Is Your Income Plan Working for You? Now Is the Time to Review

Most people leave tax planning until December or even the new year. By then, your options are limited, and it’s easy to miss opportunities. September is actually the perfect time to get started. With a few simple steps now, you can reduce your 2025 tax bill, grow your savings, and head into the holidays with peace of mind.

Why Start in September?

• You have time to plan. By fall you already have a pretty decent picture of your year so far, but still enough time left to make changes.
• You can avoid the year-end rush. Trying to do everything in December is stressful, and some strategies take a little while to put in place.
• You get more options. Acting now gives you flexibility and keeps more doors open.

Smart Moves to Consider This Fall

1. Review Your Contributions

Take a look at your RRSP and TFSA year to date contributions, and compare these against your contribution room. While the RRSP deadline for the 2025 tax year is not until early 2026, spreading contributions over the year can make things easier on your budget. If you have children, this is also a good reminder to contribute to RESPs so you do not miss out on government grants. If you have a disabled family member, don’t forget to top up that RDSP as well.

2. Plan Charitable Giving

Donations made before December 31 can provide valuable tax credits. Starting early gives you time to decide which causes you want to support and how much you want to give.

3. Check for Tax-Loss Opportunities

If you hold investments in non-registered accounts, review whether any underperforming investments could be sold to offset gains elsewhere. This strategy, known as tax-loss harvesting, works best when it is planned carefully and coordinated with your longer term portfolio construction strategy.

4. Explore Income Splitting

Families and business owners may benefit from strategies such as paying justifiable wages to family members who are involved in the business, contributing to a spousal RRSP, or reviewing pension income splitting options in retirement.

5. Think About Cash Flow

Was your spending what you thought it would be this year? If you’re not an itemized-list kind of person, just take a look at your income and how much you’ve saved. The difference was your spending. Were there large spends, perhaps on vehicle purchases, renovations, and gifts to family members that won’t be repeated? When we remove those items we know what your core living costs were for the year and have an idea of what your baseline is. If that’s what you expected, or close, then we have a starting point to build on for next year. Then, we can start looking ahead and planning for one-off expenses we know are coming, and check in on your emergency savings fund to make sure there’s enough to handle those one-off expenses we didn’t see coming.

Next Steps

The earlier you start, the easier it is to find opportunities and avoid stress. A quick financial review in September can save money and set you up for a smoother tax season. Just run through the above checklist … and then enjoy the rest of your year.

We also offer customized income planning sessions to help you make the most of your resources and manage your taxes more efficiently. We do book up fairly quickly, but please get in touch if you’d like to book a session for this year. If you think you might like one for next year, you can get to the head of the line by booking early.

Your Spring Planning Team

Practice Notes:

Julia will be taking the stage at the IAFP Symposium to co-present the Financial Planning Association of the Year Award to winner Meagan Balanaski. Julia will return to the stage to teach attendees some skills around working with Family Enterprises and their professional teams. The Symposium takes place in Nanaimo, BC from September 24-26.

Our offices will closed on September 30th to recognize Truth & Reconciliation Day and on October 13th to celebrate Thanksgiving.

On October 15th Julia will join Aravind Sithamparapillai to co-present another session of Investing Smarter in Volatile Times for CPA Ontario

Spring in the News:

We weren’t in the news this month! We were much too busy working to take interviews and are expecting to participate a bit less through fall so that we can ensure we’re able to concentrate on what we do best: supporting you.

Please check out our media page here for videos, podcasts, interviews and more.

Planning News Digest:

• What happens to royalties after death? Great article from our friends at O’Sullivan Law for all those people writing books, making music, maintaining patents, copyrights, mineral rights, and more. Check out the full article here.
• Money Together: How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship & Become an Unstoppable Financial Team – Julia got to catch up with Heather and Douglas Boneparth at the FutureProof conference this year. They’ve just released a book called “Money Together: How to Find Fairness in Your Relationship & Become an Unstoppable Financial Team”. We are going to be reading it this month and if you’d like to do the same when it is released in October, you can find it right here.
• TFSAs and Maximizing your Benefits – In line with our theme of fall planning, Tim Cestnick wrote this article about TFSAs and how you can maximize your benefits before year end. Find out all the details here.

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