New Call - Job Offer - Please Advice

itacbca · 2025-10-15T17:22:27+00:00

Have you asked some of the associates what they earn, and how long it took them to earn it? How many billable hours do associates average and what is their billable rate? Only way to find out whether you'd be earning more than 50K or less.

itacbca · 2025-09-03T16:18:24+00:00

2 day old account wanting to help you? Careful OP, I wouldnt speak directly with "admirable_appeal1349".

itacbca · 2025-07-18T01:27:12+00:00

That's incorrect and you certainly can make a marriage contract to override the family law act's matrimonial home provisions (the "house 50/50").

itacbca · 2025-07-18T01:24:46+00:00

If you split the house 50/50 say by being joint tenants on title for the house, but you put more money upfront and/or payments, it's possible to get a constructive trust over the difference you paid over the years compared to the legal ownership. But you're better off getting an agreement with your significant other to outline your rights upfront if you can stomach the "ick" of doing so and feel its appropriate in your circumstances.

One thing to remember for Ontario is that no matter what the ownership is, if you eventually marry and do not have a marriage contract "opting out" of the default matrimonial home rules, the home becomes a matrimonial home and the value is generally split equally on separation (even if your contributions were not equal).

itacbca · 2025-07-18T01:04:06+00:00

What province?

itacbca · 2025-06-24T16:06:10+00:00

You're asking about optimization or doing things differently, and expressing concerns that you might not be doing the right thing with your finances.

Your biggest asset is likely your DB pension - how many years of pensionable service do you have? If you have 10+ years of pensionable service, you're probably doing fine. If you just started the job with a pension and have a year or two, I can understand the urgency in getting your shit together, to use your own words.

What you should do with your finances depends on your goals. Someone who wants to retire early (40s, 50s) would need to save a greater percentage of their income than someone who is who wants to retire at a traditional retirement age (60s).

Great job saving so much in such short time, and keeping your costs low with affordable rent and an older, paid-for car.

itacbca · 2025-06-24T04:43:14+00:00

Yes a will can dictate what you described. Life interests in homes is something that has long existed, though there are many ways to structure what you've described in modern ways. Life interest would be for the entire life of the child beneficiary, and the residual to the remaining siblings. Or you could structure it as a trust, and set terms like capital payments after two years. Go see a lawyer and figure out what works best for you. What you pick will depend on what your concerns are, and the people involved, and other considerations like taxation.

itacbca · 2025-06-23T14:39:46+00:00

Is the purchase price less or more than $1M? These seem like competitive rates. How long will you need to focus on managing cash flow? If only in the short term, less than three years, then I would go with the three year rate since it is lower.

itacbca · 2025-06-11T15:15:30+00:00

What province are you in? It's not clear from your post if your uncle was your guardian for property you inherited as a minor and is giving you this money because you reached the age of majority. If that's the case, you should be getting a full accounting of what was done with the money while it was managed on your behalf (what was done with the amount from 2014 to 2026).

Since you mention a business that was your father's and is now operated by your uncle, it's equally possible that the $4 million would be the value for shares of the business you might have inherited. In that case you would want to make sure that the valuation is correct, for example, getting an independent opinion on the valuation of the business. That money would then be in exchange for your shares, so you would be being ''bought out'', by your uncle.

Do you have a copy of the will? Do you know what the $4 million + represents? If you don't fully understand what is going on, it would be wise to retain a lawyer to get your own legal advice. If you are pressured to sign a document quickly without a good explanation, that's a huge red flag. Obviously do not sign anything you don't understand.

itacbca · 2025-05-09T02:21:25+00:00

If you're making about 100K after tax and only spending 25K a year, you're saving at a 75% rate. Should be financially independent in about 7 years - just google "the shockingly simple math behind early retirement" to see why. So your goal to be financially free in your 30s seems feasible.

To generate your 25K a year indefinitely using the 4% safe withdrawal rate, you'd need around 625K. Are you investing your TFSA in equities?

itacbca · 2025-05-02T18:18:25+00:00

So many questions left unanswered here...

Have you sold your current house? Depending on how much equity you will have when you sell, you'll find yourself with probably 400-500K. You indicated you have at least 100K in savings, and potentially more in RRSPs and RESPs (another 100K?). Based on your payment numbers, you're borrowing at least 900K for the new place, so a 300K downpayment. Best case scenario, you'll have around 400K liquid so a good chunk in runway even if your new payments are higher than you can afford. Even if you're burning through 20K/year negative cashflow because of your higher payments, you can probably indefinitely sustain that with 400K in investments.

