DARK SIDE OF MONEY Featuring Victoria Berezovich

This night is for anyone who has done math that never shows up on a bank statement. People living with a disability or a chronic condition. People caring for someone who is. People who work in benefits, HR, or finance and keep meeting clients who found out about a program six months too late. And people who want to understand what the real numbers look like when income is fixed and expenses are not.

Victoria Berezovich built Western Canada’s first CMT community from nothing, one peer support meeting at a time, and watched it grow into an organization with its own hospital partnerships. She appeared in a docuseries that ran two seasons on CBC, worked a corporate career in labour relations before her diagnosis forced her out, and now models and speaks publicly about disability, including a commercial with her dog. She has survived two divorces, a financial scam that ended in a consumer proposal, and a rare neurological condition that keeps progressing, and she still runs the Western Canadian branch of the CMT Association. At Dark Side of Money, she breaks down what some of that costs on paper and what it actually costs in real life.

Expect specifics. When you buy a wheelchair, the wheels are extra, and they can cost more than the frame. Custom leg braces run $2,000 a leg. A scooter motor gives out in the middle of an intersection, and that is a $1,000 problem before it is a transportation problem. Victoria will talk about being declared uninsurable, about losing group benefits she thought were locked in until 65, and about the programs that exist and almost nobody hears about. Then she gets to the part most people miss entirely: capacity. The energy, time, and mental bandwidth spent before the day even starts, and what runs out when they are gone.

WHAT YOU’LL WALK AWAY WITH

• A clear picture of the costs that come with disability that no benefit plan lists

• Programs most people never hear about, including the Registered Disability Savings Plan, the disability tax credit, and Alberta Aid to Daily Living

• What to know about converting group benefits to personal coverage before the window closes, and why timing matters more than price

• Language for describing capacity to people who have never had to think about it

• Connection with a room of people working through the same math

ABOUT THE HOST

The team at F.P. Advisors created Dark Side of Money to talk about the financial realities people often don’t see coming.

Fifteen years ago, Rheanna suffered a life-altering injury. She knows firsthand that your body can change the math of your life; but she also knows how easy it is to underestimate what that math can actually look like.

Disability doesn’t just cost income. It costs access. Options. Time. Energy. Independence. And often, far more money than anyone planned for.

Rheanna wants this conversation because the darkest financial problems are often the ones people don’t see until they’re already living them. And by then, it may be too late.

Event venue & nearby stays

The Bell in Scona Brewery, 10416 80 Avenue Northwest, Edmonton, Canada

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