Adam Malcolm - IG Wealth Management

27/08/2026

Three things a good plan should let you stop thinking about.

I asked a client last month what changed for her after a year of working together.

She thought about it for a while. Then she said, "I think about money less."

I asked what that meant.

She said, "I used to check three different bank accounts before I'd buy concert tickets. I used to lie awake doing rough math on what we'd have at sixty-five. I used to feel a small wave of guilt every time I gave to the food bank because I didn't know if we could afford it."

Three things she had been carrying that the plan now carries instead.

The bank balance question, because we built the cashflow structure that handles it. The retirement number question, because we modelled it forward and revisit it twice a year. The giving question, because the giving is in the plan now, on purpose, with a budget that doesn't compete with the rest of life.

This is what integrated planning is for.

The Strategic Generosity Blueprint™ is the framework we use to hold all ten of the wealth drivers as one coherent plan. Retirement, tax, insurance, credit, estate, business, philanthropy, education, health, investments. All ten, working together, in a single plan.

When the plan holds those things, you stop having to.

That's the shift. That's the work.

If something on this list is still living in your head instead of in your plan, that's a worthwhile conversation.

When the plan holds it, you stop having to.

26/08/2026

Nobody plans to end up in a dispute with the CRA. And almost nobody knows what happens if they do.

On September 16 at noon, I'm interviewing Kendal Steele, tax litigator at LN Law, live for thirty minutes. I have no litigation background, and that's the point: I'm asking the five questions you need the answers on, just like any client would. That includes the one most people have never heard of: the economic entity audit. If you have an operating company and a holding company, that question alone is worth the half hour.

No slides. Ten minutes for your questions. A hard finish at 12:30.

Free registration: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/when-the-cra-comes-calling-tickets-1997910849132?aff=AFB1&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=lnlaw-sept16

This session is education, not financial or tax advice.

25/08/2026

What we do in the first 30 minutes, even when it isn't a fit.

This is a posture, not a sales pitch.

Every now and then I meet with someone who, after a real conversation, isn't a fit for the practice. Different stage. Different need. Sometimes a different set of goals altogether.

When that happens, my job isn't to find a way to onboard them anyway. My job is to do real work in the time we have, then route them toward the right next step.

Open up a planning conversation. Map the financial picture as it stands. Surface the question they didn't know to ask. Point them toward the people, places, or platforms that actually serve where they are.

It's how I was taught to do this work.

And here is the strange and consistent pattern. The people I refer out, more often than not, send people my way later. Sometimes years later. Sometimes the next week.

You can't engineer that with a script. You can only get it by doing real work in the only meeting most people remember, which is the first one.

If you've ever been pitched a financial product that didn't fit your life and walked away feeling like you'd been sold to, you know exactly what we're not doing here.

The first conversation has to earn the second. If it doesn't, no plan ever will.

Worth a conversation, fit or not.

21/08/2026

Back to school is a family money conversation. Most families miss it.

The pencils get bought. The textbooks get ordered. The schedule goes up on the fridge.

The conversation that doesn't happen, in the families I work with, is the one about money.

Not pocket money. Not allowance. The real one. What does this household earn, and where does it go, and what are we choosing as a family. What does saving look like. What does giving look like. What does enough look like.

I've watched families with substantial wealth send their kids to university without ever having said any of that out loud.

The kids inherit the silence. Then they inherit the money. Then they inherit the questions no one ever modelled how to answer.

A few research points worth knowing.

Roughly 70% of all estate plans fail - full-stop - by the second generation. The leading cause, according to long-running research by The Williams Group tracking more than three thousand families across two decades, is the breakdown of family trust and communication. Not investments.

What works, in the families that defy the pattern, is shockingly simple. They talked.

Back to school is one of the few moments each year where the rhythm of the family changes enough that a new conversation can fit. A walk after dinner. A morning at the cottage before the day starts. The drive to dropping off at residence.

You don't need a script. You need to start.

The conversation matters more than the document.

20/08/2026

In 2019 I was tending bar between auditions, trying to make it as an opera singer.

Someone asks me some version of the same question every few weeks now: how did you get from there to here?

Usually I have 10 seconds to answer that... but today I have a bit longer.

There are three moments in it.

The first was reading a book called The Millionaire Teacher and realizing financial freedom wasn't only for artists who got a big break.

The second was Friday, March 13, 2020. My partner and I were laid off on the same day, and that afternoon our landlord called asking when we could move out. Overnight we went from two good incomes to zero, and possibly nowhere to live. The emergency fund I'd built without fully knowing why bought us four months — that was the week I stopped thinking of cash as something that just sits there.

The third was a restaurant patio in June 2020. I was recommending wine to a family, mentioned I was trying to get into wealth management, and the husband reached into his jacket and handed me a business card... for IG Wealth Management.

What I couldn't see at the time is that the arts had already trained me for this work. On stage you have to listen to the person in front of you and respond to what they're actually doing, not to what you rehearsed.

That turns out to be the most important part of this job too.

A lot of you have joined since I first wrote this down, so I'm sending it round again.

If we haven't properly met yet, this is the version worth reading 👇

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-high-notes-high-impact-adam-malcolm-mfa-p-cfp-ris-cu1tc/

Or..

18/08/2026

A client said this at the cottage last summer. "I think we're there."

He didn't mean rich. He didn't mean retired. He meant something quieter than either.

He meant the mortgage was gone. The kids had launched. The portfolio had grown past the number that used to feel like a finish line. The number had stopped mattering as much as he expected it would.

