"Bay Street is the only place I could ever work. On the desk my days are packed with big deals and major decisions. Trading can be totally consuming and as long as you’re doing well and the market is in your favour, the money is there. We recently bought a larger house and are renovating the cottage. Although we’ve still got a sizable mortgage, I always felt we had all the time in the world to pay it off. Then, one day this summer, a bond trader we knew at another firm had a major boating accident. That weekend, I looked at my wife and two young kids playing in the water at the cottage and it was as if I was seeing my family for the first time. I was stunned to realize that I was almost 40 years old, there were a lot of people depending on me and I hadn’t done anything about it yet."

      "As soon as I got back to town, I called a guy I knew casually at The Wealth Advisory about getting this part of my life organized. On the phone I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t have a Will even though our properties are worth several million dollars. I thought I was the world’s busiest person until we tried to schedule time with my wife during the day. Once we all actually sat down to tackle the problem, the plan came together pretty quickly. I always kept a few hundred thousand sitting in ready cash that wasn’t doing much for me except generating more tax. I was surprised to learn I could increase my yield while adding several million dollars of liquidity to my estate. I think we had a total of three meetings to get the whole thing done. We now have a trust to hold the cottage for the kids and an independent money manager for my investments. I realized that made a lot of sense for me because my job keeps me too busy to pay attention to the stock market on a daily basis. Even our Wills are in place and we both feel a lot better for getting those done. Older maybe – but better."