Independent financial planning
Planning your wealth around your family’s needs
With a focus on financial planning in Canada, we consider assets, liabilities, cash flow, retirement and estate plans together, connecting the resources you have with your family’s future needs.
A whole-picture view, with room for change
An asset’s suitability depends not only on its performance, but also on the role it plays in your family’s finances.
We consider assets, liabilities, income and future spending together: when money will be needed, where wealth is concentrated, and how existing arrangements support longer-term plans.
Planning involves trade-offs between growth, liquidity and risk—using available resources to support your family’s needs while leaving room to adapt.
How assets relate to one another
Markowitz’s portfolio theory provides an important foundation for understanding how assets relate to one another: the risk of a portfolio depends not only on how much each asset fluctuates on its own, but also on how the assets move together. It is one of the main references we draw on when considering asset allocation and diversification.
Household planning also has to take in cash needs, tax, retirement and estate considerations, and diversification cannot remove every risk.
Harry Markowitz set out the theory in 1952 and, in 1990, shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with two other economists for pioneering work in the theory of financial economics.
Identify
Identify potential mismatches between assets, liabilities and funding needs across the household.
Measure
Use data and scenarios to estimate potential impacts and their range.
Mitigate
Compare practical adjustments, set priorities and allow for uncertainty.
Situations we help with
- Approaching retirement or changing work
- Understand whether current assets and future income can support the spending you expect.
- Wealth concentrated in property
- Consider whether to diversify and how to make changes over time.
- Managing your own investments
- Get broader analysis of questions involving tax, retirement or estate planning.
- A change in family circumstances
- Revisit existing financial arrangements in light of what the family needs now.
- Holding assets overseas
- Bring overseas funds, property and other resources into the overall plan where relevant.
Lucinda Xue
CFP® · CIWM® · CIM® · PFP®
Before founding Lucid, I spent more than seven years in Canadian wealth management, working at BMO, Scotiabank Global Asset Management and Canaccord Genuity.
One advisor leads the overall planning work, coordinating with your accountant, lawyer and other professionals where needed.
Independent practice, bilingual in English and Chinese — not tied to any bank, insurer or investment firm; all compensation is disclosed in writing in advance.
Meet LucindaHow scenario testing informs your plan
Scenario testing explores how changes in markets, interest rates, spending and the timing of transfers could affect your plan.
How several years of lower asset values could affect withdrawals and longer-term goals.
Whether projected resources remain sufficient as the duration or cost of retirement changes.
How financing costs could affect cash flow and arrangements that rely on borrowing.
How lower property values or a longer selling period could affect access to funds.
What funds may be available for taxes, expenses and planned distributions.
We use Conquest for financial modelling, supplemented by analysis relevant to each family’s circumstances.
View a sample financial planThis is how we think about structure — not a promise of any outcome. Every family's situation is assessed individually.
Common questions
Each of them does their part well: this year’s return, the documents on file, the account they manage. The most expensive mistakes in cross-border families happen at the seams between them. A planner’s job is not to replace them — it is to put those professional opinions on one page.
There is no tax called an estate tax, but there is deemed disposition: at death, your assets are treated as sold at market value, and decades of gains settle on one final return — with any RRSP/RRIF balance included in full (a rollover to a spouse can usually defer this — deferral, not elimination). The bill arrives on a deadline; real estate and private company shares do not sell on one. What needs planning is liquidity at that moment, not the tax itself.
Real estate itself isn’t a problem — concentration is. Cash flow can get tight (rich on paper, stretched in practice); there’s little buffer when markets or policy turn; property is hard to divide at inheritance; and cross-border ownership stacks two sets of rules. Whether and how to adjust depends on your full picture — the property simulator on this site lets you see the effect of concentration for yourself.
Not sure where to start?
Share the questions you’re considering, and we’ll reply by email. You can also book an introductory conversation.