PRIORITIES determine the order of accounts to deposit money in years you have a surplus, or to withdraw from accounts in years you have a deficit.  It is a great strength of the MoneyReady App that you can control that, but I've noticed that sometimes users get stuck on this.

PRIORITIES tables no longer intermingle your accounts with your spouse’s accounts and your CCPC accounts. 
Each of those now require separate tables. This sounds like it would be more complicated, but it actually makes things a lot clearer.

The entire PRIORITIES section of the eBook has been rewritten, and for visual learners, we have created a new video explaining how PRIORITIES work in detail.

It was a good time to make this change as you will be required to review your PRIORITIES with the New Year (see below).

I'm a bit sad to see 2024 go, as it was an amazing standout year for the MoneyReady App. We celebrated it turning 5 years old, and though you'd think we'd run out of features to add, far from it! Here's a brief summary of the upgrades we made and announced in 2024:

Reporting.

• The summary cash-flow report has been a big hit. So much so that I've been considering showing it instead of the TIME TABLE as the default report you see at first.  What do you think?
• The Table of Contents of the full Report has also been appreciated. However, someone made the comment on social media that our reports are too extensive. Given that my actual users most often request more and more detailed reporting, I do find that an odd comment.
  
• We've recently added a new graph breaking down the source of investment growth over all your accounts, and we are planning more detailed reporting of growth.

SCANS.

• The ability to do parameter scans was added at the end of March. It's a powerful feature, I'm surprised it's not used more.
• We recently added the ability to run SCANs with the Withdrawal Optimizer, and that should help its popularity. Particularly if you have investments held in your corporation (see below).

Taxes.

• The Federal government kind of forced our hand here with the changes in the Capital Gains, and the Alternative Minimum Tax. We ended up implementing the AMT. I expect more changes to come.
• Québec likes to do things differently, and we worked on implementing more of its particularities for improved Québec tax calculations and our reporting of them.  We now include RAMQ premiums and contributions to the Health Services Fund when payable. We've added the Senior Assistance tax credit, the Solidarity tax credit, and the Family Allowance. 

Permanent life insurance.

• This had been often requested but was very difficult to add. It's difficult because only the insurance company has all the information necessary to do all the calculations. The workaround requires you to get an "illustration" from your insurance advisor, that we can now incorporate into the MoneyReady App.

CCPCs.

• We greatly improved the reporting for CCPCs. They now have their own detailed year reports, complete with Sankey cash-flow diagrams.
• What I'm most proud of is the ability to automatically direct the tax-optimal withdrawals of the different types of dividends from the CCPC.
• Combined with the ability to perform SCANS on the amount of income required, you can find the optimal mix of salary and dividends to withdraw from your CCPC before retirement.
• For after retirement, you can run a SCAN with the Withdrawal Optimizer of the dividend income required to determine the best withdrawal strategy in retirement considering both the CCPC investment accounts and your own personal accounts.

All this hard work paid off as we got attention from the Press this year. Both Bruce Sellery and Rob Carrick told me it was MoneyReady App users who recommended the app to them and urged them to make it widely known. And they did, big time.  Many of you now are new users, so welcome! 

You know where to find me if you have questions, comments, or suggestions.
Thank you for spreading the word.

Happy New Year everyone!

Elisabeth

New Year Checklist:
Here is a list of things that need to be updated at the start of the year, and sometimes throughout the year to keep the TIME MACHINE calculation as accurate as possible.

• CPP/QPP table(s). An entry for pensionable earnings for last year will appear. You will need to estimate what those were until the actual amount is updated at the CRA or Retraite Québec later in the year. 
• Changes in ACCOUNTS. For the accounts listed below, you’ll need to ’Edit Account Properties’. Review each account, and click ’Save and continue’ on every form, as some of the information required may appear on subsequent forms.
  • RRIFs and LIFs. For each of these, enter the balance of the account at the end of last year. If you make any withdrawals during the year, update the total withdrawn this current year.
  • FHSAs. You must also ’Edit Account properties’ for any FHSAs to reflect the cumulative amount contributed to date.
  • RDSPs. Update the table of previous contributions if one appears. If you make a contribution this year, enter the amount once made, and you will need to come back and check the box once the grants/bonds have been received so that they are not double counted in the TIME MACHINE.
  • RESPs. Make sure the table of previous contributions and withdrawals is kept up to date.

• PRIORITIES. Just review the PRIORITIES once you've updated the accounts. A new entry for this year will be created automatically from last year if you haven’t created one for the new year previously.
• TIME MACHINE. There are up to 3 screens that capture current year tax information before running the TIME MACHINE: one for yourself, one for your spouse, and one for your CCPC when applicable. Please update the amounts asked for the current year, and keep them updated throughout the year.
• Tax owing or refund. If you expect a tax refund from the previous year’s taxes, you can enter it as an Income (Other, not taxable) with start and end dates on the date you expect to receive it. Similarly for tax owing, enter it as an Expense for the date you expect to pay it.