The plan gave them time to use.

Kevin and Barb came to Dixon Davis in their mid-sixties, about a year away from retirement. They had worked their entire lives, built a substantial real estate portfolio and accumulated investments, CPP and OAS benefits.

On paper, they had done well. What they needed to know was how to turn everything they had built into a retirement that actually worked.

Where they started

Kevin and Barb owned several rental properties, some personally and others through a corporation. They also had an investment portfolio of just under $1 million being managed through a bank.

Retirement was getting close, but there were still a lot of decisions to make. Where should their income come from? How could they make the transition as tax-efficient as possible? What should happen to the properties? And how could they use what they had built to help their two daughters?

What they were trying to figure out

One of the biggest questions was what to do with the rental properties.

Kevin and Barb had always imagined keeping them for their daughters as an inheritance. Emotionally, that made sense. They had spent years building those assets and liked the idea of eventually passing them on.

But both daughters had built successful lives elsewhere. One lived in Europe and the other in the United States.

So we challenged the assumption that keeping the properties was necessarily the best way to provide for them.

Bringing it together

Part of being a thought partner is sometimes asking the question that has not been asked yet.

We encouraged Kevin and Barb to talk directly with their daughters about what they actually wanted. The answer was surprisingly simple: neither daughter wanted the properties.

That changed the conversation.

When we also looked at the tax consequences of eventually transferring or disposing of the properties, particularly those held inside the corporation, it became clear that holding everything indefinitely came with a significant cost.

Instead of asking, “How do we preserve these properties for the kids?” we could ask a much more useful question:

How could Kevin and Barb use this wealth with their daughters while they were all here to enjoy it?

What changed

We built a property disposition schedule that laid out which properties to unwind, when to do it and what needed to happen along the way.

Some ownership changes required Kevin and Barb to pay approximately $60,000 in property transfer tax. Based on the planning projections, those changes were expected to reduce their lifetime income tax by more than $800,000.

Within six months, they sold one of the condos. The proceeds gave them additional resources to retire, begin travelling and start using more of the wealth they had spent decades building.

They also took their adult daughters on a family vacation and were able to pay for everyone.

Where they are now

This story ended in a way none of us could have planned for.

Barb had only about fourteen to sixteen months of retirement before she became suddenly ill and passed away.

During that time, Kevin and Barb travelled. They spent time together. And they took that major family trip with their daughters.

Without the planning, they may still have retired. But they very likely would have held onto more of the properties, delayed some of the spending and waited longer to do the things they had talked about doing someday.

They did not know how little time they would have.

The plan did not give Kevin and Barb more time. It helped them use the time they had.

That is one of the reasons retirement planning matters so much. The goal is not simply to finish life with the largest possible number on a balance sheet.

It is to understand what your money can make possible, make the decisions while you still have the opportunity, and use what you have built for the people and experiences that matter to you.