Understanding US and Canadian Financial Planning: A Comprehensive Guide

Welcome to Passport to Wealth.

I'm your host, Arielle Tucker, certified financial planner and fellow US Expat.

On this show, we bring together cross border experts and global Americans to help you make confident decisions about your life, your money and your next move abroad.

Let's get started.

Welcome back to Passport to Wealth.

I'm your host, Arielle Tucker and today's guest is Lucas Vennersen, a chartered financial analyst, which is a CFA and a certified financial planner, CFP licensed in both the United States and and Canada, specializing in cross border financial planning.

With over a decade of experience, Lucas helps individuals and families navigate the financial, tax and investment complexities that arise when their lives span both sides of the US Canadian border.

Through his firm, 49th Parallel Wealth Management, he supports dual citizens, expats and globally mobile professionals with integrated planning that aligns investment retirement and tax strategy across jurisdictions.

Lucas brings a rare dual credential cross border perspective to wealth management, helping clients make confident decisions in an increasingly global world.

Lucas, thank you so much for joining us today on Passport to Wealth.

Absolutely.

Thank you for having me.

So I'm so I, we were just talking because you're based right now in Arizona, but I grew up right near the border and right near the Canadian border in western New York.

And so I knew a lot of people going across that border living that cross border life from a very young age.

I'm really curious, can you tell us a little bit about your kind of personal and professional journey and how did you actually come to specialize in U.S. canada Cross border financial planning?

Traditionally, you know, growing up and stuff.

I have no ties to Canada.

I have much deeper ties to Canada now.

But I was originally attracted to financial planning in general just for US Citizens.

When I graduated college, I started working for my parents construction company and I started doing my USCFP work back in 2004 at that time.

So I worked through my CFP course over the next couple years.

I ended up finishing in 2007 and went to work for a US brokerage firm which was in November 2007 if you remember, you know, what the timing was like back then.

That was the kind of when the great Recession hit and that was actually the month where the market peaked.

So I was 24 or 25 years old, you know, spent the next year cold calling for the most part trying to, you know, round up clients and stuff like that.

And it was a rough year.

You know, I got much tougher skin that year.

But I ended up leaving and going to a large bank, made my way over to the mortgage department there, and everything was going well.

I was there for about eight years.

I was in Southern California, and so I was pretty happy.

But, you know, things have changed personally for me.

I got married, my wife had gotten pregnant.

I was looking for something else to do and I had already done all my USCFP work.

And then I just ended up getting a chance to join a cross border financial planning firm.

It sounded like a really cool opportunity.

It sounded interesting working with expats and people that were dealing with cross border complexities.

And so I jumped at the opportunity, not really knowing exactly what I was getting into at the time.

I had done all my USCFP work, but I had never sat for the examination.

I knew I was going to have to do the Canadian CFP work.

I didn't necessarily have to do the cfa.

That was something I decided to do on my own later.

But I joined the firm, ended up finishing my USCFP and my Canadian cfp.

And once I got into it, I just fell in love with it.

You know, financial planning is complex and it's very helpful for people.

I love helping people.

So once I started, you know, learning both sides of the border and the treaties and how everything works, I really fell in love with it.

Since then, my family has moved to Toronto.

In 2009, I ended up having my youngest son.

Asher was born up there in 2019.

He's six now, so he's a dual citizen.

And of course, I'm running my own.

Can I stop you right there?

I just want to have a side note here.

Was he a dual citizen when he was born?

Like, was he eligible for Canadian citizenship by birth because he was born in Canada?

I just want to point out the uniqueness of that.

Right.

Because most countries don't have automatic citizenship.

Like, my daughter was born in Switzerland.

She's not a Swiss citizen.

There's a separate process for that and that's how a lot of countries operate.

So I just want to say that's really interesting that Canada still has that automatic citizenship.

Yeah, it's, I mean, I think it's really cool.

And politically down here in the United States, they're talking about doing, know, making people choose their citizenship.

The Exclusive Citizenship act is what it's called.

And so that, from my perspective, that would be really unfortunate.

My, my son is six.

He can't choose, you know, he doesn't have an option.

We live here in Arizona.

So if they did go through with that, he would have to give up his Canadian citizenship, which, you know, they're not pushing for.

You Know, it's the country that he was born in, so I think that would be unfortunate.

