Turn money stress into a plan you can actually run

Advice-only planning and education for Canadians, from a CPA in Halifax. No products, no commissions, no managing your money. Advice is the whole business.

1. Free. The guides and calculators.

One email a month with a calculator or a guide attached. Nothing to log into, no card, and it never turns into a bill. Five of them download on the spot with no email at all. The whole free shelf is further down this page, and everything on it comes round monthly anyway.

• Get the Starter Pack, free

2. Paid. The Calm Money Community.

$449 for the year, or $134.99 a quarter. 130 Canadian guides and calculators, 18 web apps you run on your own numbers, a live Q&A every month, and me in there answering your question. The whole thing is laid out below, with pictures.

• Join for the year, $449
• Or quarterly, $135

3. Paid, and closed. The Comprehensive Plan.

From $4,500 + HST. I build the whole plan around your numbers and you never log into anything. It is closed right now. The two prices, the reason it is closed, and where else to look are further down this page.

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Here's what's behind the login

Most memberships describe themselves and show you nothing. So here it is.The library is 130 guides and calculators, grouped into four lanes so you're never staring at a wall. Building wealth. Retirement. Tax and planning. The corporate side. 18 of them are interactive web apps you run on your own numbers, and they're the part people come back to.

The Retirement Planner

This is the one I'd point at if you only opened one thing. It's the same engine I use on a paid plan, it runs in your browser on your numbers, and nothing gets sent anywhere.You put in your accounts, your pensions, your province and what you want to spend. It runs the full 2026 Canadian tax code over the rest of your life and answers the question you came with.The answer first. Does the money last, how the market histories treated it, and the tax over the whole plan.

Fourteen withdrawal strategies, side by sideMost calculators run one path and hand you a number. This one runs 14 and ranks them, because the order you pull from your accounts is worth more than almost anything else you'll decide.Same household, same spending, same lifetime income. What changes is the tax. On the example below, the highest-tax strategy costs $388,717 more over the plan than the lowest.The top three, with the marginal rate you'd actually pay while melting the RRSP down. Then all 14, ranked.

Where the money comes from, year by yearYou can read your own plan one year at a time. Which account each dollar came out of, what OAS looked like after the clawback, when the RRIF minimums start forcing your hand, and what the tax was that year.The phases of a retirement, then the same thing as a table you can read line by line.

And a picture of the risk, not just a success rateA success rate on its own tells you very little. Two tools can hand the same household 96 percent and 74 percent and both be right, because they differ on where the returns come from and on what counts as success.So the planner draws the fan instead. 2,000 tested market histories, the median path, and the worst tenth.What a weak start actually does to a plan, drawn rather than summarised.

Your number isn't flatRetirement spending has a shape. The early years are the expensive ones, travel and the projects and the grandkids. Then it eases. Then the late years are cheaper on everything but health. Model 30 flat years and you'll overshoot your number, and possibly work years you didn't need to.Your life cost carried across the three phases, against your CPP and OAS floor.

It isn't only retirement

18 web apps, and not all of them are about retiring.If you own a corporation there's a planner for that. Salary against dividends, what the passive income rules do to you, CDA and GRIP and RDTOH, and what actually reaches your family at the end.

If someone hands you a pension buyout, there's a tool for the one number that decides it. The return you'd have to earn, after tax and after the fees you actually pay, to replace an income you'd otherwise have had for life.It shows you the trade-off. It doesn't pick for you.

The CPP and OAS decision gets its own tool, because starting at 60 or 65 or 70 isn't an investing call. It's a decision about how high you want your guaranteed, inflation-indexed income to sit for the rest of your life.Your real CPP number, not the Service Canada estimate that assumes you keep earning at your peak right to 65.

The rest of the shelf: rent against buy, lease against buy against used, mortgage renewal, the Smith Manoeuvre, the property playbook for a cottage or a rental, severance and job loss, retiring abroad, coming home to Canada, the portfolio studio for thinking about risk capacity against risk tolerance, and the yearly money checkup.

The estate side, in full

Estate planning is the part people put off longest, and it isn't because it's complicated. It's that "what happens to all this after we're gone" is a hard sentence to type.So the guide is written to be read in pieces. Fourteen parts, and you take the one you need. Beneficiary designations, the spousal rollover, trusts, multiple wills, the widow's penalty, and who to hire for each piece.There's a lot in there that costs real money to get wrong. A RRIF that names a beneficiary instead of a successor annuitant. A TFSA where the same distinction quietly costs the growth after death. Divorce not revoking a designation. Quebec, where designations work differently. The Executor's Guide is in there too, with the workbook, because someone in your family is going to need it.

