TWC S02 E14: Journey to Becoming a Legacy Enjoyment Builder with Special Guest, Jamie Madigan

Don't miss the amazing insights Jamie provides as we talk about how to navigate the sometimes confusing world of finances. Jamie shares his wisdom about financial planning, estate planning, investments, taxes, and more plus how to really protect what's most valuable to you!

Jamie Madigan brings a wealth of knowledge, skills, and lived experience to benefit his clients and his network. Helping multiple generations, whatever their needs, he provides the education, guidance, and connections each client needs in alignment with their values and goals.

Using his unique combination of consulting, sales, referrals, and network of experts, Jamie is always searching for new ways to bring value to his clients in as many ways as he can. Based on their own customized Wealth Master Plan, Jamie provides comprehensive consulting, sales, service, and accountability to help his clients achieve their dreams.

Through his Legacy Enjoyment Builder program, Jamie works with successful professionals, entrepreneurs & business owners to help them protect what matters most to them - their family, business, health & wealth.

Book a FREE call: Jamie's Gift to YOU
https://calendly.com/jamiemadigan/intro

Connect with Jamie Madigan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamiemadigan/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JamieMadiganFinancialPlanner
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamiemadiganfinancialplanner/
Website: https://advisor.freedom55financial.com/jamie-madigan/home

new website launching next week

Connect with Katherine Burrows Creative
Website: https://katherineburrowscreative.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineburrows/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherineburrowscreative
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katherineburrowscreative/

Business Character Analysis Workshop information:

If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing, reviewing, or rating this on your podcast platform of choice.

P.S. To see if 90 Days to 90 Pages is right for your book idea, schedule a call with Katherine.

Book a call with Katherine: Select a Date & Time - Calendly
Check out KBC's website: Katherine Burrows Creative
Email: katherine@katherineburrowscreative.com

Connect with Katherine Burrows Creative on Social Media
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineburrows/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katherineburrowscreative
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katherineburrowscreative/

Business Character Analysis Workshop information: https://katherineburrowscreative.com/index.php

Premium Podcast Production Services by Carl Richards
https://podcastsolutionsmadesimple.com

Podcast Music by Nathan Symen of NST Music: https://nst-music.bandcamp.com/

Transcript

Intro: This is The Write Connection. This podcast is designed to help you choose the right words and stories in your business content to create authentic connections with prospects, clients, partners and colleagues. Now the host of The Write Connection, Katherine Burrows.

 Katherine Burrows: Thanks Carl. Today. I'm talking with Jamie Madigan certified financial planner. Jamie works with successful professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners to help them protect what matters most to them, their family, business, health and wealth, Jamie demystifies, the financial planning experience and helps us to see why it's so important to think about these things. Now have these difficult conversations and all the many benefits we can have from feeling organized in our financial life have a listen. Hi, Jamie welcome to The Write Connection thanks for being here today.

 Jamie Madian: Thanks for having me Katherine glad to be here.

 Katherine Burrows: So you're a certified financial planner and you have a really interesting story. The journey of how you got to that point, take us back to your childhood. What was it like? How was money discussed in your home growing up?

 Jamie Madian: As far back as I can remember, we all started working at a young age where brother and I both had paper routes. We worked for the Toronto Star and then the Toronto sun. And eventually we also got to the point where, we could earn a weekly allowance just by doing chores around the house. And obviously the more we did to contribute the more potential there was to earn.  So I always tried to max it that weekly allowance get as much as I could and also saved and tucked away all the money that I earn from my paper roots. And then I guess the first real job that I can remember having beyond that was at Scarborough bingo Emporium. And it ended up that my brother, sister and I all worked there at the snack bar. And the good thing about my dad is the first chance that we were able to, he had us filing a tax return so that we could get some RSP contribution room. And that first year that we had the RSP contribution room, he took us to the bank, we opened up an RSP account and started putting money away and we didn't necessarily know what we were doing or why but the important thing is we got started at a young age.

 Katherine Burrows: Yeah, not too many teens are thinking about planning for retirement.

 Jamie Madian: No, exactly. We're typically thinking about what's the next toy or video game or electronic device that we can buy.

Katherine Burrows: Yeah or going it with friends on the weekend, that kind of thing.

 Jamie Madian: Exactly.

 Katherine Burrows: So yeah, definitely kudos to your dad for bringing those lessons in early.

 Jamie Madian: Yeah. And I can't take him enough for that and he was fortunate enough that when he started his first job at IBM, his first manager said hey Mike, you've gotta start investing, put some money away save for retirement. It's an account called an RSP retirement savings plan. And my dad, I think he opened his at 19 and started putting away money, every pay check which is awesome that he also got that advice to set up regular contributions. And over time, like he was able to save up and build himself a good little investment portfolio on top of the pension that he was already entitled to. So he was fortunate enough that back in those days, a lot of companies still offered a pension and he didn't have to contribute anything to that. So he had his pension building up, but also was building up his own investment portfolio.