But, yeah, it's.

It's a really cool thing that he's able to have dual citizenship.

So we went ahead and got both of his passports, and, you know, now we have to deal with updating all the time.

It's funny because his passport pictures are from when he was an infant.

It's six now.

Oh, wow.

How long is a Canadian passport good for?

We're gonna have to review it this year.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think I just want to.

Because you mentioned that act that came up.

A lot of people have been talking about that, but I think it's a good point to just also acknowledge that in a lot of other countries, you also can't have multiple citizenships unless you have, like, a very specific clause.

Like, maybe you had one parent was, you know, a Dutch citizen and another one was a German citizen, and then you'd be able to keep, like, both.

But a lot of countries, you're only allowed to have allegiance to one country.

And so I'm not saying I'm.

I'm pro or against this, you know, citizenship allegiance bill, but it's just.

It's something that's interesting that doesn't exist in other countries right now.

That's interesting.

That must be mostly a European thing or, you know, other parts of the world other than North America, because I run into people all the time that are dual citizens in Canada, uk, Australia, you know, Mexico, you know, places in South America.

Yeah, it's interesting.

We.

There was a repeal in Germany, I think, two years ago now.

And so until then, you weren't able to be a dual citizen.

The Netherlands is another example where you can't be dual citizen.

So it's something that's been kind of changing and relaxing in some countries, I think in some Asian countries as well, you have to choose.

Like China.

I know as well.

You.

You have to.

You can only pick one.

It.

It's just obviously so different for Americans because we are tied financially to the US Tax system as citizens, where in every other country, like your.

Your son who's Canadian, he's not paying Canadian taxes, or he wouldn't pay Canadian taxes or file a Canadian tax return if he's living in the US Correct?

That is correct.

And I run into that a lot for U.S. citizens or people that are born to U.S. citizens in Canada that never really had any personal ties to the U.S. but because of the way the U.S. taxation, taxation system works, they find out later in life that they are responsible for filing U.S. tax returns, they've been responsible for reporting worldwide income.

And so that can cause some problems, particularly for people who are executives and have things like stock options where they're going to be taxed differently in both countries.

So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's a big reason, you know, why people reach out to me is for things like that, you know, obviously moving across the border.

But these days, you know, in this kind of globally mobile world, people are getting inheritances, you know, in different countries all over the world.

And that introduces cross border complexities for them.

So it happens in all different kinds of ways.

But, you know, at the end of the day, people need to understand that, you know, when you are dealing with cross border issues, it is much different.

And even if you do, you know, a lot of research in the other country about the tax laws and stuff like that, typically the tax treaties are going to override domestic tax law.

And so you really need to be familiar with all of it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I want to really get into some of the meat of U.S. canadian taxation because, you know, I love that.

But I want to take one step back because I really want to highlight the differences between the CFA and the cfp.

Because it sounds like you hold the CFP in two countries.

Correct.

You have the Canadian one and the US one.

That's very impressive.

Is one harder than the other, just out of curiosity?

Yeah, I thought so.

I mean, maybe it's just because I'm an American by birth and that's what I'm used to, but I found the Canadian test to be quite a bit harder.

They changed the form on the US test where it's all multiple choice now and it's still a very challenging test.

But on the Canadian test there's fill in the blank and you know, those types of questions.

So that can be a little bit more challenging.

And particularly from Canada and the US and I'm not real familiar with Europe and other places, but the terminology that they use in Canada and the US is very similar.

And that can make things very confusing, you know, so when you're really used to one and then you start learning about a different system where they still have interest, they still have dividends, you know, they still have capital gains, you know, stuff like that, they're still called wills and powers of attorney up there, you know, and so it seems very similar, but it's not.

There's nuances that you need to be aware of because really with, with cross border issues, there are a lot of landmines that you can step on and cause yourself, you know, a lot of, a lot of pain.

But a lot of it's about opportunity costs.

You know, you don't know what you don't know.

And if you don't, you know, do your planning properly, you can be missing out on money that you don't even know.

Oh, totally.

It's all about the right questions.

And you raise a really good point about words being similar but the concepts not translating.

And I see that all the time in every country.

We think we're having a conversation about one thing.

We're both talking about something different because we're both our backgrounds and our basis is completely different.

