Thank you! I think I have hit a spot where I may start needing financial planning from an advisor. Does anyone know of a local fee only advisor? Iam located in Vancouver, BC.
Perhaps for the time being I will set up an appointment with a TD bank advisor and see what knowledge I can aquire from there. I literally need someone to hold my hand and draw me some pictures, Haha!
Well, first, let's clarify that to be a "financial advisor" is to be someone who is licensed to sell investment funds. There are A LOT of advisors who know very very little about optimal tax planning.
I myself took the entire training to become a financial advisor just because I wanted to better understand, and it taught very, very little of practical use for my own finances. It *only* taught me what I needed to know to sell mutual funds. That's it.
FTR, I have never sold mutual funds and never will. However, when I tell people I took the course, they immediately assume I'm an expert on personal finance. I'm not.
If it's a question of how to manage your tax deferred accounts, an accountant is who I personally would and do ask. However, the services of financial advisors at the bank are typically free, and many of them are quite knowledgeable, so you could start there and see if you get the advice you need. If not, consider talking to an accountant maybe.
Also, to address your earlier question, there is no such thing as family or household income. I think that's why you are so confused. You aren't even legally allowed to use each other's incomes to fill those accounts. Meaning, if you wanted to use some of your husband's income to fill your RRSPs for some reason, as I understand it, he would have to loan you the money with interest.
I had this situation myself where DH had years of unused space and I started my career very high income and I assumed we could use his space to offset my taxes. NOPE!
That's when I found out that we could even get in trouble for me using my money to fill his RRSP space.
I was like "but we have combined finances, how would they be able to tell?" and I was told that in our case, it probably wouldn't be an issue because DH's income was large enough for it to make sense that he could have used his income for it, but if he had stopped working, like you have, then it would be obvious that I was using my money to fill his account, and apparently that's not allowed.
Now, I don't trust *anything* a financial advisor tells me anymore without verifying it. So that may not be accurate, I've never had a need to verify it, but that's what a top, very expensive, very respected FA told me.
It makes no sense to me that income is treated this way when in divorce it's by default treated as household, but the tax guys don't give a flying F about what the family law folks are up to, so it doesn't matter.
Honestly, and I speak from experience here, the advice that you can get, even the advice you pay for, is practically useless until you really understand this stuff for yourself.
It's hard to even get good advice until you are literate enough with the material to be able to ask the right questions. The good news is, it really doesn't take very long to learn it, and there are endless sources of info available.
A single afternoon of googling and reading should get you to a level where you can very adeptly know how to ask exactly the right questions to be able to get meaningful answers when you seek professional advice.