• Join the Community, $134.99 a quarter

The part that isn't a library

There's a live Q&A every month where you can ask the messy version of your question. The one you wouldn't put in an email.There's a board where you post what you want built and vote on everyone else's. If it gets movement, I build it. A good chunk of what's in there started as one person asking.Real questions from that board, and every one of them turned into a guide or a calculator:"We're thinking about retiring somewhere warmer. What does actually leaving Canada cost us?""My RSUs vest next month and I don't know what gets taxed when.""I want to leave my advisor. What do I do the day after?""We've got a pile of cash sitting there doing nothing. How much do we keep and how much goes in?""We have a cottage and two kids. One wants to keep it, one wants it sold.""We want to retire five years apart. How do we plan one household on two dates?""My son has a disability. How do I leave him money without costing him his benefits?"None of those have a clean answer, which is why they're worth a conversation rather than a search.It's also where the other half of money lives. The part that isn't math.

Joining the Community

The Calm Money Community. $134.99 a quarter, or $449 for the year and save $91.

The right fit for most people, and it always was. Not the leftover option.Your price locks the day you join. Whatever you pay when you sign up is what you renew at for as long as you stay, so a future increase never touches you. Leave and come back and you rejoin at whatever it costs then. Founding members who joined before 13 July keep renewing at $299 on that same rule. That was the deal, and it holds.

• Join the Community, $134.99 a quarter
• Prefer yearly? $449, save $91

The Comprehensive Plan

The other way to work with me, and it's closed. From $4,500 + HST, and most land higher.

The full build, for a financial life with layers. I do all the work, you never log into anything, and you run the plan after. This is the tier where I look at everything, your investments included: I review your portfolio and give you the guidance to run it yourself, simple, balanced, low-cost. I advise. I never manage or trade your money, and I don't sell anything. Two versions. The only real difference is whether a corporation is involved.Individual covers singles and couples without a corporation. $4,500 is the floor, for a genuinely simple situation. Most Individual plans land in the $5,000 to $6,000 range, because that's where real life sits: executive comp, rentals, a pension election, or more than one province in the mix.Corporate adds the business layer on top of everything in the Individual plan. $7,500 for a single company, $9,500 with a family trust, $12,000 for multi-company or estate freeze work. You never buy both. Corporate already includes the personal side.The price moves with complexity, nothing else. The more moving parts, the more it costs, and I'll tell you where you land before you commit.The first year is the full build: a plan around your real numbers, the retirement projection, your account and tax structure, the meetings, and written reports you keep. Your plan includes a 30-day window for follow-up questions after delivery.After that,
the Annual Planning Membership keeps it current: a plan refresh plus defined touchpoints through the year, from $4,000 + HST a year, priced to the access you want and the complexity of your situation (corporate runs higher). More access costs more, and I'll quote it plainly when your plan wraps up. Or come back down the road for a one-off plan, priced from the $4,500 floor like any build. A single decision in between is a $800 + HST working session.This is the tier most people who reach out actually want, and it's closed. Not closed as in check back next month. I'm booked out well past six months, the waitlist behind that is full, and I've stopped taking names for it.The honest version: I build 20 to 22 of these a year. That's not a marketing cap, it's what one person can do properly, and demand ran past it a while ago. A prospect walked this summer because I couldn't give him a start date, and he was right to. Selling you a spot I can't name would be the same thing with better manners.So I'm not naming a reopen date, because I'd only be guessing. When it opens, the Community and the email list hear first. In the meantime, FP Canada's Find Your Planner and the Advice-Only Planners directory both list Canadian fee-only planners taking clients now. If the corporate piece is what's hard, say that in your search, fewer of us do it. And the Community moves the same dials today for $134.99 a quarter.Out of scope. US persons, divorce in progress, blended-family estate complexity, tax filing. I'll point you to the right specialist if that's you.

• Closed. Email me and I'll point you somewhere good

Still not sure? Email me a few sentences about your situation and I'll sort it in one reply.

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What I help with

Retirement planning
Clear income by age, RRSP, RRIF, TFSA, and non-registered draw order, CPP and OAS timing, OAS clawback protection, survivor scenarios, and sustainable spending plans you can actually run.Corporate and business owner planning
CCPC drawdown sequencing, GRIP, CDA, and RDTOH tracking, salary versus dividend decisions, holdco and family trust integration, and how your corporate plan fits with your personal plan. CPA-led, not a referral.Tax-aware decisions
High-level planning to reduce drag, avoid common traps, and use the right account at the right time. Returns are filed by your tax preparer. The planning behind them is mine.Budget and cash-flow systems
A simple plan and a weekly autopilot you will actually run. Built around your real life, not a 50-line spreadsheet.Structure and account setup
Clean account order for Canadians, asset location across registered and non-registered, and education on being efficient with your investments. Not investment advice, just education.The emotional side of money
Money stress, shame, and avoidance cost more than any tax mistake. The plan we build accounts for what you feel about money, not just the spreadsheet.Education first
Plain language. Tools you own. You stay in control. Every claim traced back to a real source.