My last announcements have been all about Building a Resilient Financial Plan, using Monte Carlo simulations and SCANS.
These address the risks to your financial plan stemming from market volatility and the uncertainty in the timing of various life events like retirement and death.

There is yet another risk to financial plans: policy risk,  as governments can change tax and pension policies. 
A recent federal budget and a climbing budget deficit have got people anxious and speculating about what changes the government will make. They ask me how those changes would affect their financial plan.

We do not know what changes governments will make, nor when a change would apply, but the MoneyReady App was always meant to be an exploratory tool. We've set up some canned scans that can modify internal parameters of the app to address a selection of users' fears or expectations of particular policy changes:

1: Reduce the OAS Minimum income recovery threshold:
This scan reduces the current OAS Minimum income recovery threshold by a factor of 0.9 (a 10% reduction) to 0 (no minimum income for clawback).
2: Reduce capital gains exemption on sale of principal residence:
This scan reduces the current capital gains exemption on the sale of principal residence by a factor of 0.9 (a 10% reduction) to 0 (no exemption).
3: Reduce RRIF/LIF required minimum withdrawals.
This scan reduces the current RRIF and LIF required minimum withdrawals by a factor of 0.9 (a 10% reduction) to 0 (no minimum withdrawals required).
4: Capital gains inclusion rate.
This scan changes the current (50%) realised capital gains inclusion rate into taxable income from 0% (no tax on capital gains) to 100% (capital gains fully taxed as regular income). 
This only applies to non-registered investments (personal or business).

The scan applies the changed parameters from today. 

Obviously, this is only a small selection of potential policy changes. We could imagine changes in tax brackets and rates, caps on tax-advantaged accounts, etc.

I don't want to scare you. These are not predictions; they are just for fun.

Let us know if there's another policy change you'd like to explore.

Other announcements:

• Once an account has converted to an RRIF or LIF, this is now indicated in the Warning/Info column of the Timetable.
• The year reports and detailed reports of the TIME MACHINE now break down the total of TDA withdrawals by required minimum withdrawals and voluntary withdrawals. 
• You can now set the age at which to stop CPP or QPP contributions if you work past 65.
• You can now set GIS to be ignored in the TIME MACHINE.
• We've added support for BC and AB property tax deferral loans for users from those provinces.