Andrea Thompson

So if you're on the U.S.

side of the border, I'm really sorry.

I can't help you till you move here.

But I'm working mostly with U.S.

citizens who are living in Canada or Canadians who have perhaps worked in the United States before, accrued a bunch of pensions and assets in the United States and then moved back to Canada.

don't really have managed that aspect of their wealth with their Canadian wealth.

And when I worked for the investment management team I was referring to before, I was licensed to actually provide securities advice on both sides of the border.

I did learn a lot in that process of what are the intricacies involved on the investment side when it comes to

not just holding and maintaining the assets and investing the assets, but taking the assets out or moving the assets across, you know, really that complex administrative angle.

And also what I would say is for a lot of people who are looking at the cross-border angle, we often think of snowbirds and, you know, people leaving the U.S.

or we think of people living in the U.S.

I mean, cross-border is a massive space.

There's so many permutations and combinations of what a cross-border person can be.

I don't focus on all of them.

There's a lot of different practices out there that actually do focus on specific segments of cross-border financial planning.

So, you know, to be clear, it's still a bit of a wild west of who's doing what and who can specialize in what elements.

And that is really interesting.

I will say it's Fifty Shades of Grey.

If you know the movie or the book Fifty Shades of Grey, it is 100 percent often the interpretation of the tax act between the US and Canada in what you should or should not do.

Oftentimes I'll hear a lot of clients say, well, I shouldn't have a TFSA or I shouldn't do this or I can't do that.