 Katherine Burrows: So as you were growing up through the teenage years and thinking about career choices, how did all this financial advice from your dad impact that?

  Jamie Madian: t it's funny, financial planner was never on my radar, never something I had considered.  I started off, the first real job I had like corporate job was that IBM following my dad's footsteps. I started there in the summer I think it was second year university. So did a couple summer internships there then started full time right out of the gate after university in 99, the relationships that my dad had taught me or by getting started early, I kept that going. And then obviously as my income grew RSP contribution room grew and as I made more money, I saved more money. And that enabled me to save up a good down payment for this lovely condo that I'm living in now and I've been here 17 years now and it's funny when I look back at what I bought and paid for back then.

 I thought it was really expensive and some of my cousins were pushing me to go to bedroom and get a roommate read that out better resale value. Of course, I kicked myself now that I didn't do that. But from a budgeting standpoint, in my first time moving out, I wanted to be conservative, go with something I knew I could afford that I only had to depend on myself from an income perspective. So yeah, it's been great in the sense that by my dad getting us started early, my brother, sister and I all got through university or college debt free and we're all able to save up good down payments between just their savings and withdrawing from our RSP with the first time home buyers plan to make a good down payment on our first places. So we can't thank him enough for that advice, even though I always joke, back in the day my dad thought diversity or diversification was giving a bit of money to every single bank.

 So as I stumbled into financial planning and learned that this was something I was really passionate about and somewhere I could make a difference, because it's not taught anywhere. And most Canadians don't have a clue what to do because it's just not something that they're really interested in or they don't know where to go for advice, or they hear all kinds of different advice from different people to different resources. So rather than jumping into financial planning, I was initially recruited into it back in 2009. And then by 2016, I realized that this is where I'm meant to be, this is what I'm passionate about, this is how I can make a difference.

 Katherine Burrows: That's awesome. And I know that you approach financial planning in a really unique way that I've never heard another financial planner talk about before. Can you tell us about your program? How do clients work with you or how do you work with clients?

 Jamie Madian: Sure, happy to. So, yeah, over my 23 years now of working in the financial services space Katherine, I've realized, I've seen it time and time again. So I've put together what I call the legacy insights model. And it's not so much my program, but it's something that each and every Canadian really should have. So legacy insights is really all about you. And what do you want your legacy insights to be? And there's three key components to it. The first is what I call monetary proficiency. And that's really just getting your money working harder for you and as hard as you work for it, the second is what I call legacy personal direction and that's just getting crystal clear on what you want your legacy to be. How do you wanna be remembered? Are there any important causes that you want to give to or donate to? And then the third part is ensuring that you've got your legacy support network in place and that is simply the right resources to execute on the legacy personal direction of what you want your legacy to be.

 Katherine Burrows: That's great. So what's the first step when someone comes to work with you?

 Jamie Madian: So the first step is booking a consultation and connecting usually over zoom or the phone, if they prefer, it's really all up to the person whom I'm talking to, but I like zoom just so that we've got that face to face connection. And it's really just learning about that person. What's important to them? Who’s important to them? What stage of life are they at? And answering all of their questions and concerns and talking about their goals, what are their short term goals? What are their long term goals? Where are they at now? What keeps them awake at night? What has them concerned? And just going through all of their questions and concerns, because like I said, this isn't taught anywhere. So I'm just trying to connect with as many Canadians as I can to help educate them cause I love this, I could talk about it all day long in case it's not obvious. So I'm just doing my best to connect with as many Canadians as I can and pass on my knowledge that I've learned over my 45 years here on earth.

 Katherine Burrows: well, it is totally obvious how much you love doing what you're doing and it’s always so comfortable to speak with you, like you're very patient and understanding and I've never felt awkward about asking a question or stupid or anything like that. You've always got a really good comprehensive answer. So I totally appreciate that non-threatening approach and you do all this for free, right?  That blew me away.

 Jamie Madian: yeah. So I do this all for free, meaning that I don't charge my clients to meet with me or prospects to book time with me, get the questions and concerns answered. There are all different types of advisors out there, there's different titles in the industry so that's the other confusing part. People really don't always understand who they're talking to. So I always encourage people to your point there really is no stupid question and whether you're talking about your money, your mortgage, your insurance, your health benefits, your group benefits because it's not taught anywhere. We shouldn't be shamed or feel embarrassed or stupid for asking questions. I always encourage people to ask lots of questions. And my promise is that I will always try to explain things in simple English and clearly communicate what they should be doing and why. And I always check that by asking them at the end. So what did we talk about today? What are agreed to next steps and why do we agree to those? Just cause if they can regurgitate that back to me, I know I've done my job and if they still can't quite do it or there's some confusion, then we're able to get crystal clear on that.

