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Making biased free financial decisions is challenging. As investors, we’re forced to confront our own emotions each time we make decisions. And, biases crop up and quietly work against us. Overconfidence, anchoring, and confirmation biases are some of the powerful…
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Beyond Returns: Aligning Wealth With Values
When families think about their investments, they often focus on financial returns alone. But for many families today, that isn’t enough. They want their wealth to reflect their values, to become a force for good in the world. Not just…
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Active Returns, Benchmarks, and the Truth About Performance
Many investors describe their portfolio performance in raw returns, like, “my portfolio made 15% last year” or “my portfolio gained $300,000”. While such statements may be true, they don’t tell us the whole story. And cannot tell us whether results…
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Family Governance: The Missing Link Between Wealth and Legacy
For many families, the challenge isn’t just how to grow wealth. It’s how to make it last. Generational wealth is often lost not because of poor investment decisions, but because of a lack of structure, clarity, and shared understanding. This…
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Stop Paying More for Less: Why Pension Funds Underperform their Benchmarks
OMERS recently announced its mid-year investment results: a 2.2 % return in the first half of 2025 (Financial Post; OMERS update). The press release emphasizes “a challenging market” and “resilient performance” but let’s be honest: if your retirement savings grew…
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Stage 1: Getting Started with a New Family
When a new family begins working with us, we know that the first stage of onboarding sets the tone for everything that follows. It’s not just about transferring data it’s about building trust, creating clarity, and laying the groundwork for…
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Investing Through Discomfort
Why Emotional Fortitude Matters Now More Than Ever Despite a growing list of global concerns such as geopolitical tension, trade uncertainty, and an uneasy economic backdrop, the S&P 500 has reached new all-time highs. For many investors, this feels hard…
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Emotions and Investing: What’s More Important: How You Feel or What You Earn?
Many novice investors assume the goal is simple: “make the most money”. But things rarely turn out this way. Even though we want the best outcomes, we often make decisions that that prioritize emotional comfort instead. Whether it’s the desire…
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Income That’s Built to Last
Step 4 – Why Selling Assets Shouldn’t Be Your Income Plan When a portfolio needs to fund a lifestyle, many investors fall into a quiet trap: generating cash by selling off assets. On the surface, it seems harmless. And, it might…
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Restructuring Fees and Aligning Incentives
Step 3 – The Real Cost of Complexity When we conducted a full audit of the family’s portfolio, the most jaw-dropping figure wasn’t performance-related. It was the fees: $330,000 per year. And they weren’t even getting full value for it—until…