Julianna is a 58-year-old partner at a prestigious law firm whose legal practice is structured within an individual professional corporation. She works hard, putting in between 80 to 90 hours a week. Juliana is recently divorced and feels some guilt for prioritizing her career as her three kids were growing up. As a result, she continues to give them significant financial support even though they are now adults.

When Julianna came to Rubach Wealth she was embarrassed. She felt as though she had made poor financial decisions and knew her finances were disorganized. She had spent so many years focusing on her career and working hard to provide for her family that she failed to give more careful attention to financial matters.

Julianna revealed two key concerns: She was increasingly worried about running out of money in retirement and she knew there was friction among her children because one child was still living at home. As a result, there was an imbalance in what she was providing to him over the other children. She wanted to ensure she was providing equally for all three children.

What we did for Julianna

During our first meeting with Julianna, we recognized quickly that she wanted to regain her sense of stability and control over her financial future and within her family. Once we went over her finances, we saw that she lived within her means and had done a good job of putting away money for retirement. But we also identified a number of gaps in her financial picture, most notably in the areas of tax and estate planning.

This is how we worked towards filling in those gaps:

• • Through our discovery process, we helped Julianna get a clear picture of what she wanted her life to look like in retirement. Based on this comprehensive understanding of her wants and goals, we were able to show her how much money she would need in retirement and what rate of return would ensure her investments today could provide for her tomorrow.

• • Julianna was already using all the tax sheltering opportunities available through traditional accounts such as RRSPs and TFSAs. But she wasn’t optimizing her professional corporation. So we set up a life insurance policy to reduce her tax liability from future capital gains and simplify intergenerational wealth transfer.

• • We did a cash flow analysis to help Julianna understand the extent and impact of the financial support she was providing her children. It was eye-opening for her to see, in black-and-white, that she had, so far, given one child four times more than she had given her other two grown children.

• • We worked with a lawyer to update Julianna’s will and to create a secondary will covering assets that would be passed on to her heirs without having to go through probate.

• • Recognizing that Julianna’s investments and tax plans had not been managed adequately, we transferred her investments to one of our trusted asset managers and brought in an accountant with proven expertise in tax planning.

The outcome

For Julianna, an immediate benefit from working with us was gaining peace of mind from knowing she would not outlive her savings. Thanks to the tax-efficient financial and asset management plan created for her by Rubach Wealth, Julianna is now on track to achieve her retirement goals

She also has a more informed perspective on the conflict among her children. She understands now that by giving significantly more to one child she had inadvertently been unfair to her other children. Rubach Wealth continues to help Julianna with her estate plan, which will take into account her desire to provide equitably for all three children. 

Now that she feels secure in her financial future, Julianna is also more confident about sharing her wealth with her kids and charities of choice, as well as exploring retirement exploring future opportunities in ventures outside of law. She is considering corporate board appointments and involvement in charitable causes close to her heart, such as water safety and security in Africa.