Calm Money Coach

Four short videos from this year on being an executor, in one place, if you missed some when they went out.

How to actually pick one, and the conversation your lawyer skips. The first year of the job, when your brother wants his share and your sister thinks you're stalling. Section 159 of the Income Tax Act, the rule that can make an executor personally pay the CRA two years after the money's gone. Why putting your kid on your bank account can override your will.

Get the free estate guides at calmmoneycoach.com

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

Education only, not legal or tax advice for your situation. Estate rules vary by province.

Is Ottawa coming for your TFSA, your OAS or your house? I went through the budgets in two parts.

First, what could realistically change, and what each change would cost you. CPP and your OAS cheque are the safest numbers in your plan. The changes worth watching are the quiet ones: the OAS clawback tested on household income, the age credit, and tax brackets that stop rising with inflation. Your home and your TFSA balance are the least likely targets.

Then, where Ottawa actually went for money over the last 10 years, in Finance's own numbers. Mostly high earners, private companies, trusts and banks. The biggest increase proposed, on capital gains, was cancelled within a year, and the bottom tax rate went down.

Takeaways
1. CPP and your OAS cheque are the safest numbers in your plan.
2. The realistic changes are the quiet ones: the clawback line, the age credit, and brackets and limits that stop rising.
3. TFSA withdrawals don't count as income, so those changes can't touch them.
4. Most of the last 10 years of tax increases landed on high earners, private companies, trusts and banks.
5. If you split pension income, run your plan once without it.

The full guides are at calmmoneycoach.com

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

General education only. 2026 rules, today's dollars. Ontario unless stated; BC, Alberta and Nova Scotia land close.

Can a couple retire in Canada on $500,000? If they spend $120,000 a year, no. This couple spends $60,000.

Both 65, $500,000 saved, and CPP and OAS pay them $40,000 a year. So their savings only have to find $20,000 a year until 98.

I ran their retirement 20,000 times two ways. Spend a flat $60,000 no matter what, and the money runs out before 98 in about 3 of 10 runs. Follow one rule, checked once a year, and a 35 percent market drop costs them a $2,000 trim. That's a skipped trip.

The part I'd take away: a flat $60,000 that works 9 times in 10 needs about $620,000 saved. Willing to trim in bad years and settle around $54,000 later on, they can start at the same $60,000 on $500,000. That's $120,000 less to save.

The catch is you have to actually trim. If you know you won't, plan flat and start a bit lower. Either way, rerun the plan every year.

Takeaways

1. Build your floor first, and know what you really spend after tax.
2. Decide now what you'd trim in a bad year and what you'd add in a good one.
3. A few small trims along the way protect you from one big drop late.
4. Being willing to flex means you need less saved to start at the same number.
5. Rerun your plan every year.

The spending rule calculator, the planner and the full guide are at calmmoneycoach.com

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

Illustrative couple. 20,000 simulated retirements, before tax, in today's dollars, returns per the 2026 FP Canada and IFP Projection Assumption Guidelines. Education only, not advice for your situation.

Someone in my community asked how you actually have the hard money conversation with your partner. So here's a couple who've had the same money fight for 10 years. Takeout, hockey fees, a very expensive air fryer, and still nothing in savings.

How the first sentence went, why they were both arguing from something that happened 30 years ago, how they put a number on retirement, and a plan they can live with while the kids are small.

Run your own number at calmmoneycoach.com

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

Illustrative couple, figures in today's dollars. Education only, not advice for your situation.

FHSA, cash, family money, a regular investment account, RRSP, TFSA, a corporation. Every dollar you pull out has a price tag, and the price is different in every account.

The order I'd use, cheapest first:

1. FHSA, topped up, then all of it. No later than 30 days after you get the keys.
2. Cash, but keep 3 to 6 months of expenses. A home needs a cushion.
3. Family money as a real gift, with your parents off title.
4. Small gains and losers in your regular investment account.
5. Home Buyers' Plan before the TFSA, and pay it back faster than the minimum.
6. Big winners and corporate money last.

Reasonable people swap a couple of these, and I go through why in the video.

Run the order on your own accounts, in your own province, at calmmoneycoach.com

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

The couple in the example is illustrative. Education only, not advice for your situation.