And so we're coming to a conversation, but we're not understanding the other person's background.

I mean, that applies to so many things in life, but for sure, in cross border financial planning.

Okay, one more question.

So cfa, talk to me a little bit about what the CFA and why that's important that you have that in your firm.

Yeah.

So the CFP is focused on financial planning, comprehensive financial planning.

The CFA is a little bit different in that it does cover some topics in financial planning.

It's got a pretty big tax section and accounting section, but it's primarily focused on investments, valuing securities, you know, things like that.

And so the CFA is a little bit more versatile in the jobs that you can perform once you get it.

Wealth management is obviously one of them.

And you know, portfolio management is a huge part of the CFA program.

But you know, a lot of people work for corporations trying to figure out how many widgets to make, you know, here and there.

You know, people work in economics.

And so it's a lot more versatile as far as what you can do with it after the fact.

But you were asking about difficulty of tests and the CFA is the three part series, so you got to take three separate tests.

Usually they're offered twice a year.

So it can take a long time, particularly if you don't pass all the tests the first time to get through the program.

And I would say that all three of the CFA exams are harder than both of the CFP tests that I took.

Everyone I know with a cfa, I have so much respect when I see those credentials because I know that is a very difficult exam.

So anyways, kudos to you and you talked a little bit about tax, because I know the CFA and the CFP designation has sections on tax.

And I'm curious, like for me, I always find one of the main pillars of cross border financial planning is tax.

And I'm curious, is that your understanding as well or is that what your takeaway has been in cross border financial planning?

Absolutely, yeah.

It's, it's the tax treaties are what really change things the most.

There's a totalization agreement between Canada and the U.S. that deals with their government pensions, Canada pension plan, old age security and Social Security as far as eligibility and qualifications and how it works once you start taking distributions and stuff like that.

But yeah, the tax treaties are extremely important, not just for tax itself, but how investments are dealt with and things like that.

It also, you know, we'll start talking about how the taxation of different pensions from different areas in Canada, they have things called income splitting.

So, you know, it'll deal with those types of things.

So, yeah, the tax is very important.

Thankfully, the first two firms that I worked for before starting my own both did taxes on both sides of the border.

So I was part of the tax team on both at both of those firms, personally prepared tax returns on both sides of the border for eight years.

And to be honest with you, not my favorite thing to do.

It's not something that I plan on doing personally going forward.

But my firm does offer tax prep assistance on both sides of the border.

But we basically contract CPAs to get the work done.

That's a great service that you offer your clients.

That's amazing.

Yeah, a lot of our clients are elderly.

They don't want more work to do, and some of them can be more technologically challenged.

And so that's really where that came from, is more of a convenience service where clients wanted to have somewhere where they could go and get everything done all at once.

And so it's not really a separate business for us, but we do facilitate for our clients.

Oh, wonderful.

Okay, so you've kind of like alluded to some of the treaties and some of the different planning opportunities between U.S. and Canada.

Can you run us through an example or some of the common issues that you see for your clients going between us and Canada?

Yeah, probably the biggest thing is not planning for the fact that you're not allowed to file joint tax returns in Canada.

So in the U.S. married couples typically file one tax return, a joint tax return, which means you can combine your income, provider deductions, all that kind of stuff.

In Canada, there is no such thing as a joint tax return.

So everybody files their own return.

And so for people that are married moving to Canada, that creates a big change and a lot of planning opportunities, particularly for people where there's a big discrepancy in income, one spouse makes significantly more than the other.

So if you can imagine when you go to Canada and you're looking at tax rates that are potentially over 50%, if you have one, one spouse that's paying all of the tax, you're going to be paying a lot more tax than if you were to do some restructuring of your assets and maybe some gifting and try to either equalize things or shift things in a way where the lower income spouse can start, you know, paying the income tax on your investment income, whether it's stock, securities, rental income, all that kind of stuff, you can, you can restructure the ownership of your assets.

So that's a big thing.

Each country has their own kind of weird rules.

Canada has one in particular that's called the change of use beam disposition tax.

And so this happens sometimes where people will move from Canada to the U.S. for work purposes, it will rent out their property while they're gone, and then when they move back, they plan on moving into the same primary residence they had when they left.

But in this case, because it was rented out, in the meantime, there's a change of use deemed disposition.

