HAL SIMONSON, CFP®, RIAC, MFA-P, Executive Financial Consultant, Simonson Team Wealth Management, Sherwood Park, AB

HAL SIMONSON

"Everybody knows about the Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, but those are all billionaires. Individuals like you and I can do this work, too. The feedback from my clients has been consistent: ‘I didn't know this was possible until you told me how."

Hal Simonson remembers his grandfather as a brave man who landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Though he passed away when Hal was young, the idea of living a life of service was embedded in Hal’s DNA. “It's what eventually led me to military college at eighteen,” says Hal. Under the pressure of seven courses per semester, plus military training, mandatory French classes, and physical requirements, Hal developed a discipline that has served him well.

At age twenty-four, he left the military service and started his business at IG Wealth Management. “I used to love this Canadian show, Traders, when I was a kid,” says Hal. "It was about traders at the Toronto Stock Exchange, and all the excitement and drama that comes with that—which is entirely not what I do for a living," he laughs.

Hal learned quickly that personal financial advice is less charts and graphs, and more a kind of financial psychology. "The biggest value that my team and I bring to clients is financial behavior management, giving them the information to make better choices for their longterm prosperity," says Hal. Some of his favourite work is with small-to-medium size businesses, helping them navigate complex tax strategies to extract wealth from their companies.

Somewhere around year twenty-five of his business, something shifted for Hal. "I came to realize that helping wealthy clients grow their wealth wasn't making enough of a difference to the broader world. When we can leverage the wealth that I've helped my clients create and grow to help less fortunate people in the world, then it feels like we're doing something meaningful."

That realization crystallized in 2021 when Hal expanded his practice to include philanthropic planning as a core focus. He set an audacious career goal: to facilitate fifty million dollars in charitable contributions before he retires. As well, his commitment went deeper than his professional practice: Hal became the 9,105th person globally to take the Giving What We Can pledge, committing at least ten percent of his lifetime income to be donated to the world's most effective charities. His personal goal? To donate one million dollars before retirement.

"That's going to happen," he states with confidence. The work centers on donor-advised funds—charitable accounts that allow clients to make a significant tax-deductible contribution upfront, then disburse five percent annually to charities of their choice in perpetuity. Hal's fifty million dollar goal means orchestrating two and a half million dollars in annual distributions to charitable causes once achieved.

He's currently a couple million into that goal, opening new charitable foundation accounts regularly. To support this work, Hal wrote How to Give Like a Billionaire (When you’re not a Billionaire) which is (to his knowledge) the only client-facing book in Canada on the subject. "Everybody knows about the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, but those are all billionaires. Individuals like you and I can do this work too," he explains. The feedback from his clients has been consistent: "I didn't know this was possible until you told me how." Hal’s other professional goal is to give away 10,000 copies of his book because, as he says, “I don’t have time to tell everyone in the country about this important topic, so I’ll be happy to give them all books!”

Hal runs two charitable accounts himself: one that gives locally and one that gives globally. His primary beneficiary is the Against Malaria Foundation. "Every $5,000 donated to buy malaria nets saves somebody's life, and saving a life is the most important thing I think you can do,” he says. But Hal doesn't impose his philosophy on clients. "All causes are good causes," he says. He's had tearful conversations with clients about why they support particular causes, for example, someone who lost a spouse to colon cancer, or parents whose young children want to support animal shelters. "Helping people understand what's important to them and showing them that they can make an impact is really important to me."

The conversations he's having now with older clients reflect this shift: "Do you want $6 million to go to the kids and $2 million to go to taxes? Or do you want $4.5 million to go to the kids, $3.5 million to go to charity and nothing at all to taxes?"

His team of six has assembled almost accidentally, without a single job advertisement. Scott, a former economics lecturer and researcher, has "a deep and abiding loathing for CRA." Devon, twenty years younger, works with the next generation of clients (typically children of the team’s high net worth clients) and will eventually lead the practice. Donna is a friend who recently joined from a competitor. Kimberly, Scott's wife, was just hired to add administrative capacity. Sarah, Hal's wife, has served for a decade as the team's "mom," keeping everything running smoothly with a perception for people's emotional state that complements Hal's analytical focus.

With four licensed Advisors on the team “We put at least two, if not three, sets of eyes on every client file," says Hal. "Clients are getting two for the price of one when it comes to advice.”

When almost retired clients ask, "Am I going to have enough?" Hal's team illustrates long term income and spending projections, while building cushions into retirement plans that ensure at least three years of withdrawals are safe from economic volatility. "We don't have to worry about what’s happening south of the border this afternoon,” he tells them. His advice is consistent: don't watch the news. "Anything that ever happens economically has always gotten better within three years. Do something better with your time."

When asked how his military service informs his current work, Hal pauses before making the connection explicit. "At a fundamental level, choosing to join the military is saying I'm willing to sacrifice myself to protect others," he says. "That's why my grandfather landed on the beach in Normandy. It wasn't to make his life better; it was to make other people's lives better. That deeply influenced my decision to enlist.”

The parallel is clear. "Now in the work I do, how can I help other people have better lives? I absolutely help my clients have stable retirements and their kids get through school because we’ve saved carefully for retirement and education, and that's great. But it is very much helping wealthy, primarily white, Canadians get wealthier. If I can take some of my revenue from that and help people who didn’t start life with the same advantages I did, that's probably even more meaningful in the long run."

He sees the broader context too. Canada's political environment isn't receptive to the taxation levels needed to sustain robust social programs. "Political parties exist to get elected and reelected," Hal observes. "One of the surest ways to be popular is to cut taxes, and now our taxes have been cut to the point where we can't sustain our hospitals and our schools, let alone women’s shelters and food banks." Private donors, he believes, will increasingly fill that gap—and the tax credits for charitable giving reflect a policy decision to support that shift.

Hal is early in his fifty million dollar journey, but he's got time, and with ten percent of his lifetime income already pledged to effective charities, his personal example leads his professional mission.

The call to service never really ends. It just finds new forms.

Carmen Morgan is a skilled business writer and storyteller, collaborating with business owners and executives to tell their stories and share perspectives on growth and success, as well as perseverance and adversity. Over two decades she has refined her interview, writing and editing skills to capture the nuggets and captivating details that engage readers and make a story memorable. 

Hal Simonson, CFP®, RIAC, MFA-P,

Executive Financial Consultant

Simonson Team Private Wealth Management

8005 Emerald Dr #250

Sherwood Park, AB, T8H 0P1

780 - 400 - 4311

Hal.Simonson@igpwm.ca

http://www.halsimonson.ca/