alt="Crossing the 49th Parallel book cover">Crossing the 49th Parallel
A Retirement Planning Guide for Moving Across the Canada–U.S. Border.
By Lucas Wennersten, CFA, CFP® (U.S. & Canada)
The guide he wished existed when he crossed.
Moving between Canada and the United States is one of the most financially complicated things a person can do in retirement — two tax systems, two sets of accounts, a treaty most advisors have never read, and a hundred small decisions that quietly cost people money for the rest of their lives.
Crossing the 49th Parallel is the plain-language guide to getting it right. Drawing on both his professional expertise and his own move across the border and back, Lucas Wennersten walks through the tax, retirement, and planning realities of a cross-border life — the RRSPs and 401(k)s, the CPP and Social Security, the departure tax, the traps — in language built for the person living it, not the specialist.
Everything that crosses the border with you.
- How the Canada–U.S. tax treaty actually affects your retirement income
- What happens to your RRSP, RRIF, and TFSA when you cross the border
- Coordinating CPP, OAS, and U.S. Social Security — and how each is taxed
- The departure tax, and how to plan a move instead of stumbling into it
- 401(k)s and IRAs for Canadians — and the PFIC trap to avoid
- Estate and probate exposure that quietly crosses the border
- Currency, timing, and where your money should actually live
- The mistakes that cost cross-border retirees the most — and how to dodge them
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alt="Crossing the 49th Parallel">Written for your crossing.
- Canadians planning to retire in the United States
- Americans retiring to Canada
- Dual citizens and snowbirds
- Anyone moving across the 49th with retirement savings in tow
Lucas lived it.
alt="Lucas Wennersten">Lucas Wennersten is the founder of 49th Parallel Wealth Management and one of the few advisors qualified on both sides of the border — holding the CFA charter and CFP® designations in both Canada and the United States. A U.S. citizen who moved to Toronto and back, he didn’t learn cross-border planning from a distance; he lived it.
More about Lucas →