Scantlebury Wealth Management

If you speak to most Trustees-in-Bankruptcy in Canada, you will find that it is pretty hard to go bankrupt from medical expenses alone. Freida Richer, a Vice President and Principal at Grant Thornton Limited, noted this in an interview with Global News; and, if you think about it, that makes sense.   We, in Canada, are very proud of our social safety net. We believe in the idea that government programmes should cover basic physician and hospital expenses; while other social programmes should provide financial assistance to Canadians who are unable to work because of disability or illness. Accordingly, Canadians don’t receive bills from our hospitals for procedures like a hip transplant or cancer operations.  As a society, our employers and ourselves often go the extra step by creating Extended Health Benefits through Group Benefit Programmes or by purchasing private products individually. According to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA), some 24 mil...

I was recently asked a question that bothered me: Why should a married couple who have no children acquire a life insurance policy? The question shook me because I have more than a decade in the financial industry, and more than thirty years of personal experience; so a number of sad stories came to mind. One particular story was stronger than the rest though.  The couple were acquaintances of mine and they had just gotten married. They were in their twenties and in reasonably good shape. The husband was on a business trip and died due to natural causes.  Now I am the first to admit that this is an unusual circumstance. When the gentlemen passed, more than a decade ago, most of us would say that he could be expected to see his 80th birthday. Today, a similar Canadian who is male and twenty years of age could be expected to live to his 82nd year. So why would he need a policy? Well because all of us are different and we are not just averages. Whether, we think we are going to l...

During my career, I have been asked a simple question repeatedly: why should a twenty year old buy life insurance?  In many ways, this is the easiest and hardest financial planning question to answer. For the answer to the question lies in statistics, expectations, hopes and the way in which we wish to live our lives. Statistically, it is quite clear that most people in the Western World will not die tomorrow. The Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Children and Their Families noted that while those between the age of 0 and 19 made up 29 percent of the population in 1999, they only made up 2% of all deaths.  In fact, if you look at statistics from Canada, the US and the UK, you see a remarkably similar trend. From birth to the pre-teen years, the likelihood of death drops off dramatically. Or put differently, based on the StatsCanada data from 2014-2018, from birth to age 1, 4.5 Canadian babies out of 1,000 will die. However...