I love watching home reno shows. Seeing a kitchen or bathroom fully transformed can be really exciting, and gets me wanting to do all sorts of work at home. Which my fiancé loves. One of my favourite shows is Disaster DIY, where a contractor, Bryan Baeumler, shows up...
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Estate Planning
Dealing with death on Facebook
I have written before on what happens to your social media when you die. Today I am going to write about one site in particular, and an app that has been developed to deal with death on it. Sanctri is an app that allows you to create a “social memorial” as well as...
Top five estate planning to-dos
This one is short and sweet. Here are my top five to-do items for estate planning: Get a will. This makes sure that what you want to have happen on your death, will. Get a power of attorney for personal care, and include a living will in it. Without this, you have no...
Leaving the gift of education
Many Canadian parents have established Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs) for their children or grandchildren. These are special savings vehicles designed to help with post-secondary education. Unlike RRSPs or life insurance, RESPs cannot have beneficiaries on...
Do your frequent-flyer rewards expire when you do?
Almost everyone has some form of loyalty rewards, whether it is credit card points, Air Miles, or reward miles from a specific airline. Those points have high value; I have booked several trips solely through points. If you wait long enough, the points can add up...
Fair, but not equal
It’s a classic movie scenario: mom or dad dies, the will is read, and one child ends up with far more than the other, leading to extreme conflict between the siblings. The problem is that it doesn’t just happen in movies. It’s not at all uncommon for parents to decide...
When does life support stop supporting life?
There has been a lot of discussion in the news in recent months over what counts as “life,” between the right-to-die cases moving toward the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as the Rasouli cases and the right to keep a patient on life support when the family’s wishes...
Time for a change
In this day and age, it is not uncommon to have a former spouse (or more than one former spouse). If you are separated or divorced, however, you must remember to change your beneficiary designations. Beneficiary designations are done through the financial institution...
Remembering those who gave their lives
Yesterday, in Canada, was Remembrance Day, a day when we remember those who fought for our country. In honour of that, I wanted to write about the soldiers of World War I – in particular, about their wills. Thousands of soldiers answered the call to fight in WWI. Many...
Military wills
With Remembrance Day around the corner, I thought I would talk today about wills for men and women serving in the military. For the most part, doing a will is no different for those in the armed forces. The Canadian Armed Forces administrative staff do a very good job...