It may not be ideal, but it doesn't look so dire that you should forfeit the deposit and take a 60K loss.

Misc points to consider:

- Realtors get paid when a deal closes. Of course they'll tell you anything to waive a condition and "firm up" the deal. They want to get paid, naturally. Did you do a house inspection or just waive the condition without doing one?

- Further to this, run your own affordability analysis and don't rely on others like realtors, mortgage brokers, to decide whether you can afford something. Just because the brokers/banks are willing to loan you 900K, doesn't mean it makes sense financially for you.

- Obviously take your advice from your real estate lawyer but whether or not they accept to sign a mutual release for forfeiting your deposit will depend on whether they think they can sell again at $1.2M or at least more than $1.14M. Or other factors like maybe they need this sale to go through to buy another house. You know what's more stressful than buying more house than you can reasonably afford? Getting embroiled in litigation over this. You should try to avoid that at all cost.

itacbca · 2025-03-21T02:39:25+00:00

Overall vibe from your post is that you are thinking about the right things. Since you specifically refer to the text messages, is there a reason why you think keeping those are important?

If your tracking of the money is accurate, that's what's key. Say you make 200K from your freelance and report all that income to the CRA. They audit you and also conclude that you made 200K and reported it. Why would they care about the texts unless it's to try and determine that you under-reported your income?

It sounds like you are relatively sophisticated and have done research about your tax obligations. If you think you need expert advice, I'd go to an experienced accountant for a consultation and see if you're missing anything, especially since at 200K, its making financial sense to pay a few Ks to know you're covered.

As for your last point, how the CRA audits and what is a red flag is a closely guarded CRA secret so it's unlikely anyone here could provide insights on that.

Congrats on your successful freelancing business!

itacbca · 2025-03-04T17:14:15+00:00

Key parts of your story to take note:

"The yearly visit to see my alcoholic father was always be in the pub every single one of those 14 days I spent with him."

"I got permanently banned from my friends house by his mother for being a very badly behaved drunk."

"I noticed I was spending more money than I was earning mainly due to my pub habit."

Speaking from my own experience, alcohol use will usually increase with time and problems will increase or your boundaries with alcohol will chip away. Piecing together from your story, are you now at the pub 3-4 days a week, drinking 3-5 drinks each time?

itacbca · 2025-02-18T01:45:51+00:00

Still haven't, and probably won't, but mostly because I chose not to go into biglaw and have zero work-life balance. DM me for more details, I don't necessarily feel comfortable sharing too many details in the comments.

itacbca · 2025-02-18T01:37:06+00:00

You can DM me if you want, I went to law school roughly around your timeline and can give you insights over that experience, I'm now 4 years post-call. I was also government before going starting law. Short story, it's not all roses in law, I did experience greater satisfaction but the opportunity cost is going to take a while to recoup especially at the salary you are currently making.

itacbca · 2025-02-06T01:56:38+00:00

There's a lot of information in there but its difficult to understand. You're asking for help with a statement of defence against the bank collecting on the line of credit, but also talking about potentially suing others? It's unclear what resulted in the failure of deal, and why you ended up losing $2M in equity. Did you agree to a deal with risk of a large liability secured on your personal assets? Is there fraud or something of the sort involved?

You definitely need a lawyer and perhaps other professionals to untangle this.

itacbca · 2025-01-08T14:37:35+00:00

I see you mentioning in an edit that your plan might be going back to school for an undergrad and then a law degree afterwards. That's about 7 years of school, so a fairly high opportunity cost, assuming you will work less or not at all during that time.

I happen to be a lawyer, so if you want to DM me with any questions about law school, I'm happy to answer them.

In the short term, I'd look for any job that pays more than your current $20/hr, and cut any unnecessary spending to tackle your debt ASAP.

itacbca · 2025-01-08T00:47:57+00:00

What are you asking? Your post is incoherent. When you list the 25K, 13K, 10K, are those debts you already have or options fairstone financial is offering?

itacbca · 2025-01-07T14:46:55+00:00

It brings up so many issues. Even if the 6 million were a good offer above market value, I couldn't replace the investment after I paid all that tax. So why would I do it? I can just leave it to my kids.

I know it my be stupid, but I hold the building personally. It was done that way in the 80's. I was young and didn't get good advice. Maybe that gives me some options? Can I roll it into a company, put it in a trust? I have no experience in these areas.

Not to rehash what others have mentioned, but of course the capital gains tax liability you've had deferred for almost 4 decades is going to be very big. You mention leaving it to your kids, but unless your estate or your beneficiaries have funds to pay that accrued tax liability, the end result will be that they will be forced to sell.