So any gains that accrued between the time that they moved out and the time they moved back in become taxable when they make that change.

Wow.

Yeah, that's a big one.

And then another huge one that I see is estate planning.

You know, you've got two different estate, you know, planning estate.

Canada doesn't have, even have an estate tax per se.

It's a deemed disposition tax.

And so what happens in Canada is when you die, all of your taxable assets, all of your, you know, pensions, all that kind of stuff, they all become taxable on your final tax return.

So it's a lot different because in the US we have an estate tax and there's a, it's a huge estate tax exemption amount.

So most people don't even actually pay estate tax.

But when you go to Canada, you know, you're, you're a much different situation.

And unfortunately, when you're in a, you know, a country that has 50 plus percent combined tax rates, if your planning isn't done correctly and you're not, you know, you don't have enough forethought, you can run into a huge tax bill on your final tax return which will, you didn't see the inheritances and beneficiaries.

Wow.

Yeah.

Do you have a massive expensive exclusion at that deemed disposition or is there like, when you're filing that final estate tax return, do you have like any type of exclusion or it's just like everything has been sold.

Yeah, just everything's been sold.

In Canada you get a personal amount, so it's similar to a standard deduction.

So it's not a, it's not a huge exemption like you would get with a state tax exemption.

And that's why it's so expensive.

You know, if you're paying 53 Ontario and you've got, you know, a huge amount of capital gains and maybe an RSP with a million dollars in it, all of that is going to go on the final return.

And so you can see how that tax bill would really add up.

Okay, I don't know anything about Canada, but I have some more.

I just have some random questions that I keep thinking about, you know, how in the US we can, we have the, the unlimited marital spouse gifting.

So you can freely gift.

If you're married to a US Spouse, you can freely gift assets to your spouse.

Right.

Do we have that concept in Canada or do you have to.

Basically, if you're trying to even out assets, do you have to do all of that before you actually become resident in Canada?

You do, and there's not a gift tax per se in Canada, but there's income attribution rules, which means that basically, if it's not an arm's length transaction and you dip money to your spouse or other family members, the investment income that comes off of those assets is going to be attributed back to your tax return.

So you can gift it.

There's no gift tax, but it's not really going to do any good because all that income is going to be attributed back to you.

So yes, ideally when you move to Canada, they don't really know what you have until you get there and you start filing tax returns.

So until you become a Canadian resident, you can restructure your assets and do whatever you need to do to try to put yourself in the best position possible once you enter Canada to try to optimize your taxes going forward.

So all that gifting and restructuring or anything else needs to be done before you actually become a Canadian tax resident.

When you move to Canada and start filing your tax returns, you're going to put your entry date on your first tax return.

So that's the date that you need to kind of shoot for and make sure that everything is done before that.

Okay, if Canada is really high tax rates, way higher than US Tax rates.

So is there an interesting planning opportunity for Canadians to move down to the US for, for lower.

I Don't I always think of the, like the snowbirds, right, Coming down to Florida and Arizona.

Is there, is there an interesting tax incentive for them to be able to do that and break their residency in, in Canada for, for a period of time?

If you're, if you're comparing living in the US Versus living in Canada, you're almost always going to pay less tax living in the U.S. and obviously, just like I described, the estate tax regime is a lot better than the deemed disposition tax in Canada.

The problem is that when you leave Canada, there's also a deemed disposition tax.

So if you have that, you know, huge brokerage account with a lot of gains in it and stuff like that, that all would become taxable in the year that you leave Canada.

So it's not quite as bad as the deemed disposition at death because, for example, like your retirement accounts are not going to be deemed disposed of if you leave Canada.

You can leave those in Canada.

You can have them managed in Canada.

The Canada U.S. tax tree will kind of govern, you know, what happened to taxation after that.

But yeah, so there can be a big cost just by virtue of leaving Canada.

And that's, you know, kind of a big hurdle for some people.

And I would argue that finances is usually not the thing that drives people across the border.

It's usually family and job opportunities and, you know, other personal things because, you know, it's nice to be able to save tax on, save some money on tax.

But there's so much more to lines, you know what I mean?

It's more important than tax bill is at the end of the year.

So I would encourage people to focus on those things as well and make sure that if you're going to be moving across the border, that the lifestyle is going to fit, not just that it's a better tax situation.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I mean, in Canada, they have health care.

