Five videos on investing simply, in one place.

Since 1926, about 4% of US stocks created all of the market's net wealth, and more than half lost to a GIC. Over the last decade, 95% of Canadian equity funds lost to a simple index. So what do you actually do? DIY, a robo-advisor or a fee-only planner, and why the market you lived through shapes your fear for life (Malmendier and Nagel). Why you already own every AI winner in a plain global index fund, and why the people who borrowed to own them lost everything. And why your 80/20 is fine once you retire, whatever the all-equity crowd says.

More at calmmoneycoach.com

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

Education only, not investment advice for your situation.

Harry Potter lost his parents as a baby, found a vault of gold at 11 and inherited a house at 15. Each one is a real estate planning question in Canada. I'm Brian, a Canadian CPA, and I walk through what happens to a kid, the money and the house when the plan falls apart, and what I'd have set up for the Potters.

1. Name a guardian in your will, then name backups, in order. Ask each of them first, and write a short letter saying why you picked them.
2. Split the jobs if you want: 1 person raises the kid, another handles the money. Leave money for the raising, like life insurance.
3. Leave money straight to a kid with no trust and the province steps in. In Ontario, anything over $35,000 is paid into court, and it all lands at 18 or 19.
4. A trust in the will lets you say what the money is for and pay the rest out in stages, like some at 21 and the rest at 25. Outside Quebec, you can name a trustee right on a life insurance beneficiary form.
5. Canada has no inheritance tax, but at death a house is taxed as if it were sold that day. A home is tax free only for the years the owner lived there, plus 1.
6. Inherit a house and wait before big decisions. Get it appraised, call the insurer, then price out a full year and compare living in it, renting it or selling it.

Free guides and calculators at calmmoneycoach.com

#estateplanning #canada #harrypotter #wills #trusts #inheritance #personalfinance

40 with nothing saved for retirement? You've got about 25 earning years left and a pension floor that's already building. A 2025 HOOPP study found 39% of Canadians have never saved for retirement, so you're in good company.

Meet Jess. She's 40, rents a 1 bedroom in Halifax and earns $70,000. To retire renting there she needs about $41,700 a year after tax in today's dollars, including $6,000 for trips, dinners and gifts. Owning with no mortgage drops that to about $33,500. A renter needs about $35,600 in Saint John, $38,000 in Winnipeg and $45,000 in Toronto or Vancouver.

CPP and OAS give her about $23,000 a year before she saves a dollar, so her savings only cover the gap. At $500 a month her money lasts in 63 of 100 market runs. At $750 it's 80, and at $1,000 it's 90. $750 and working to 67 gets her to 92. Even in the bad runs, CPP, OAS and the top-up for low-income seniors keep about $27,000 a year coming.

TFSA or RRSP? At $750 a month both get her to about 80, as long as the RRSP refund gets invested. Spend the refund and it drops to 52. Closer to $45,000 of income the TFSA comes out a bit ahead, and at $100,000 the RRSP does.

4 things I'd do at 40 with nothing saved
1. Check your CPP estimate in My Service Canada Account, and your OAS.
2. Build your number from what you'd actually spend where you live, and save toward the gap.
3. Start with your employer match, then automate what you can, $50 or $300 a month, into 1 all-in-one fund. Raise it with every raise.
4. Working a couple of extra years and starting CPP later both add guaranteed income for life.

Growing your pay does a lot of the heavy lifting. A $6,000 course that takes her to $80,000 pays for itself in about a year or 2.

My free retirement calculators come with my monthly email at calmmoneycoach.com.

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

Run through my retirement planner, October 2026, in today's dollars. Spending from Statistics Canada's Market Basket Measure and CMHC rents. HOOPP 2025. Education only.

#retirementplanning #retirement #tfsa #rrsp #personalfinancecanada

Why do Canadians pay property tax every year on a home they've already paid for, and what are you actually paying for when you buy a brand new one?

Part 1: property tax is one of our oldest taxes. Upper Canada's first assessment law in 1793 paid for a courthouse, a jail, bridges and destroying bears and wolves. Cities lean on it because it's one of the few taxes provinces let them collect: by their own count they look after about 60% of public infrastructure and collect about 10 cents of every tax dollar. Your bill follows your city's budget more than your home's value. On a fixed income, look for your province's help: Nova Scotia rebates up to $800 for low-income seniors, and BC and Alberta let older owners defer the tax until they sell.

Part 2: take a $1,000,000 new semi in Toronto. $137,846 in development charges (about $83,000 less if the deal with Ottawa and Ontario goes through), $32,950 in land transfer tax with up to $8,475 back for first-time buyers, and about $130,000 of HST that's fully rebated for a first home at $1,000,000 or less. Approvals take about 25 months in Toronto and 31 in Hamilton. The same price in Belleville carries about $126,500 less in charges and tax.

Buying new in Ontario? Have a lawyer check Schedule B of the Tarion addendum before you sign.

Free guides and a simple retirement calculator, then one email a month, at calmmoneycoach.com.

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

Sources: UNB British North America Legislative Database; Federation of Canadian Municipalities; novascotia.ca; gov.bc.ca; alberta.ca; IRS; City of Toronto; C.D. Howe Institute; CHBA; City of Belleville; Tarion. Education only.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Oathill Crescent, Dartmouth by Ben MacLeod (CC BY-SA 4.0); Main Street, Picton by Doug Kerr (CC BY-SA 2.0); Downtown Belleville by Dillan Payne (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Four videos on the bigger Canadian picture.

Why the number at checkout keeps climbing: the dollar, climate, how few companies sell our groceries, and housing. Why 140,457 Canadians filed for insolvency in 2025, the most in 16 years. What 100 years of income tax actually built, since it arrived in 1917 as a temporary war measure. And whether Canada's math still works for the people now in the middle.