New or used, fix or replace, and whether an electric battery is really the risk people think. I ran all 133 cars in my calculator. Ontario, 16,000 km a year, every cost counted, including what the car's worth when you're done.

Keep a car about 3 years and used won on every one. Keep it 10 and gas cars and hybrids get close, typically $25 to $35 a month apart. Electrics are the exception. Used won every time, usually by about $120 a month.

Fix or replace: divide the repair by the months it keeps the car on the road. A $3,000 repair that buys 24 months is $125 a month. A 3 year old CR-V costs about $270.

And the battery. Recurrent tracks 30,000 electrics, and 0.3% of 2022 and newer ones have needed a new one.

The calculator is free at calmmoneycoach.com

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

Ontario figures, 2026. Costs vary by province. Education only, not advice for your situation.

Am I okay? Where do I draw from? What could break it? What are my moves? And what happens if one of us dies?

I took one Canadian couple through my retirement planner, start to finish. Anne's 60 and the breadwinner, Rob's 58, Ontario, both stopping at 63. $1.26 million saved, no work pensions, $85,000 a year to spend. Every figure is in today's dollars.

What's in it:

• The floor and the bridge. CPP and OAS cover about half their spending once both are on. The heavy years are 63 to 66, about $224,000 out of savings.
• Where to draw from. 14 withdrawal orders, the same spending in 13 of them, and about $500,000 apart in what's left at the end.
• What could break it. They make it through 1966, the worst year on record to retire into. A private care home at 90 runs the money out at 94.
• Their moves. Hold the bridge safe, know your 10 percent trim, and the "no best plan" table.
• If one of them dies. OAS stops, CPP gets capped, and guaranteed income falls about 40 percent.

6 things I'd keep:

1. Find your floor, then your bridge.
2. Hold the bridge safe, and know your trim.
3. Draw in the cheap years.
4. Pick the plan for what you want.
5. Look at a death both ways.
6. Re-run it every year.

Sources named in the video: Jonathan Guyton and William Klinger, "Decision Rules and Maximum Initial Withdrawal Rates," Journal of Financial Planning, March 2006. The funded ratio as adapted to households by Don Ezra. CPP survivor benefit, section 58 of the Canada Pension Plan.

Rob and Anne are an anonymized example household. Education, not advice.

The planner, Rob and Anne's plan file and the full guide are in my community. Free guides are on my email list.

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Put 5% down and invest the rest, or save to 20% and skip CMHC? For most first time buyers it's the biggest money decision they've made so far, and the usual advice only prices half of it.In this episode I walk through one Ontario couple buying a $500,000 first home, modelled in my home funding calculator:CMHC costs about $50 a month once you net the premium against the cheaper insured rate. 20% down means finding $75,000 more before closing.Every dollar you put down earns your mortgage rate, 3.69% here, guaranteed and tax free.Every dollar you keep has to clear 5.91% after tax. Inside a TFSA or FHSA it just clears. In a taxable account it misses in all 13 provinces and territories.Across 4,000 simulated markets, the smaller down payment finished ahead 49% of the time.It only works if you actually invest the difference, and that's the part that breaks.10% down came out best for this couple, and it holds up better when life gets in the way.Then the two things the spreadsheet can't price: flexibility when the furnace dies, and how a bigger mortgage feels for 30 years. When the math is this close, sleeping well is a fair tiebreaker.Calculator and full guide through my community at but i also have free subsriber list there with lots of great calculators as well: calmmoneycoach.comOntario, 2026 figures. Example couple, not a real client. The result moves by province. Educational, not financial advice.Sources: Bank Act s.418, CMHC Mortgage Loan Insurance Cost, CMHC's Story, FP Canada and CPA Canada 2026 Projection Assumption Guidelines, Thaler and Benartzi (2004).

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If you are buying a car in Canada this year, you are having an argument with yourself. Lease, finance, or buy used. I ran that argument 6,916 times, and the argument you are having is not the one that decides it.

Every one of the 133 vehicles in my calculator, all 13 provinces and territories, 4 hold lengths. What comes out of it is that how long you keep the car matters more than how you pay for it.

