Michael Squires, Senior Wealth Advisor at CIBC Wood Gundy

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Michael Squires, Senior Wealth Advisor at CIBC Wood Gundy

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Senior Wealth Advisor and founder of Squires Wealth Advisory Group - CIBC Wood Gundy

https://www.cibc.com/content/dam/pwm-public-assets/documents/pdfs/social-media-disclaimer.pdf

03/09/2026

Haters will definitely say this picture is fake…

But, since I have your attention:

Ten people at a dinner party: six have no workplace pension, five aren’t invested in the market at all, and three have never saved a dollar for retirement.

Make that table Canadians aged 55 to 64 and four of them have less than $5,000 saved not $500,000, five thousand. The pension era is over and nobody sent a memo.

My ask: don’t be the person without the plan. Start something.

02/09/2026

I am very excited to announce, I’m HIRING again!

“Squires Wealth Advisory Group is adding another assistant to the team in Wolfville. This will be our third, and that’s the part I’m most excited about. Three assistants means we can specialize instead of having everyone do a little of everything. Each person owns a defined set of responsibilities, and clients get support from someone whose job is that specific thing.

We strive to provide white glove service for our clients. More support is how we keep meeting that standard as the practice grows. So we’re thinking ahead and adding capacity now.

If you’re organized to a fault, genuinely like people, and want to build a career in wealth management, send me a message. Licensing helps (but not required). Attitude and judgment are what really matter!”

If that sounds like you, or someone you know, send me a message and I’ll pass along the application link!

27/08/2026

Quit a job I didn’t like at 20-something. Came back to Wolfville with nothing lined up. Got the opportunity of a lifetime.

Not having it figured out at 24 is normal. It’s the default, actually. Nobody’s ahead of you.

Been reading Jack Raines’ Young Money. His point: time is the one currency you can’t earn back. Real wealth isn’t status - it’s optionality.

The move isn’t about creating certainty in life, that doesn’t exist in your 20s. It’s a rough road map for life. Know what this stage is for building skills, saving a base, taking the risk while it’s cheap to take and know roughly when the next stage starts.

You don’t need the whole plan. You need to know what you’re doing right now, and why.

Start early and you get to live early. Wait for “later” and later shows up whether you planned for it or not.

17/07/2026

As I have mentioned before, sport and specifically Acadia Football (& Acadia University) has shaped my life in ways I’ll always be grateful for!

As a way to give back, I founded The 2011-2012 Football Champions Award, celebrating the two Atlantic University Sport conference championships won by the Acadia Axemen in 2011 and 2012 - both teams I had the privilege of playing on.

Presented to a football student-athlete, in any year of eligibility, who shows a strong commitment to excellence in his sport and leadership on the team and in the community - while maintaining good academic standing. Recipients are recommended by the Head Coach of the Varsity Football program. The inaugural disbursement will be for the 2026-27 academic year.

We’re off to a great start with $8,000 raised so far thanks to the generosity of teammates, supporters, and friends of those championship teams. But with tuition costs continuing to rise, and the competitive landscape in USports becoming more expensive, every additional dollar makes a real difference for the program.

If you’re interested in supporting the next generation of Axemen, I’d love to hear from you! Please send me a message to learn more or to contribute.

09/06/2026

Where does the time go? That used to be me. Acadia. Number 5.

I’ve debated this post for a long time, and almost 16 years after my final game, I guess it’s time….

For years that was the whole answer to “who are you?” The scoreboard told me if I mattered. The touchdowns, the championships, the All-Canadians, the CFL opportunities - that was the proof.

Then one day it ended. And no one tells you how loud the silence is.

The hardest stretch of my life wasn’t a loss on the field. It was the year after the cleats came off. No locker room, no Saturday, no way to know if I was winning. The thing that defined me for most of my life was gone overnight.

What softened the fall was coaching. The win stopped being mine - a good day became whether a player I worked with got better. That was the bridge from being the athlete to serving one. I just didn’t realize I was training for my career.

So if you’re a young athlete who played their last game, convinced the best is behind you: it isn’t. The discipline, the resilience, the way you show up — none of it retires. It just changes uniforms. The game leaves. What it built in you doesn’t. You’ll stand on it for the rest of your life.

What I didn’t see coming…. In my own career, I watch the identity crisis I had at 22 play out in the clients I serve at 60. The owner who just sold. The executive walking into retirement. Who am I now that I’m not that? The money is rarely the hard part. It’s the silence after the last one — and helping people through it turned out to be the whole job.

I’ve lived that silence. I know it passes.

05/06/2026

I was told sponsoring this hole would guarantee me a mulligan.…

01/06/2026

I’ve said it before — life is too short not to enjoy it.

“But Mike, if we do that, how will we retire?”

There are two ways to save more for retirement.

You can spend less. Or you can earn more.

