF, and careful withdrawal sequencing can help keep your income below the clawback threshold. This is one of the core problems a retirement income plan solves.

Not necessarily — it depends on each spouse's health, income needs, other assets, and survivor benefit considerations. For some couples, one spouse deferring and one taking early makes more sense than both deferring. There is no universal answer. The right approach requires modelling both options across multiple scenarios.

A RRIF (Registered Retirement Income Fund) is what your RRSP converts into by December 31 of the year you turn 71. At that point, you must begin taking mandatory minimum withdrawals, which are fully taxable as income. How you manage the years leading up to that conversion — through meltdown strategies, spousal contributions, or early withdrawals — can significantly reduce the tax bill over a 20-year retirement.

Often yes — especially if you retire before CPP and OAS kick in and your income is temporarily low. Taking RRSP withdrawals in lower-income years and sheltering the proceeds in a TFSA can reduce lifetime tax significantly. This is called a RRSP meltdown strategy and it's one of the most underutilized tools in Canadian retirement planning.

If you have a spouse, your RRIF can roll over to them tax-free. At the second death, the full remaining balance is included in income on the terminal return — and taxed accordingly. On a $400,000 RRIF, the tax bill at the second death can exceed $150,000. Proper beneficiary designation, spousal rollover strategy, and testamentary trust structure can reduce this materially. This is not optional estate planning — it's essential.

Absolutely. DB pension decisions — particularly the commuted value vs. monthly income election — are one of the most consequential and irreversible financial decisions you'll face. We work with members of OMERS, HOOPP, OPG, Ontario Teachers, and other public and private sector plans. We model both options fully before any recommendation is made.

The commuted value is the lump-sum present value of your future pension payments. Taking it means you give up the monthly income in exchange for a lump sum — which you can transfer to a LIRA (Locked-In Retirement Account) and potentially a spousal RRSP for the excess. Whether this is the right choice depends on your health, investment confidence, surviving spouse needs, and the pension's solvency. It cannot be undone once elected.

The Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption is a federal tax provision that allows the owner of a Qualified Small Business Corporation (QSBC) to shelter a portion of the capital gain on the sale of qualifying shares from tax. The lifetime limit is approximately $1.25 million per individual (2025), indexed annually. To qualify, three tests under the Income Tax Act must be met: (1) more than 50% of the corporation's fair market value must be used in an active business throughout the 24-month period immediately preceding the sale; (2) at the moment of sale, more than 90% of the assets must be active business assets; and (3) the seller must have owned the shares for at least 24 months. This is a hard legislative requirement, not a guideline. Most incorporated professionals approaching a sale need 18 to 36 months of advance planning to ensure shares qualify — and many do not realize this until it is too late to act. Working with a CFP® and a tax accountant well in advance of any sale is the only way to confirm eligibility and execute any required purification of the corporation.

When you operate through a corporation in Canada, profits are taxed at the corporate level first — at a relatively low rate, often around 12% on active business income up to the small business limit. The remaining after-tax profits accumulate inside the corporation as retained earnings. To use those funds personally, you must extract them — typically as dividends or salary — and at that point they are taxed again at your personal marginal rate. For high-income professionals in Ontario drawing dividends from a corporation in retirement, the combined corporate-plus-personal tax rate on extraction can approach 47%. With proper planning — staged dividends, salary restructuring, capital dividend account utilization, and timing around lower-income years — that effective rate can often be reduced to the 30–35% range. The dollar value of the difference, on a meaningful retained-earnings balance, is typically six figures.

There is no universal answer — it depends on your CPP contribution history, your retirement income needs, your spouse's situation, and your overall tax position. Salary creates RRSP contribution room and CPP entitlement, both of which compound for decades. Dividends produce no CPP credit and no RRSP room but allow for income splitting through dividend sprinkling rules where eligible, and can be more tax-efficient in certain provinces in the short term. Many incorporated professionals who paid themselves dividends only for years arrive at retirement with materially lower CPP than they expected — and discover the gap is recoverable, but only if salary restructuring begins several years before retirement. This is one of the most common gaps we identify in business owner financial reviews.

An asset sale means the corporation sells the practice's assets — equipment, goodwill, client lists — and the proceeds remain inside the corporation, which must be extracted later. A share sale means the seller sells the shares of the corporation directly to the buyer. Share sales are typically more favourable to the seller because they may qualify for the LCGE, sheltering a substantial portion of the gain from tax. Asset sales are generally more favourable to the buyer because they receive a step-up in the depreciable basis of the assets and avoid inheriting the corporation's history. The negotiation between asset and share sale is one of the most important and least understood elements of any practice sale, and where coordinated planning between a CFP®, a tax accountant, and a transaction lawyer produces the largest dollar outcomes.

Incorporated professionals — physicians, lawyers, dentists, veterinarians, engineers, accountants — face a planning challenge that does not exist for salaried employees. Wealth is held inside corporations, and getting it out efficiently requires coordinated tax, investment, insurance, and estate planning that most generalist advisors do not have the depth to provide. Decisions like dividend versus salary, retained earnings structure, LCGE purification timing, capital dividend account utilization, life insurance layering for tax-efficient extraction at death, and timing of practice sale relative to retirement income — these are not decisions a typical bank advisor will surface, because most are not paid to. Working with a CFP® who has experience with incorporated professionals, coordinated alongside your accountant and corporate lawyer, is not optional for most practice owners. It is the planning. The cost of getting it wrong is typically measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars over a career.

The Life-First Blueprint™ is priced at $9,750 for the first year (planning fee) plus 1% AUM annually. Year 2 and beyond carries a $4,875 annual retainer plus 1% AUM. Advisory Sessions are billed at $450 per hour with a 60-minute minimum. Odyssey ONE (self-directed platform) is $14.99/month. The first conversation is always free — no commitment required.

Our soft guideline for the Life-First Blueprint™ is $500,000 in investable assets. This isn't a hard cutoff — it's a guideline that ensures the engagement makes economic sense for both parties. If you're below that threshold, Odyssey ONE or an Advisory Session may be a better starting point.

Yes — we serve clients across Canada virtually. All meetings are conducted over Zoom. We are based in the Oshawa/Pickering area but our client relationships span the country. The Life-First Blueprint™ was designed specifically for virtual delivery.