Tag: Small business owner

When you hear the word franchise, what do you think of?  McDonald’s.  Tim Hortons.  Subway.  And probably someone working incredibly hard while the franchisor takes a cut of the revenue.  I get it.  I have friends who have gone through...

What would you do if you closed on a 17-cottage resort in the middle of a snowstorm, during COVID, with guests already checked in?  That’s exactly how Ed and Christine’s ownership of Springwood Cottage Resort in Arden, Ontario began. I...

Three years ago, I bought a business.  Since then, the equity I have built is equal to about 98.6% of the original purchase price. And I bought it with zero dollars of my own money down.  That sounds like one...

Every time the market shifts, the headlines get simpler, and the reality gets more complicated.  So instead of guessing, I sat down with Nick Karadza of Rock Star Real Estate, someone who’s been in the mom-and-pop investing world for well over 20 years, to get...

You can read all the theory you want about missing middle housing — zoning changes, GST rebates, CMHC financing. But at some point, you want to know: what does it actually cost, and what does it actually take, to get one of these built?  So this...

A young couple sat in my office a few months ago. Both work full time. Both make decent money. They had saved $28,000, and they were embarrassed about it.  “Cherry, we’ve been saving for four years,” she told me. “We’re not...

Let me ask you something. When you think about your mortgage, what do you feel? For most people, it’s a mix of dread and just… acceptance. It’s the biggest debt of your life, and you figure you’ll be paying it off basically forever.  But what if I...

If you have spent years paying off your home, you have probably wondered how much of it your kids will actually keep when you are gone.  Here is what most people do not realize. Before your kids can inherit your home, your estate may...

You’ve heard you can build a fourplex on a regular lot now.  The rules changed. Everyone got excited. But almost nobody explains how these deals actually work, or whether they’re right for you.  So here’s the honest version.  It’s a machine, and it runs in order  Missing...

Let me start with something most accountants would never admit in public.  I got audited.  Me. A CPA who does this for a living. I file my own taxes carefully, I know the rules, and the Canada Revenue Agency still...