More at calmmoneycoach.com

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

Education only, not advice for your situation.

Someone sent me a reel asking if this is a real strategy: every January, buy last year's best stock in the S&P 500, hold it a year, then swap. Shout out to Ricky, @the.steady.investor.

I ran it back to 1998. Your $10,000 hit about $48,500 by the end of 1999, then fell to about $1,400 by 2011. You trailed the S&P 500 at the end of every year from 2001 to 2023. Then NVIDIA and Palantir more than doubled, and you finished 2025 at about $252,000 against $117,000 for the index, in US dollars. Change whose list of winners you use and the same idea ends anywhere from about $84,000 to $810,000.

Whole countries went the other way. Over 50 years of developed markets, buying last year's best country turned $10,000 into about $1.5 million. Owning them all in equal shares got about $2.3 million, and last year's worst got about $91,000.

Old data can fit almost any story. One researcher showed butter production in Bangladesh explained about 75% of the S&P 500's swings. Please don't buy sheep. Momentum is real in the research, which buys hundreds of recent winners at once, and published edges shrink by about 58% once everyone knows. About 4% of US stocks created all the market's gains over treasury bills from 1926 to 2016, and 98.8% of Canadian equity funds trailed the TSX over the 10 years to 2025.

3 things I'd keep
1. Own the whole world as your base, with low-cost market index funds.
2. Tilting toward momentum, value or profitability? Have a reason that holds up once everyone knows it, and be ready for it to trail for 10 years.
3. Where you rotate matters. In a regular account, half of every gain you sell is taxed. In a TFSA or RRSP the switch isn't taxed.

More at calmmoneycoach.com, and my email list is free.

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

Before fees, trading costs and taxes. My backtest of yearly S&P 500 winners, Ken French country data, Leinweber, McLean and Pontiff, Bessembinder 2018 and SPIVA Canada Year-End 2025. Education only.

#investing #indexfunds #sp500 #personalfinancecanada

Is Canada heading into stagflation? Prices were up 3.1% in September, unemployment is 6.5%, and groceries cost 33% more than in September 2020.

Stagflation is prices jumping while the economy stalls. It followed the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and in 1981 the Bank of Canada's rate went past 21%. Economists say we're nowhere near that today. Leave gas out and prices are up 2.2%, and the Bank's rate is 2.25%.

It stings more than it should because growth was already slow. In 1984 a Canadian worker produced about 88% of what an American did per hour. By 2022 it was about 71%. Part of that is how the country was built: 13 securities regulators, different trucking rules at every provincial border, and a Supreme Court case over 14 cases of beer. The IMF says clearing the barriers between provinces could add close to 7% to the economy over time.

There's real building too. Less of what we sell goes to the US, Trans Mountain runs nearly full, Darlington has a small nuclear reactor underway, and LNG Canada approved doubling its size. And 76% of small business owners plan to exit within 10 years, with only 9% holding a succession plan.

4 things I'd do
1. Build or protect your emergency fund.
2. Keep the savings habit alive, even $50 a month.
3. Invest in yourself and point it at work that's hiring: a trade, nursing, a credential, a side business.
4. When prices ease or a raise comes in, send part of it to savings first, into a simple low-cost global ETF.

And keep living. A potluck still counts.

My free retirement calculators come with my monthly email at calmmoneycoach.com.

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

Statistics Canada, Bank of Canada, IMF and CFIB, read October 2026. Photos: Robert T Bell (Darlington), Colin Rose (Supreme Court), Brett Jordan (Tamagotchi), CC BY 2.0. Education only.

#stagflation #inflation #canadaeconomy #personalfinancecanada

Canada doesn't have an estate tax like the US. We tax death a different way, and it reaches a lot more regular families.

Take 2 cousins. Doug in Regina and Chad in Dallas each put $2 million into index funds, and today each pile is worth $10 million.

Chad's playbook is buy, borrow, die. He never sells, borrows against his shares to live, and when he dies the US resets the cost of those shares to their value that day. The $8 million of growth is never taxed, and the US federal estate tax only starts above US$15 million a person. The US Treasury puts that reset at about US$40 billion this year.

Canada dropped its estate tax in 1972 and started taxing gains at death. Doug is treated as if he sold everything the day before he died. Half the gain counts, and at Saskatchewan's top rate that's about $1.87 million. In St. John's it's about $2.14 million. Probate adds about $70,000 in Saskatchewan, $149,000 in Ontario and $169,000 in Nova Scotia. Manitoba dropped its fee in 2020. A spouse defers it all, and the family home is exempt.

Far past US$15 million, the US takes 40% of every dollar over the line. Big US estates paid about 19% of their value, about the same as Doug.

4 things I'd keep
1. Use your TFSA and name your spouse as successor holder, or a beneficiary. In Quebec, do it in your will.
2. Draw your RRSP or RRIF down in lower income years. A $1 million RRIF left to your kids adds about $475,000 of tax.
3. Keep your will, beneficiaries and power of attorney up to date.
4. Enjoy your retirement first, then give cash while you're alive. Canada has no gift tax on cash.

Pitched life insurance or a family trust to cut the bill? Ask what it costs and who it's built for.

My estate guides are in my community at calmmoneycoach.com, and my email list is free.

I'm Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. Advice-only planning through Calm Money Coach. No products, no commissions.

US: IRS and US Treasury, read October 2026. Canada: 2026 top rates and each province's probate schedule. OECD 2018. Parliament Hill photo: Saffron Blaze, CC BY-SA 3.0. Education only.

#estateplanning #estatetax #tax #personalfinancecanada