Keep a car 3 years and buying used wins 99.7 percent of the runs, and the cheapest path beats the next one by about 22 percent. Keep it 15 years and used wins 55 percent, buying new wins 32, leasing and then buying it out wins 12. Call it a tie when the best 2 paths land within 5 percent of each other, and at 3 years that happens in 4 percent of runs. At 15 years it is 75 percent. A new car's worst depreciation happens in year 1, and the longer you hold it, the more years that one bad year gets spread across.

What else is in here. Put $50,000 into a hybrid and 5 years later you have about $33,100 of it. Gas, $30,300. Battery electric, $22,300. Buying used won 100 percent of the electric runs at 3, 5 and 10 years, which is the same depreciation working for you instead of against you. Hybrids hold value so well that at a 15 year hold, buying new wins 54 percent of the time, the only powertrain where new takes the majority. Knock a full point off the new car finance rate and the winner changes in 5 percent of runs, and in none at all where the gap was already 10 percent or more. Leasing forever came last in 90 percent of runs and at a 10 year hold the median run cost $50,935 more than the cheapest path. On the business deduction, lease payments are capped at $1,100 a month before tax, but buying is deductible too, on a cost capped at $39,000 plus $350 a month of interest, so leasing is not a loophole. And the same Corolla Hybrid at 16,000 km a year over 10 years runs $64,184 in the Northwest Territories against $79,225 in Ontario.

Running costs are in every total, including maintenance priced apart for new and used, insurance, fuel or power, tires and registration.

I also tell you the 2 things the model cannot do, and the part where it argues with me. At my own usage, 10,000 km a year in Nova Scotia over 12 years, the gas Impreza and the Corolla Hybrid land $9 a year apart. I write about this for a living and the answer for my own household is a gas car.

Sources: Natural Resources Canada, iSeeCars, Hydro-Quebec, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, Transport Canada and the CRA. Insurance is a provincial average by segment and powertrain rather than a quote, because Canada has no published model by model rate book.

I am Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. I run Calm Money Coach, an advice-only planning practice. No products, no commissions, I do not manage anybody's money.

The calculator and the guide are free: calmmoneycoach.com

Education only, not advice for your situation. Talk to a professional about your own.

Follow me at @calmmoneycoach on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.

The Disability Tax Credit and RDSP in Canada: Backdated 10 Years, Up to $90,000If someone in your family has a disability, this is my RDSP series in one place. 3 walkthroughs I already posted, stitched together because each one builds on the last and they are easier to follow start to finish.Part 1, the form everything runs through. The Disability Tax Credit tests the effects of an impairment, not the diagnosis. Who can sign the T2201 besides your family doctor. How the 10 year backdating actually runs, from the end of each tax year rather than the day you are approved. The box that gets CRA to adjust your old returns. And the promoters charging 15 to 40 percent of the refund: what they do well, and the bigger money their work stops short of.Part 2, take everything the system gives. Up to $70,000 of grant and $20,000 of bond, and ESDC counts 34 percent of approved people under 50 with the account open. Why a family on $200,000 still qualifies once the child turns 19, why waiting never upgrades an old year, the tax return a 17 year old has to file anyway, using an RRSP contribution to get under the $117,045 line, and why only 2 of the 17 issuers let you hold ETFs.Part 3, the string on the money. The 10 year holdback and the $3 back for every $1 out. Counting back from the year the money is first needed. How withdrawals are taxed and how the provinces treat them, including Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI, and the Canada Disability Benefit in Alberta. Then the question parents ask me most, what happens when we are gone: the RDSP and a Henson trust, and why they work together rather than as alternatives.Free help with the form: Disability Alliance BC, and Plan Institute's helpline at 1-844-311-7526.Sources named throughout: CRA, Employment and Social Development Canada, Finance Canada, the Canada Disability Savings Regulations, Disability Alliance BC, Plan Institute and the CBC.Free on my website, no charge, no membership: The RDSP and Disability Tax Credit Guide, Leaving Money to a Child With a Disability, and the RDSP and Disability Benefits Workbook.

calmmoneycoach.com

I am Brian Orlando, CPA, in Halifax. I run Calm Money Coach, an advice-only planning practice. No products, no commissions, I do not manage anybody's money.

Education only, not advice for your situation.

Talk to a professional about your own.

Follow me at @calmmoneycoach on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.