Right.

And that's part of paying your taxes and you have different benefits and university education is lower.

It's, it's a different system.

So you're kind of, you're paying for things in a, in a different way than we do in the U.S. i also just want to point out in the U.S. we have an exit tax if you're a green card holder or if you're giving up your U.S. citizenship.

So in the same way, I guess that concept of deemed disposition, like we do kind of have something similar to that here.

Yeah.

And you were asking about if there's an exemption like, you know, with, you know, when you're leaving the US and you're covered.

Expatriate.

We do have a large exemption, but there's nothing like that.

But I did want to add real quick, you were mentioning healthcare costs.

I have four kids, and I mentioned that my last one, my youngest was born in Canada.

Prior to that, I was working for a smaller firm.

There was no health insurance plan, and so I was on the Affordable Care act plans.

And there's a huge difference in the amount of tax you pay in Canada.

There can be a huge difference in the amount of health insurance premiums you pay down here.

So before leaving, our premiums for our family were about 2,000amonth, and then the deductible was 13 or 14,000.

You know, kind of went up over the years.

Kids.

So I had kids three years in a row paying $2,000 a month for premiums, and then another 13 or $14,000 on top of that to have a kid.

So when I got to Canada, everything was free.

We ended up paying $400 for a private hotel room and the hospitals in downtown Toronto.

You can't even get a hotel room for $400 in downtown Toronto, but we got a private hospital room.

It was wonderful.

Everything was paid for.

And they include a midwife for you as part of the deal as well.

So we had house visits from the.

So it was a really, really great experience.

And I did pay a lot more money in tax when I was up there, but I also saved a ton of money in health insurance costs.

Canada can be, you know, if you're lower income and you have a bigger family, they're a lot more friendly, you know, from a finance perspective for those types of people than single people who have really high income.

Yeah, I always think that about Europe generally as well.

Like, I actually think a wonderful hack is leaving the United States when you are having your children and when your.

Your kids need childcare.

Because I keep talking to people living in the US Hearing about their healthcare costs, hearing about their childcare costs, and I'm like, wow, I didn't realize, like, we were hacking the system by leaving and having our kids abroad.

But we've, we've saved a lot, a lot of money just by being in kind of more socialized countries for, for when our kids are little.

I'm curious because you've moved back and forth now between the US And Canada.

So I'm curious, like, what is maybe one thing you wish you had understood or maybe one thing that you wish your clients understood about moving between the US And Canada?

Whether that's finance or Not.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think probably the most important thing is to think about lifestyle and how, you know, how life is going to feel once you get up there.

Hopefully, you know, if you're somewhat familiar with the area before you get there, that'll help a little bit.

But I think that it's important to talk to a financial planner, you know, especially if you're going to be moving across an international border.

My firm offers hourly consultations so it doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg, you know, but like I said before, you don't know what you don't know.

And not asking the right questions can be very expensive.

And so, you know, paying a little bit of money either hiring somebody full time to help guide you through the process, you know, over your lifetime, or can be very helpful.

But at the bare minimum, you should talk to somebody and make sure that you at least are aware of what the issues are that you could be facing.

Almost everything's available on the Internet these days.

So if you have the time and you have the drive and you want to go figure it out yourself, you can probably do that.

But you should at least talk to a professional about, you know, what it is you should be looking for.

There's a lot of small things that change when you move across the border.

Of course, you got to get used to, you know, different health insurance or different health care situations.

Driving is a little bit different.

All cities are a little bit different.

In fact, when we moved to Toronto, we're coming from Phoenix, the streetcars were different for us.

So coming across traffic and getting on the streetcar and having to watch out for the streetcars and people getting off when you're driving was a little bit different.

So you're gonna have a lot of stuff that you need to learn.

Cell phones work differently.

We're gonna try to keep our American cell phones.

That lasted for about three weeks.

And then just little things started happening where we weren't getting text messages and weren't getting media messages and stuff like that.

So there's a lot of stuff that you're going to have to try to figure out.

Plus, when you move to a new country, you're probably not going to have a social insurance number, a Social Security number, you know, whatever the term is.

In Europe, you need that for a lot of things.

You need that to, you know, set up different services.