 Katherine Burrows: And what types of clients do you work with? Cause I feel like there's an assumption that you need to be a CEO or own a yacht before you need a financial planner.

 Jamie Madian: Yeah, I know. And again, that's unfortunately something that we hear a lot about in the industry where advisors only wanna work with the high net worth people and you must have a minimum salary or a minimum dollar of investible assets to talk to them. And unfortunately I fell into that mistake early on in my career where I had those minimums, but I since got rid of them. Cause I realized, again, we shouldn't be penalizing Canadians because they're not making a certain income or don't have a certain dollar amount saved. Typically I find I'm able to bring the most value to the table, to usually people between the ages of 40 to 65. And I say that age range because that's where I fall into so I can relate well to that age group. Usually that's when we're in our highest income earning years, retirement planning becomes much more important to us cause we can start to see that light at the end of the tunnel and start to get a vision of where we wanna be.

 What's that gonna look like? But also estate planning becomes more important to us. So thinking about our legacy, what will we leave behind? How do we wanna be remembered? And once I get into that space and it's usually with professionals or business owners or entrepreneurs, then I work what in what I call family planning. So for instance, if you became my client, as we built up that know, like, trust factor you became more comfortable with me. I would then slowly over time, like to get to know the rest of your family. So for instance, do you have a spouse? Do you have kids? What about the parents and then work with all the different generations within that family? And the goal behind that Katherine is to try to keep as much money as we can within the family and pass it down from generation to generation, as opposed to letting some of that escape through estate taxes and probate fees.

 Katherine Burrows: Right. And it also helps to really clarify what's going on. And I know that some of those conversations can be really difficult, especially if there's some disagreement or different values and priorities happening. How do you handle that?

 Jamie Madian: Yeah, definitely. And that's always a discussion that I encourage families to have and again, depending on the age dynamics of that family, for the kids to be talking to their parents, for the parents to be talking to their kids, grandparents or grandkids but it's really important for families to be aware of what are the wishes of their parents and grandparents and for the parents and grandparents to be sharing that with the children, because we all know we're going to die at some point, like let's face it there's that shouldn't surprise everyone, but it's also obviously not a fun discussion to be having and not something that a family would typically wanna discuss as they gather around or at least when we used to gather for holiday meals, but it's a discussion that we need to book time for. And I'm always happy to lead that because I've done it so often, including with my family.

 And the point I bring up is that as uncomfortable as it is, it's much easier to have that discussion when everybody's in good health, good minds. And yeah, likely we're not all gonna agree initially. And maybe some people will be shocked by some of the wishes, but by getting those all add on the table, it become known and we can then respect them and also work through any indifference that there may be or talk more openly about them. Cause ultimately when that time comes that somebody does pass on, it's a very hard time. I just went through it, myself back in December when my dad passed. But again, because we had had these discussions done, all the planning, my family was able to just focus on the grieving and mourning process. Like he went above and beyond, had everything planned and paid for, his plot way back when the tombstone he chose to be cremated.

 So even that was prepaid for it. The will had been updated back in 2017 and we'd openly talked about what his wishes were. So we knew that and we could then honour those wishes and we weren't scrambling around after he passed away wondering, what did dad want? Did he want open casket? Cremation? Does he have life insurance? Does he have investments? Where are those? He was very organized, had his file system. We all know where that is so it's been a pretty smooth process working through his estate, fortunately slash unfortunately his health has deteriorated over the last few years, so we had lots of opportunities to have those discussions. And also we're given a heads up that his death is getting closer. Whereas on the flip side, I've also seen people just go unannounced unexpected and that catches families off guard even more, especially when those conversations haven't been had, because now you've suddenly lost someone and there's likely things that weren't said or left unsaid, plus you have no clue what their wishes are or where any of their things are. And it's horrible to see families go through that and just what it does to the different levels of the family.

 Katherine Burrows: Yeah. I think it's great that you're doing so much to, I think break the stigma around those conversations and really encourage people to think of them as normal, as commonplace. They don't have to be threatening, they don't have to be full of drama and conflict. Like let's just sit down and, and have a discussion and people can express their opinion, but they can do it in a respectful way.

 Jamie Madian: Yeah, exactly. And especially when we know it's all gonna happen to all of us someday, like if you know something's gonna happen plan for it. But then on the flip side of that part of the planning is also planning for all those unknown things too, that we don't know whether or not they will happen.

 Katherine Burrows: So you have a lot of different types of services that you can provide, investments, do you wanna list all those out?

