Tim Chesnutt – Owner/Founder & Chief Advisor
I owned a Financial Planning Firm for the best part of twenty years. My Practice dealt primarily with Incorporated Professionals and Small Business Owners. We did comprehensive Financial Planning and our effort was focused on where we and the clients could have the most impact. Cash flow planning, debt reduction, buying and selling houses or cars, negotiating employment contracts, phantom share arrangements, and also severance packages. Making sure they only had the insurance they needed and that they paid as little as possible for it. Basically making sure that their money was working to support what was important in their lives – what ever that might be.
I often set up Health & Welfare Trusts for clients that were spending their own dollars on their family’s health care. I found that although having a Health & Welfare Trust would benefit any Canadian taxpayer earning more than $39,000/yr., no-one else wanted to set them up.
Most financial advisors are so focused on only investments and have so many clients, they don’t have time to look at the big picture and understand the benefits of Health & Welfare Trust.
Most Benefits Consultants, Insurance Agents, and Health Insurance companies would rather sell a Group Health Insurance Plan, or a Personal Health Insurance Plan where they make 35-40% gross profit, rather than setting up a Heath & Welfare Trust where there is only 10% gross profit.
These plans have been around since 1986. They are well known within the industry, but very few advisors want to talk about them to their clients – even though the math is simple – every Canadian who spends personal dollars on Health Care and is in the second tax bracket or higher, can save significant tax dollars this year, next year, and every year until they stop earning income by simply setting up a Health & Welfare Trust.
So I saw the opportunity to build a site where we could communicate directly with the tax-payer on how these programs work. From that simple start, we now have clients in 8 of 10 provinces. We see a lot of our visitors are not just Canadian taxpayers looking to save on their health care costs, but are financial advisors and others in the industry wanting to better understand how these products work, and how to best utilize these accounts with their own clients.
Setting up Health & Welfare Trusts (and the related Personal Health Spending Plans) is all we do. It’s what we are good at. If you spend personal dollars on your Family’s Health Care, and if you pay Canadian Income Taxes, we’d like to talk to you – we can save you a lot of tax – this year, next year, and for as long as you continue to earn income, pay taxes, and pay your own dollars on health care.
Tim Chesnutt