He spent thirty years climbing. He hadn't noticed when climbing wasn't the right verb anymore.

This moment, when accumulation quietly stops being the question and stewardship becomes it, is one of the most important transitions in a financial life. Most people miss it. They keep planning for the next ten percent of growth when the harder, more interesting work is figuring out what the wealth is now for.

A retirement income strategy designed for security and dignity. An estate plan that says what you actually mean. A giving plan that lets you watch the impact while you're still here. A health and energy plan that lets you enjoy the years you worked for.

The Strategic Generosity Blueprint™ exists for exactly this moment. It's the framework that turns "I think we're there" into "and here is what we're doing about it."

If you've started to wonder whether you've crossed that line, that's a worthwhile question to sit with this summer.

Worth a conversation when 'we're there' starts to feel true.

13/08/2026

When your heirs live in three time zones.

A common shape for Canadian families when the kids grow up. One stayed in Canada. One built a life in London. One settled in Paris or New York.

You can love every one of them equally and still leave them an estate that creates problems for each of them in different ways.

Here are three.

1. Estate tax doesn't disappear because Canada doesn't have one... The US, the UK, France, and several other countries do and the dreaded "situs assets" (i.e. physical or legal location of your assets) can really matter here.

2. Probate timelines stretch when assets, beneficiaries, or executors sit in different jurisdictions. What takes nine months in Canada can take two or three years across borders - not to mention what happens when you need to physically go and sign some paperwork... and you live an 8-hour flight away?

3. Trusts that work in Canadian planning may not be recognised in other countries, or they may cause added complication to your family's estate plan.

This is one of those areas where the Canadian-only will, written by a Canadian-only lawyer, leaves your family with work you didn't intend for them.

There are real options: Multiple wills in each jurisdiction, asset structuring that anticipates the path the money will travel, Coordination between Canadian and foreign professionals, insurance positioned to provide liquidity in the right hands at the right time.

If your family has scattered, your plan should know.

Heirs scatter. Plans should anticipate that.

11/08/2026

Planning as a verb, not a noun.

I say this all the time to clients, and I just might even get it tattooed on my forehead (don't bet on that though!)

A plan, as a noun, is a document. A binder. A deck of slides. Something you signed once and may not have read since.

A "financial plan" that's just this is really only a projection - nothing more.

Planning, as a verb, is what actually changes outcomes.

It's the second meeting where you look at the same numbers with new context. It's the call when a job offer comes in and you need to model what saying yes actually costs over five years. It's the conversation with your accountant in June, not March, because June is when there's still time to act on what you see... it's ultimately the follow-through and implementation where plan becomes verb.

Most people I meet have had a plan written for them. Far fewer have had planning done with them.

The plan that gets written once and filed lives in a state of slow decay. The world keeps moving. The plan doesn't.

This is why our work doesn't end at the kickoff meeting. It begins there.

If you have a plan that lives in a drawer, and your financial life has changed since you signed it, that's worth a conversation.

A living plan beats a binder every time.

06/08/2026

What actually happens to your cottage in Ontario when the second parent passes?

When you die in Canada, the CRA treats it as though - the second before you died - you sat up in bed and yelled "sell everything!"... and all your property will be taxed as though that were true.

So, if the cottage has appreciated since you bought it, that gain becomes taxable income in your final return.

Three nuances most people don't realise.

One. The principal residence exemption can shelter one property per family per year. If you've already designated your city home as your principal residence for those years, the cottage's gain is fully taxable.

Two. If your spouse outlives you, you can usually defer the tax through the spousal rollover. The capital gain then lands on the second death. The bill doesn't go away. It moves.

Three. Joint ownership with adult children is often suggested as a fix. It can create more problems than it solves. Probate may be avoided on that asset, but income tax, family law exposure, and creditor risk all shift in ways that need a real plan, not a workaround.

There are good options. Each one trades different costs against different protections.

A family trust. A planned sale at fair market value. Insurance designed to fund the eventual tax bill. A staggered transfer over years. Just some of the ideas and strategies that can be used.

What doesn't work is silence and a hope and a dream that things will work out.

If the cottage is part of your estate, the planning is worth the cost of a conversation.

A real plan beats a hopeful workaround.

05/08/2026

Why don't we talk about the cottage until it's too late?

The dock is full. Three generations of the family. Kids in life jackets. Parents reading. Grandparents watching the light change on the water.
..but nobody is talking about what happens to the cottage when this generation is gone.

I see this every summer. Families who have done well, who built or bought a place that's become the centre of family memory, and who have never had a single direct conversation about how it carries forward.

Sometimes it's because the parents assume the kids know. Sometimes it's because they assume the kids want it. Sometimes it's because they don't want to ruin the weekend...

Then, someone dies.

The cottage goes to two siblings jointly. One wants to keep it. One wants to sell. But, there's also a third inheritor: the CRA and they want their tax on the capital gains... and guess who gets their way if there isn't the right planning in place?

So, the cottage gets sold to cover the tax, and what was meant to be a gift becomes a wound.

None of this is rare, but most of it is preventable.

The families I work with who have done this well share one thing in common. The conversation happened while everyone was still on the dock together.

It didn't have to be long. It didn't have to be polished. It just had to happen.

If the cottage is part of your family story, this is the right summer to talk about what you want it to mean ten and twenty years from now.

Something to think about while you're at the dock this summer… start the conversation.