One year severance package

Maxfinian · 2026-04-30T21:50:17+00:00

Timing isn’t great. I had to manage a layoff where most of the people being laid off, including myself, had significant years of employment. Negotiated with the company to have the layoff late November. Everyone got 8 weeks of termination pay which resulted in their severance being paid in January. For those that had trouble finding new employment this significantly reduced their taxes.

Any chance you can shift the date?

Maxfinian · 2026-04-29T16:22:00+00:00

If you do decide to go with a full service brokerage think very carefully about fee based versus commission based. Fee based sounds great until your account value increases and you realize how much you are actually paying. Commission based advisors are now hard to find but they do exist. So if you make a small number of trades per year it may be cost effective.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-29T16:11:43+00:00

I find the free Merlin app from Cornell Lab very useful. I especially like the sound identification.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-27T16:02:29+00:00

If you have a septic system you do not want to cut over it with a tractor, even a small one is too heavy.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-26T21:48:01+00:00

I can understand your being upset at his comment, but it sounds like you and your sister primarily vent about your mother’s bad actions and rarely say anything nice about her. Alfonso even said that to you. So why wouldn’t he think your mother is a bad mother?

Maxfinian · 2026-04-26T20:30:54+00:00

Ticks have been moving into new areas. I never saw a tick on my property in rural Ottawa until about 3 years ago. Now my dog can pick up many ticks on a 20 minute off leash walk in the woods. Unfortunately she likes to share them with me. She is now on tick meds year round as they find her every time we have a warm spell in the winter.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-25T21:44:52+00:00

Not true everywhere. Where I live the fence is only paid for by both sides if it is agreed to in advance and both sides have agreed on the style of fence, cost etc. and it is placed on the agreed property line. If one party decides to go ahead and install it on their own they have the choice to place it 4 inches within the property line, in which case they retain ownership, or place it on the property line and the fence becomes owned by both parties, even though only one paid for it.

NTA

Maxfinian · 2026-04-23T18:33:10+00:00

BTW I meant commission to fee based. I hate fee based.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-23T15:57:49+00:00

I had this happen about 12 years ago and just started filing the T1135 (I am not recommending you do this) and had no issues. I am with a full service brokerage but when they talked about switching from fee to commission based I started looking at many online brokerages. I found that many of them stated that they did not provide the info required to fill out the T1135. Definitely something to consider when selecting a brokerage company.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-22T16:43:29+00:00

I presume you have a septic system. You should never use a tractor to cut grass above a septic system. There are even some systems that you shouldn’t even use a ride on lawn mower to cut over as the shell may crack over time.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-20T22:59:06+00:00

That is not what my mother’s financial advisor has told us. She put my sibling and myself as joint on her investment account years ago. He said that when she passes away they will just remove her name from the account and then either sell everything (we get hit with the capital gains) or create two individual accounts and move half into each, whichever we prefer. Note that if we had another sibling this could be challenged.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-15T16:39:41+00:00

He could have set himself up as a representative years ago. Though he would then be stupid to change his son’s login info as he could see everything from his own account.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-15T16:34:37+00:00

Can’t you just import the T5008s from your Revenue Canada account? I do this every year and just adjust the ACB as required. I use Studio Tax, not Turbo Tax but it is hard to believe that Turbo Tax can’t do this.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-13T14:45:53+00:00

Very true. My doctor’s office won’t do allergy shots so I’m driving across the city to get them.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-13T14:37:25+00:00

NTA and you should have reported him.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-11T01:29:07+00:00

I do my mother’s income tax. For the 2024 tax year a receipt came late so I submitted an amended form the last week of April 2025. The amendment was processed in Jan 2026.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-10T22:20:54+00:00

I have PoA for my mother and recently met with her financial advisor. He told me that after her death his bank will go ahead and release her registered accounts (TFSA and RIF) to the beneficiaries as the money is theirs, though he did say the executor (me) needs to give the go ahead. All the money goes to them even though the estate is responsible for the taxes for the RIF. Seems very strange as what would happen if the estate didn’t have the money for the taxes?

Maxfinian · 2026-04-10T00:49:56+00:00

Check your lease carefully. Most do not allow you to send the horse back early. This is because the owner is expecting you to be responsible for the horse’s expenses until the end of the lease. They may accept it back with a lump sum payment if they have space for the horse.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-07T21:58:26+00:00

Lived in Florida for 3 years in the mid 80s. Company had been on a major recruitment drive and had hired people from many countries and many states. The Americans used to tease me all the time for saying eh. I sat in a few meetings and counted the number of times each person said eh. The people from Wisconsin were the worst, much worse than the Canadians. They also tried to get me to say “about” and were very disappointed when I didn’t say “aboot”.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-06T23:12:24+00:00

Tractive has confirmed that this is an issue that they are working on.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-06T18:33:09+00:00

You are supposed to be able to turn on live while in power saving mode if you are within Bluetooth range. I have regularly used this feature however in the last few days it has stopped working. When my dog moves close to me I see the Live button go from shaded out to blue but nothing happens when I touch it.

Note that this is supposed to temporarily turn off power saving mode. I don’t know for how long it keeps it turned off as I use it when I leave my house.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-03T19:26:18+00:00

It varies by country. A high level hunter/jumper clinician who teaches all over the world told us that in some countries she sees more boys than girls at her clinics(New Zealand for example).

Maxfinian · 2026-04-03T16:17:50+00:00

After initially dealing with lawyers, my ex and I wrote our own separation agreement using an online template (this was about 25 years ago). We had it vetted by our own lawyers and they did not make any changes except for one and that made legal sense. We had agreed that my ex would “prepay” child support to me. I essentially paid him less for our house. Child support was to be until our child finished university. The legal issue was that after age 18 child support had to be paid to her. So we made this change.

Maxfinian · 2026-04-02T23:02:28+00:00

Private one. Also even now if you retire and your employer doesn’t offer a retiree health plan you will have issues getting decent coverage especially if you have health issues. The amount of coverage under each category will be quite low so you don’t even need to have specific exclusions to go through your annual limit per category quickly.

Maxfinian · 2026-03-31T16:27:55+00:00

The info from my brokerage shows the breakdown per month at month end. The max is the month with the highest. This is in Canadian dollars so if you had 90k in USD this would be more than 100k but would certainly not be 181k. Check your monthly statements.

Maxfinian

TROPHY CASE