My Why:
I truly love helping people with their finances, especially through the lens of learning what brings them joy and what their life goals are. It’s so exciting to hear about my clients hopes and dreams, what they care about. Of course, many people only know that they don’t want to be a corporate slave forever and want to build their financial independence that will give them options, that’s also a great goal. It’s really fulfilling to be a part of people’s lives in that context. When I can offer guidance through a challenging situation, I feel very helpful and I love to be helpful. I’ve offered advice and planning through a job transition, a layoff with a lot of moving parts (company RSU’s, severance, corporate RRSP plan), or many other life transitions. Some are great things, like the awesome options available for RESP’s, budgeting for once in a lifetime trips or home purchases. Sometime life transitions are emotionally heavy, but I am here for it all, to talk through both the hard numbers, and the emotions that govern our decisions because we are just people trying to do our best.

Advice-only financial planner

I'm Cassie St. Amant

I have two young kids (3 & 7 at the time of writing), a husband and my sweet dog, Lucy. We LOVE camping… honestly, we have a pretty nice camper so it’s the comfortable kind of camping that is really more of a travel and vacation combination. Being able to meet clients over video calls gives us the freedom to be able to work from anywhere so we get to see and do so much! We’ve recently leaned into mountain biking and love to get outside, go hiking, wander through museums, enjoy beach days, and see new places as a family. Lucy especially, I’m sure she thinks she’s a celebrity because she gets so much extra attention from people we meet.

My background:
Every time I write this it gets very long, so one day I will post the long version if anyone is interested.

I’m currently a QAFP Candidate, all of my courses have passed and completed but I have not yet written the very last exam. So long as no other big life things come up, I will write the exam this October and I’ll be so excited to finally have the full QAFP Certification. QAFP stands for Qualified Associate Financial Planner by the way, and it’s both its own certification and an achievement on the path to becoming a CFP, or Certified Financial Planner. Side note, the financial industry seems to be quite obsessed in making more and more acronyms, there are so very many.

What led me to pursue a financial planning designation? I have been investing in stocks since shortly after graduating high school. My dad taught me to choose and purchase stocks and made sure I had both a TFSA and non-registered account. I’ve learned so much more from him over many years and it’s been amazing to see the power of compounding returns over a long time period. Investing is just one part of financial planning, I wanted to dig into more depth.

I discovered the FIRE movement, which stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. It’s a whole thing, and like everything there are good and not so great strategies out there. But the idea of having financial independence is of course awesome. It doesn’t mean that a person needs to retire early, but it offers the freedom and that is the best goal. I wanted to know how much a person would need to be able to retire, what tax efficiencies could be found… all the things and how to set it all up in a way that works best for me and my family.

Along this journey, I have talked to more and more people who tell me they have no idea where to start. They let me help them, and I’m so grateful to have been able to be a part of their journey and success. Honestly, I get at least as much excitement from my people’s success as I do from my own. Being a financial planner pretty much checks all the boxes for me, I love helping people, I love the work and am a huge numbers nerd, it allows me to have flexible time with my family and to travel. After all, don’t we all just want to figure out how to enjoy life while we’re here and make the most of what we have, both time and our money.