
A family office is the next level of wealth management service offering typically for higher income and higher net worth individuals and their families. A greater level of service is required due to the enhanced complexity of the family situation. The family situation may be more complex due to a higher level of annual income, higher levels of current net worth and the ownership of one or more businesses, rental properties or personal properties. As a result, taxation issues are more significant as is the size and purpose of the current investment portfolio. The family needs to have a dedicated team that proactively helps each generation identify current risks and opportunities while also working towards ideal personal and family outcomes.
When the family office team provides these same services across a group of families, this is called a multi-family office. The Precision Wealth Family Office offering is a multi-family office team, led by Douglas Nelson & Lynda Harris. The team is comprised of Doug, Lynda, James McInnis, Jake Steele, Chris Briggs, and Iwona Nicastri.
Dating back to 1996, Precision Wealth Management has grown into a multi-disciplinary Canadian financial services boutique with over 20 team members and $700 million in assets. When we provide to you financial planning services, we are doing this through Precision Wealth Management.
Doug & Lynda joined Precision Wealth in November 2025 with the responsibility of launching the Precision Wealth Family Office. While this is a new formalized service from Precision Wealth, these services and strategies have been in place at Precision Wealth and have been an integral part of Doug & Lynda’s previous business for many years. Joining forces with the Precision Wealth team creates an instant opportunity to design something new with the combined experience of the PWM advisor team. Doug & Lynda are both Certified Financial Planners and Registered Portfolio Managers at Q Wealth Partners. They co-lead the Family Office team in providing fee for service financial planning and custom portfolio management services through Q Wealth Partners.
The planning work always needs to come first to determine the most optimal approaches, strategies and outcomes. The implementation of any specific tax plan, corporate structure, investment portfolio or insurance solution is just a means to an end that is derived from the plan. To ensure that the most optimal plan is determined, it is important to spend the necessary time up front on the planning process. By charging a fee for the plan, it enables us to remain completely focused on you, your goals, priorities and preferences.
We begin by recognizing that tax is life’s single greatest expense where this tax is typically triggered on the personal tax return. Therefore, to manage taxation efficiently, we need to adopt an “income first” orientation. This means that we are always looking at your personal income today and into the years ahead.
To project your income into the future, we need to focus on the details of your net worth statement. Your net worth statement shows the breakdown and role of each of your assets. By proactively managing your net worth we can help assure that the right amount of income and capital is allocated into the right areas so that you create your most optimal future net worth.
We also think about your situation from both a top down and bottom-up perspective. The top-down perspective looks at all of your assets and income sources first to see what role they play in meeting your various financial goals. The bottom-up approach focuses only on what you need and want so as to live your most optimal life. Comparing the top-down and bottom-up approaches helps us understand how to tax-efficiently bring these two approaches together to create optimal client outcomes.
This is our proven process that helps our clients navigate their way through complex situations, by breaking things down into smaller pieces, to determine optimal, tax-efficient strategies to achieve the desired outcomes.
Q Wealth Partners is a registered portfolio management firm with offices across Canada. Precision Wealth Management Partnership is a Partner Firm of Q Wealth Partners. Doug Nelson, Lynda Harris, James McInnis, Chris Briggs, Jake Steele, and Iwona Nicastri and are all registered portfolio managers or associate portfolio managers of Q Wealth Partners. When they provide custom portfolio management services, they are doing so through their registration with Q Wealth Partners.
You will want to look at the following things when selecting your most preferred financial advisory team:
Credentials: Do they have educational credentials such as the Certified Financial Planner designation? Have they grown beyond this designation to include other designations?
Experience: Do your financial advisors own their own business? Are they business owners themselves and can they relate to the same challenges that you face? Do they have 15 to 20+ years of industry experience working with different types of unique client situations?
Time and Focus: Time is always scarce, yet it is so terribly important. Do your advisors have time for you? Do they have time to look at your situation in a thoughtful, comprehensive way? Do they use tools or approaches to cut corners or expand the level of sophistication of their advice? Are they focused on clients with similar issues or characteristics, so that they are true experts in their field or do they only have a small number of clients like you?
Registration: Are they registered portfolio managers? As a registered portfolio manager you are also a fiduciary, responsible for always putting the best interests of your client first. Working with advisors who have the greatest opportunity to build custom solutions is always extremely important.
Depth: Does your advisor wear multiple hats? Do they do the planning work, tax work and portfolio work in a seamless manner all at the same time? This is really important to help ensure that your plan is well connected between all of the most important parts.
Team Work: How does your advisor team actually work together? Many advisors will say that they collaborate with others, but does this really happen in a formal manner? Does the advisor team truly work together to create shared goals and outcomes for the client or does each advisor do their own work independent of the others? To achieve the best results in more complex situations, the advisor team must work as one.
This is a Canadian best-selling book authored by Doug Nelson, now in its 4th edition. The book has 14 chapters and is 233 pages in length:
Chapters:
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Lessons from the Masters
The Great Killers of Wealth
The Principles and Rules to Master Your Retirement
The Phases of Retirement
Seven to Ten Years Before Retirement
One to Two Years Prior To Retirement
The First Two Years of Retirement
The Healthy Years
When Illness Strikes
Being On Your Own
Your Final Estate Plan
Managing Portfolio Risks
Issues and Strategies for the Small Business Owner
The Master Your Retirement Process