With her office located directly behind her split-level home, Sandy Page is positioned perfectly to balance her life as a fee-only financial planner and a mother of two to Rachael, 12, and Max, 9.

Even though there was a nanny until recently to help out on the home front, Page says, she has always made it a priority to be home when her children leave for school in the morning and return in the afternoon.

“That’s sacred time,” she says.

The other element Page, 44, always makes time for is exercise. The daughter of a golf pro, she is a big believer in keeping fit; accompanied by her black standard poodle, Princess Grace, Page regularly jogs in the woods surrounding her Markham, Ont., home. She also skis and lifts weights — devoting at least five or six hours a week to exercise. In fact, she put an exercise room, complete with a treadmill, stationary bike, spinning bike and weights, in her house right after Rachael was born.

But when Page added her home office, with its separate entrance, onto her house, she also started to go out to a gym.

“I do so much in my house that I like to get out,” she says. “I need something different.”

If anything defines Page, it’s the interplay of home, work and life that she has orchestrated. Sitting behind her large, tidy desk in her sunshine-filled office, with a sighing Gracie curled up in a facing chair, Page seems content with the balance she has created for herself. One might suppose from this idyllic scene that Page had planned this life all along — but that would be a misperception. A graduate from the University of Toronto’s commerce program in 1985, Page’s original intention was to work as a chartered accountant. But, she says, “I was interviewing with CA firms, and the work they were describing was horrible.”

Then, on the advice of a family friend, she met with John Page at Great-West Life Assurance Co. It was an auspicious meeting: not only did it set the course for her career, but it was the start of a life-altering relationship. The pair eventually married and had two children, then divorced amicably four years ago.

“We’re still good friends,” she says. “He’s my kids’ dad, and I respect him.”

Page admits she fell into her career: “I didn’t even know what insurance was. I got the life and disability booklets as soon as I graduated and then I bartended all summer.”

That was in the mid-’80s, and Great-West Life was piloting a financial planning program called Gold Key Financial Services. “I was the guinea pig,” Page says of the pilot program. She learned how to create a financial plan — and did it, free of charge, for every insurance prospect she had. “It would take hours to produce a plan. But I had enough time and energy, so I’d do it.”

She remembers knocking on a lot of doors. “But I found some real diamonds in the rough,” she says. In fact, many people she met then are still clients today, including one person who mistook her for the newspaper delivery girl when she showed up on the doorstep.

A year of working for free was about all that she could take, however. “John and I decided to open up a financial planning firm at that point,” she says.

The pair found a site in Oshawa, Ont., and started pitching themselves as fee-only financial planners. This was in the early days for fee-only planning, so it involved a lot of work to get the message out, Page says. “We developed a presentation and the rationale, and presented the concept to many people until we got clients.”

She remembers landing her first client couple — they are still with her today, she says: “It was really cool.” At the time, she charged $200 for the full financial plan. “Now, they probably pay that a month.”

The early days were not easy on the wallet, she admits: “It’s a big investment to try to set up a fee-based financial planning practice. It took sacrifice and cost us a lot of money in unearned income to do it.”

In fact, she says, it took a decade of hard work to move away from living hand to mouth — but she was always confident their efforts would pay off because she believes in the integrity of fee-only planning. “Hopefully, people don’t have to make such sacrifices anymore,” she says, “but it’s a tough go.”

@page_break@The pair found success and eventually hired six advisors to work in Oshawa before expanding to Richmond Hill, Ont., in 1989, where they hired four more advisors.

The couple married in 1992. Two years later, after their first baby was born, Page started working from home — just as the Internet was starting to take off, allowing her to tap into work computer systems from her home office.

Around this time, John’s career began moving in another direction, focusing mainly on teaching advisors, Page says. But she has continued to do what she still loves — being a high-touch financial planner for her clients. “I love to make a difference in people’s lives,” she says. “I love to help them.”

Page doesn’t do it on her own. In fact, she says, one of the biggest challenges of working independently is hiring the right people. She has been fortunate when it comes to support teams, but had some difficulty in finding the right administrative assistant. Last May, Page hired Donna Massel, a neighbour, business graduate and a mother who structures her own hours, whom, Page says, is the final part of the puzzle.

Around the same time, she also hired Mike Woods, a university graduate who had just finished his CFP course, to handle all the analytical analysis for her clients. She admits her approach to support staff has changed over time: “I understand that it’s give and take, not just take.”

Page manages the financial plans of almost 80 client families, each with at least $1 million in assets. Her philosophy, she admits, is to stay small by design; in her business plan outline, she says, her team will work no more than 40 hours per week, 49 weeks per year.

Page relies exclusively on client referral and is picky about whom she takes on as a client. Do-it-yourselfers who simply want her knowledge and expertise before taking flight or clients who like to have a lot of cooks in the kitchen — under the illusion that the more people handling one’s money, the better off one will be — don’t fit well into her practice, she says. And she’d rather address this fact bluntly than let the relationship turn bitter.

In fact, in a nod to achieving and maintaining balance, Page seeks out clients she truly likes and respects — and who themselves believe that health, fitness and balance are an integral part of life.

“I like to work with people who are genuinely kind and respectful,” says Page. “I want them to have a good heart and to care about the world and care about making it a better place.” IE