I’ve made a post like this before, but we spend almost all our energy on the first one. Skip the trip. Pack the lunch. Put off the renovation. Those choices can matter(ish) over the long term— but past a certain point, you’re not trimming waste anymore. You’re trimming your life.

So what’s the solution?

The lever most people underuse is the other one: their own earning power.

Upgrading a skill.

Taking on the harder file that earns more commision.

Asking for the raise you’ve quietly already earned.

Side hustles IMO are case by case — some work, some don’t. Do your research and tread wisely.

A $10,000 income bump — banked rather than absorbed into lifestyle — compounds into something far larger than the coffee you talked yourself out of buying.

Here’s the discipline that makes it work: grow the income, hold the lifestyle roughly steady, bank the difference. That’s the whole game. A raise you immediately spend doesn’t move you any closer to retirement. A raise you save does.

The goal was never to arrive at retirement having skipped your thirties, forties and fifties to get there. It’s to fund the future without forfeiting the present.

So before you cut one more experience out of your life, ask the harder question: what would it take to be worth more?

16/05/2026

As I sit in the trunk potty training my son, I can’t help but notice the parallels to building wealth. I’m grasping at straws here, but stick with me for minute…

Consistency beats intensity. Daily reps. Boring routines. Compounding.

Setbacks are part of the process. Accidents happen.

So do drawdowns. The plan is to keep going through them, not avoid them.

Systems beat motivation. Sticker charts and scheduled breaks for a toddler.

Automatic contributions and scheduled reviews for a portfolio. Remove decisions, increase results.

Emotion is the enemy. The calmest parent in the room wins. So does the calmest investor.

You’re not training for today — you’re training for independence.

Same with a retirement plan. The work isn’t for next quarter’s statement. It’s so future-you has options.

The discipline that gets your toddler out of diapers is the same discipline that builds a confident retirement.

It works at 3. It works at 63.

Show up.
Stay the course.
Trust the process.

I can definitely help with the wealth building part, but need some work on the potty training 🤣

12/05/2026

Yesterday’s post on living life and saving with purpose clearly struck a nerve — the engagement was a good reminder that people are hungry for real conversations about financial resilience, not just market commentary, and messages about saving more.

Here’s one that deserves the same attention. Maybe more.

If you’re under 45 with a young family, your biggest asset isn’t your house. It isn’t your RRSP. It isn’t your business.
It’s your human capital — every paycheque you haven’t earned yet.

For a younger person earning a good income, that’s $4M–$6M of future income walking out the door every morning. It funds the mortgage, the RESPs, the retirement, the legacy.

And it’s the one asset most people leave completely uninsured.

We insure the house. The car. The boat. But the income paying for all of it? Often nothing — or thin group coverage that vanishes the day you change jobs.

A healthy 35-year-old can lock in $1M of 20-year term for the price of a streaming subscription. The math is embarrassingly in your favour — if you act while you’re young and healthy. One diagnosis, one new prescription, and the cheapest options are off the table permanently.

If you’re in your 30s or 40s with kids at home and have never had someone quantify what your family would actually need if you weren’t here — that’s a gap, not a preference. Small cost. Catastrophic downside.

Think about it.

I’ve seen the benefit of a large insurance policy first hand. The stress about money — gone.

That’s what the right coverage actually buys. Not a payout. Peace.

The best time was at 25. The second-best time is before you finish reading this.

AtlanticCanada

11/05/2026

Unpopular opinion from a financial advisor:

Buy the latte, go on the family trip… Life is short.

The version of you that exists today — with these kids, at this age, in this season — only exists once.

I’ve spent my career telling clients the opposite of what most advisors say - because I’m living a life too.

Skip the $5 coffee?
Cancel the trip?
Stop eating out?
No.

If you save $5 a day for 30 years, you’ll retire with an extra $180K and a lifetime of resentment.

That’s not a plan.
That’s a punishment.
Real financial planning isn’t about restriction — it’s about ALIGNMENT. It’s about have a realistic plan that doesn’t suck the fun out of life!

Save aggressively for the things that matter.

Spend freely on the things that bring you joy.

Cut ruthlessly on everything in between.

I have young kids.

And I’ll tell you the truth — I’m not waiting until I’m 65 to enjoy my life with them. The trip we took this year?
They’ll remember it forever.

The Saturday morning “daddy are you getting coffee” , the ice cream after dinner, the random pizza night?

That’s the stuff that builds a childhood.

You don’t get those years back.

There is no “catch up” on being present.

The clients I see retire happiest aren’t the ones who deprived themselves for 40 years. They’re the ones who took the trip with their kids while their kids still wanted to come.

They’re the ones who renovated the kitchen they cook in every night — and skipped the boat they’d use twice a summer.

They’re the ones who knew the difference between what looked good and what felt good.

You don’t build wealth by hating your life.

You build it by knowing exactly what you’re building it for.

Save with intention.

Spend with intention.

Happy life!

Address

Telephone

+19024995310

Website

http://www.larsonsquiresadvisorygroup.com/

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