So there is a lot to do and you're going to be very, very busy when you take that step and actually move across the border.

So I would Recommend that you start planning early, that you, you know, keep an open mind, that, you know, you might need some help from a professional and be prepared for, you know, a lot of work and be very, very busy a few months.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I love the idea always of, of trying to scout out locations, really exploring it, going in January to Canada.

Right.

And experiencing what that is like.

Do you know, off the top of your head, how long are Americans allowed to be in Canada before they establish residency or they need to kind of apply for some type of visa?

In both countries, it's generally about six months, 183 days.

The US has a different test that we have, so it actually looks back at the last three years and see how many days you've been in the country for the last three years and then adds those up through a formula.

So in general, if it's just going to be one year, you can be in either country for about six months.

If it's going to be coming back year after year after year, you need to look in a little bit more detail on how often.

And is there a different test then for.

If you, let's say you want to work remotely in Canada, do you need to go and apply for a visa to be able to do that, or can you just have the flexibility to take your US Job and work remotely for six months in Canada?

Well, technically, if you're going to be working in a country, you should be having a work, sorry, a work.

A work visa, work authorization.

And so, you know, when people come as a visitor and you don't have any intent on staying, setting up services, they're just in a hotel, that's one thing.

If you're going to be coming and you're going to be staying for six months on a regular basis, you know, you're going to be earning income in Canada and that's the plan, then, yes, you should have a work permit of some sort.

I get that question all the time about kind of these remote work setups.

So I just want to make sure we highlight like there's visiting a country and there's then working and earning income and having your kind of establishing physical presence in that country.

And I think that's just an important thing to just be aware of.

So I wanted to bring that up today.

Okay, so finally I want to get to, you know, what's one piece of advice that you would give anyone, navigating life and finances across.

Across borders?

One piece of advice would be to make sure that you.

I hate to keep promoting, you know, A business.

But I do think that especially when you're dealing with cross border stuff, it is very complicated.

You might not need professional help forever, but you should hire somebody to make sure you at least get the foundation down, get the framework down.

And life changes too, as people get older.

I think that, you know, financial planning is especially important as you come into retirement and enter retirement and those first few years after retirement, it's very important.

Before that you want to make sure that you're doing your planning and staying on track and you know that you're not getting yourself into a situation where you have to make drastic life lifestyle changes to be able to maintain what you got going on.

But particularly for those years right around retirement.

But oftentimes, you know, by the time people get into their late 70s, you know, mid-80s, you know, those later ages, there's not a whole lot of financial planning left to be done.

It's more about investment management.

When we're in a cross border context, there's always currency exchange issues to deal with, you know, investment issues that we have to deal with.

And so it is, from my experience, it's always a kind of an ongoing thing where people need help and unless they want to, you know, it's like any other service.

Also, there's, there's a lot of knowledge involved here.

But do you like mowing your own lawn?

Do you like changing your own oil?

There's going to be a lot of work and research and you know, you're going to really have to stay on top of things in order to make sure that you feel comfortable with what you're doing, you know, across border context.

So take that into consideration.

And you know, oftentimes it's better to let the experts handle it.

Awesome.

Lucas, thank you so much for joining us today.

And I just want to give one plug because we just launched our founding members of our advisory circle for Passport to Wealth.

These are other fiduciary financial advisors and professionals that we have gone out to in our community.

People that we know we can trust.

They're not salespeople.

And we are building a platform so that you can connect with those professionals.

We do not make commissions.

Whether you hire Lucas or not.

They pay us a flat fee to be on our, on our platform.

But you can connect with Lucas if you have questions, if you're thinking about moving to Canada.

I love that your firm is offering those kind of initial paid consults so you can get a ton of information at a very low price to just start to think about things really strategically.

I think that is an excellent service.

So thank you Lucas so much for being part of that and for joining us today.

Yeah, thanks for mentioning that, Ariel.

It was a pleasure being with you.

I appreciate you having me on and look forward to hopefully helping people in the future that are watching.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

The content shared in this podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered financial, tax, or legal advice.

We encourage you to consult with a qualified financial advisor, tax professional, or other licensed expert before making any decisions based on the topics discussed.

Everyone's financial situation is unique and personalized guidance from a trusted professional is the best way to ensure your choices align with your individual goals and circumstances.