William Barreca, CFP®

The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is one of your most valuable assets in retirement But most people aren't optimizing CPP to its full potential This can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost benefits Here is a breakdown of how to get the most out of CPP:

Leaving the cottage to your kids comes with a tax bill When you die, it's treated as sold at its value that day, and the gain since you bought it is taxed on the final return. But nobody actually sold it, so there's no sale money to pay the bill Permanent life insurance gets misold to a lot of people. But this is where it can be really valuable: it can guarantee your kids the cash for the tax, so the cottage can stay in the family.

Business owners: paying yourself only in dividends doesn't necessarily save you tax And you give up two key retirement tools. Dividends don't create RRSP room, and you don't build CPP benefits

If your spouse is younger, your RRIF minimum can be based on their age instead of yours. A younger age means a lower forced minimum. If you don't need the full amount to live on, that's less taxable income every year, and more left growing tax-sheltered.

Adding your adult children as joint owners to avoid probate will almost certainly create way more headaches than it's worth. In Ontario, probate is 1.5% Not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things

Melting down your RRSP isn't always the smart move Take money out early that you don't spend, and once your TFSA is full it lands in a taxable account, where its growth is no longer sheltered from tax. Die at 78, and it might save you some tax. Live to 94, and the lost growth can outgrow any tax you saved.

Most people think tax planning means having an accountant prepare their tax return. That's tax filing. It records what has already happened. Tax planning means looking forward and planning strategies that can save you taxes for the rest of your life

"The government's broke. I'm not counting on CPP." CPP doesn't come out of the government's budget It's paid from the contributions of people still working, plus a fund of over $860 billion invested by CPP Investments That fund is kept separate from government money, and it can only be used for CPP

An easy way for married couples to minimize taxes: have the higher-income spouse pay as many of the family expenses as possible. That way, the lower-income spouse can invest more of their own savings, and any income earned on those investments is taxed at their lower rate

People who complain about paying taxes on RRSP/RRIF withdrawals usually also forget the massive advantages they got along the way. A tax deduction on every contribution, often at a high rate. Decades of growth without paying a cent of tax on it.

Retiring doesn't automatically mean your portfolio should get more conservative. Retire at 60 and the money may have to last 30 years or more Move too much into bonds and cash, and you swap the risk of a market drop for the risk of inflation eating your spending power.

On your TFSA, name your spouse as successor holder, not beneficiary. As successor holder, they take over the account as it is, and it keeps growing tax-free. As beneficiary, the account is closed and paid out tax-free. But it can't be recontributed to your TFSA if you don't have the contribution room

"Should I wait for it to recover?" is the wrong question to ask about a stock that's down. Ask this instead: if I had the same amount in cash today, would I buy this stock? If the answer is no, the only thing keeping you in it is the price you paid.