 Jamie Madian: Sure. So I look at financial planning, people here certified financial planner. That means different things to different people, quite often people think, oh, you do investments or you do insurance. And I always say, well, that's part of what I do, but I do what I call holistic financial planning and that's really anything and everything to do with money or financial matters. And there's usually five key areas that we talk to and those are investments, insurance, mortgages, health benefits and group benefits. And it really all rolls under the umbrella of retirement tax and estate planning.

 Katherine Burrows: Right. So does a client have to have all of those things with you? Like what if I've already got a mortgage with someone else? Can I still call you and have a conversation?

 Jamie Madian: Yeah, definitely. It doesn't matter what point you're at or where your current investments insurance mortgages are or if you're renting and don't own, don't have a mortgage we can get started or we could talk regardless of where you are it doesn't matter. Whereabouts in Canada, you are how old you are, what stage in your life you are. If you have questions or concerns, I'm here to help, I'm happy to help. And I'd rather us connect and have that discussion you get the proper answers rather than try to Google it or connect with somebody who doesn't have all those answers. And if I don't have the answer, I'm not afraid to admit that I've got a whole team of experts behind me that I will go to and get the answer.

 Katherine Burrows: That's brilliant. So, yeah, I just wanna read you something that I wrote for you as part of your business character analysis, Jamie brings a wealth of knowledge, skills and lived experience to benefit his clients and his network, helping multiple generations, whatever their needs he provides the education, guidance and connections each client needs in alignment with their values and goals. Using his unique combination of consulting, sales, referrals and network of experts. Jamie is always searching for new ways to bring value to his clients in as many ways as he can, based on their own customized wealth master plan, Jamie provides comprehensive consulting, sales service and accountability to help his clients achieve their dreams. Now we're just starting 2022 here and lots of people have some new year's resolutions they may have made around finances and this episode will be airing just shortly before tax season is there any advice that you can provide to people?

 Jamie Madian: Definitely. So like you said, Katherine, usually one of the top three unused resolutions is getting better control over your finances. And with it being the first 60 days of the year, the banks have us, or it's known as RSP season. The banks have us programmed to think of the first 60 days is when we should be looking at our RSP's contributing to our RSP's. I always tell my clients, no retirement is something that we plan for every day of the year. But the unique thing right now is to your point with it being a new calendar year, we've got new contribution room in our TFSA. So another $6,000 of contribution room, which brings the lifetime contribution to $81,500 for anybody, 18 years of older, that's a great account to take advantage of money, goes in tax free, grows, tax free and comes out tax free.

 You've got access to it whenever you want it. It's the best account that Canadians don't understand and aren't properly utilizing and given that we now should know how much income we earned in 2021. It's also a good opportunity to see where does that put us from a tax bracket perspective. And we've got the first 60 days of this year to contribute to our RSP. And it can count either towards 2021 tax return or 2022. So it's a good opportunity to see how much RSP contribution room do you have first off. And then if we do a top of contribution or a lump sum or maybe a first time, if you're not contributing regularly, does that get you into a lower tax bracket or what would it take to get you into a lower tax bracket? And that's also a reason why a lot of the financial institutions will offer RSP loans or investment loans right now because they realize people likely have a lot of RSP contribution room, but not a lot of money sitting in his savings account to fully max that out. So there's a lot of great opportunities, especially on the investing side right now for people to take advantage of March 1st and again, it's looking at contributing to your TFSA, contributing to your RSP, potentially lowering your income tax that will be due and considering an investment loan or RSP loan to help you fully maximize your TFS a and RSP investments.

 Katherine Burrows: That all sounds really great, but a little bit complicated. So can I call you for help?

 Jamie Madian: Yes of course you can, I've realized I'm trying to keep it simple English, I realized it was a lot in there, but yeah. The two key things to be looking at right now or should be top of mind for everyone are your TFSA and your RSP.

Katherine Burrows: And you're happy to answer questions if any of my listeners would like to give you a call.

 Jamie Madian: Yes, definitely. For all of your listeners, if you have questions or concerns or if any of what we've talked about today is somewhat confusing. Please feel free to reach out. Like I said, I'm trying to connect with as many people as I can to really put this into simple English so that you clearly understand what you should be doing and why and how that's gonna help you to achieve your goals.

Katherine Burrows: Okay. Well, I'll definitely put the link to book a free call in the show notes, thanks so much, Jamie, for all the wisdom and insight that you've shared today and thanks for being a guest on The Write Connection.

 Jamie Madian: Thanks for having me, Katherine. I really appreciate it.

 Outro: Thanks for listening to The Write Connection. What did you think of the show today? Give us a rating and leave us a comment if you have a question for Katherine, reach out to her by sending her an email, The Write Connection@KatherineBurrowscreative.com or visit her website, Katherineburrowscreative.com. And don't forget to follow Katherine on social media thanks again for listening to The Write Connection.