Christopher Liew is a CFP®, CFA Charterholder and former financial advisor. He writes personal finance tips for thousands of daily Canadian readers at Blueprint Financial. A big salary hides a lot of problems. I’ve met and worked with plenty of people with large incomes and surprisingly little to show for it, and they were usually the last ones to notice. When the paycheque is big, there’s always another one coming to cover whatever went wrong this month. That works until it doesn’t. Below, I’ll walk through five mistakes I see high earners make, and what I’d do about each one. Who counts as a high earner in Canada For this column, I’m drawing the line at the top 10 per cent. According to Statistics Canada, you needed an income of $116,500 to get there in 2023. That’s lower than most people I talk to would guess, and it’s the cutoff I’m using here. The numbers climb quickly from there. The top 5 per cent started at $152,700, and the top 1 per cent started at $293,800, with an average income of $606,000 inside that group. Wherever you land in that range, the mistakes below apply to you. 1. Comparing yourself to the people you work with At $200,000 a year, chances are the people around you earn about the same. Your colleagues drive similar cars, renovate similar kitchens, and take the same March break trips, so your own spending looks normal. In a downtown Toronto or Calgary office tower, it probably is normal. Now look at the numbers above. An income of $152,700 already puts you ahead of 95 per cent of tax filers in the country. You’re comparing yourself to a tiny group and concluding you’re average, or even behind. I think this is the most expensive habit on the list because it never feels like a mistake. You can’t see your coworkers’ debt, so stop benchmarking against their lifestyles and start benchmarking against your own savings rate. 2. Believing you can always out-earn the problem When a bad decision costs you $20,000, the instinct is to shrug and say you’ll make it back. With a big income, you probably will. The trouble is that this mindset makes every mistake feel cheap, and it keeps pushing saving off to next year’s bonus. The Canada Revenue Agency’s latest TFSA statistics show 534,030 TFSA holders with incomes of $250,000 or more in 2024. Only 148,250 of them maxed out their contributions. If anyone can afford to fill a TFSA, it’s this group. Peak earning years don’t last forever. Industries shrink, companies restructure, and health happens. I’d treat every high-income year as a chance to turn salary into assets, starting with your TFSA and RRSP room. 3. Measuring yourself by salary instead of net worth Income is what comes in, and net worth is what you keep. I’d bet plenty of high earners track the first number closely and couldn’t tell you the second. I walked through this in a recent Blueprint Financial video on the seven levels of wealth in Canada. Every level on that ladder is defined by net worth, from survival all the way up to dynasty. Salary doesn’t appear anywhere on it, and that’s on purpose. Add up what you own, subtract what you owe, and write the number down. Then do it again every few months. If your income has climbed for five years and your net worth has barely moved, you know where to start looking. 4. Assuming that being good at your job makes you good at investing Doctors, engineers, lawyers, and executives are used to being the smartest person in the room. That confidence is earned, but it doesn’t transfer. Being a great surgeon tells you nothing about whether a friend’s startup or a pre-construction condo deal is any good. In my experience, high earners also get pitched more. Private placements, flow-through shares, and “exclusive” real estate deals have a way of finding people with money and not much time. I’ve watched smart people do less homework on a $100,000 private investment than they’d do on a new dishwasher. I wrote recently about how to tell if your financial advice comes from the wrong place, and the same test applies here. If you can’t explain how the investment makes money, whether the person selling it is registered with a Canadian securities regulator, and how you get your money out, pass. I’d take boring, diversified, and low-cost over a hot tip every time. 5. Paying a percentage fee without checking the dollar amount A fee of 1 per cent sounds tiny. On a $1-million portfolio, it’s $10,000 a year, and it grows every time your portfolio does. High earners feel this more than anyone because their balances get big quickly. I covered fund management expense ratios (MERs) in my column on the wrong ways to save for retirement. This is the layer on top: the percentage your advisor or portfolio manager charges on everything you hold. Canadian investors are about to get a clearer look, because under new total cost reporting rules, the annual statements arriving in early 2027 will show your total cost of investing in dollars. I’m not against paying for advice. Good planning is worth real money, especially when your tax situation is complicated. I just want you to know the dollar figure, ask what you’re getting for it, and ask whether a flat or hourly fee is an option. Final thoughts A high income is a great tool, but it’s only a tool. What you build with it is what counts, and none of these fixes is complicated. Most take an afternoon. I’d pick the one that made you wince while reading and deal with it this month, while the paycheques are still big and the choices are still yours.