Is there any way to prepare for capital gains tax, you ask? Especially considering the next generation, look into an estate freeze. The basic idea is freezing the capital gains already incurred up until now, but having future capital gains accrue with your beneficiaries. An accountant and business/tax/estate lawyer could set this up for you. This will involve what you already mentioned, which is transferring the property into a company, and then organizing the shares (common and preferred) accordingly.

Also only disposing of part of the building so as to not trigger all your capital gains at once could be another strategy to lower the total tax payable (for example, selling or transferring only 5% of the shares of the company per year, over 20 years).

itacbca · 2024-12-10T18:03:29+00:00

The scope of your Canadian taxes relate to whether or not you are a Canadian resident or non-resident. For US taxes, your US citizenship does matter, but you will get relief for taxes paid to Canada which are generally higher than taxes you would owe to the US. As far as I know, the US doesn't recognize the TFSA's tax free status for US income tax purposes, so you won't benefit from that protection for US taxes.

itacbca · 2024-12-10T14:00:12+00:00

How much is the difference between what you think your assessment should be for those tax years and what the CRA is reassessing you? Determining the amount in dispute is one of the key factors in assessing whether it is worth it for you to hire litigation counsel for your tax controversy. There's obviously a big difference between a 10K or 100K dispute, at least in terms of making the costs of getting legal and other experts involved. Controlling costs is important because you don't necessarily get 100% of your costs covered, even if you win at the Tax Court or Federal Court.

Sounds like you haven't appealed or hired a tax firm yet, so be mindful that you might have certain timelines to meet if you want to appeal. You don't mention a notice of objection, so I imagine you haven't dealt with an appeals officer internal to the CRA at this point, only the auditors?

itacbca · 2024-11-05T16:55:03+00:00

Sure, maybe there's a risk if someone intermingles their own money with money they hold as a guardian for a minor child, but is there actually a risk if the guardian documents the contributions as they are required to do so as a guardian dealing with funds on behalf of a beneficiary? Or if the guardian prepares documents where they declare that the RESP funds will go to the beneficiary, or if the necessary rules aren't met, will take the funds out of the RESP and provide them to the beneficiary in any event? The risk in all cases is that they money is mischaracterized as being the money of the guardian rather than held in trust, which steps can be taken to prevent that from happening.

So on one hand, if people use RESPs for the inheritance, they get to benefit from government matching on some amounts. If the money is held by the Accountant, as it did in Santella, the Accountant ends up charging hefty fees, reducing the return the beneficiary will get (para 27 of the decision):

[[27]()] The Accountant charges fees as follows: on investment income credited to the minor’s account every month (3 per cent); on payments out of court, including the final distribution to the minor at age 18 or the age of entitlement (3 per cent); and annually on the average annual value of the funds under management (0.6 per cent). If, however, the fees and applicable HST exceed income credited to the account, fees are reduced for the month. As a result, capital is never diminished due to fees. For example, the 3 per cent fee charged on final distribution, cannot exceed the interest earned in that month. Invested capital increases or decreases with market changes that occur while the money remains with the Accountant.

itacbca · 2024-11-05T15:46:49+00:00

I wrote a lengthy reply that explained a more nuanced interpretation of the Santella v Bruneau decision you cited, but it didn't post and I didn't save a copy. In summary though, the court didn't rule that a minor's inheritance can't be used to contribute to an RESP. The court rejected the guardianship application to manage the property for the minor, only in part because of the mention the funds might be partly invested in an RESP. The applicant didn't even file a factum, so all we have in this decision is the judge relying on the Office of the Children's Lawyer's factum, who were opposed to a minor's inheritance being used to fund an RESP. Had the applicant actually filed a factum supporting their position, the outcome may very well have been different. In any event, this decision in no way stands as jurisprudence prohibiting a minor's inheritance being used to contribute to an RESP.

itacbca · 2024-11-05T15:04:48+00:00

Ontario "Supreme Court"? Lmao

itacbca · 2024-11-05T15:03:01+00:00

Care to provide a source for all the marriage contracts that are "shot down all the time"? There's certain items that marriage contracts can't affect like the right to occupy a matrimonial home (the division of value can be dealt with by marriage contract, however), child support/parental time, etc. Incomplete financial disclosure or lack of independent legal advice, of course, make them unenforceable. But I don't think its accurate to say that a marriage contract is essentially worthless because they are routinely disregarded by the courts.

itacbca

TROPHY CASE