New Year checklist:
  My favourite time to run the TIME MACHINE is early January. This is because the current year then acts very much like a future year in the TIME MACHINE. There is no need to consider what contributions have already been made, what taxes have already been paid, and no need to prorate any amounts for incomes, expenses and savings. 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 current year calculation as accurate as possible.

  1. 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.
  2. RRIFs and LIFs.  For each of these, within 'Edit Account properties', 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 If you make any withdrawals during the year, update the total withdrawn this year.
  3. RDSPs. 'Edit Account properties' for these, and 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.
 4. 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.
  5. 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.

Happy New Year!

Click AUTOMATIC SAVINGS and WITHDRAWALS in the left menu.
Click +Add Saving or Withdrawal
For Select Account for deposit/withdrawal: 
select the account you want from the dropdown list.

Enter a Date (YYYY-MM-DD) to start the withdrawals.
For Set the amount: select Withdraw all distributions.

Click Save and Continue

You are looking at the results in Today’s dollars which are discounted for inflation. Anything growing with inflation will look flat. Look at the Time Table (and other reports) in Future dollars, and you’ll see the amounts increase.

The program is not indexing the CPP and OAS to inflation, it's the same amount all the way down.

There’s no need for a separate account type, both spouses can contribute to it. eEnter it as an RRSP. 

Great question.

The TIME MACHINE will convert the RRSP accounts to RRIFs at the age you set to be converted.
Default is 71, but you can change that: Edit Account Properties, and I on the next screen after you Save/Continue the first.
You can also run a SCAN on the age to convert if you want to explore a range of values.
Once converted to RRIF (you’ll see that in the Warnings/Info column of the TimeTable), minimum required withdrawals will be withdrawn in the TM.
You’ll also see withdrawals in the detailed report or year report, as voluntary or required.

The TM treats all withdrawals from RRSPs or RRIFs after age 65  as splittable pension income. In real life you need to do a partial conversion to RRIF for it to be considered splittable income. So be careful, the TM assumes you will do that.

The Withdrawal Optimizer also considers all of this.

Yes. You can answer the question by forcing the TIME MACHINE to make withdrawals from the Non-registered account so that the capital gains are realised. You set that up with AUTOMATIC withdrawals from the account, and you can set the amount and timing of the withdrawals as you wish. If the money is not needed for spending, then it will be deposited  back into that or another account based on your deposit PRIORITIES. If you want to play with the amount and timing, you can run a SCAN to systematically vary the parameters of the AUTOMATIC withdrawal entry, and this way find the optimal solution.

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.

You can now set to ignore GIS but not CPP/QPP. Under CPP/QPP and OAS  tab check the box Ignore GIS calculations in the TIME MACHINE. Please read the Help for this page.

Thanks for the suggestion

Yes. The TIME MACHINE assumed you would always contribute.  You can now change that under the CPP/QPP and OAS tab, set the age at which you will stop contributions.

Thanks for that suggestion.

The easiest way to vary the conversion age over multiple values to gauge its impact, would be to set up a SCAN. Under Setup new SCAN, select the ACCOUNTS table, and then the Age of conversion will appear as parameter for each applicable account you have. This way, you can consider a range of ages all in one go. You can add additional parameters to the scan to vary simultaneously on multiple accounts.

The only thing conversion does is to force a minimum withdrawal every year after conversion. This does not mean you can't make withdrawals from (not locked-in) accounts before conversion. Often people don't convert until they have to (age 71) for maximimum flexibility. The Withdrawal Optimizer does honour the minimum withdrawals, but it also optimizes for withdrawals irrespective of the conversion status, so it may start withdrawing earlier from those accounts. You can have the SCANS run with the Withdrawal Optimizer.

You make a good point that the age of conversion is not currently shown in the reports. I think it could be useful in the detailed reports to seperate out the mandated minimum withdrawals from other withdrawals that were made, I'll add that.

I know the second page issue is a little awkward, but the system needs to know what type of account it is to know what questions it needs to ask next, and the type of account can be modified on the first page (so you can convert your RRSP to RRIF when that time comes yourself). I'll see if there's any way to make it easier.
Thanks.

You can force withdrawals from your RRSP by entering an AUTOMATIC Withdrawal entry for the account.
That might not be necessary if you've set the RRSP as a top Withdrawal PRIORITY. In that case, if you need money, the TIME MACHINE will take it from there.
You can also try the Withdrawal Optimizer to find an optimal withdrawal strategy for you.

You can add your own LIFE EVENTS, so just add Go-GO, SLOW-Go and NO-GO entries, with the date/age you want each to start. Then you can add/edit EXPENSES with their own amount, and link each of their start and end dates to those life events. This is meant specifically for expenses (and other entries like incomes and automatic savings) you want to specifically link to those dates.
If you want to smoothly adjust  your expenses over time, you can also play with how they are indexed to inflation. See this previous discussion.

This thread is the most accessed on the Forum. @thermodynamicthoughtfulFalcon4 certainly started something! Thanks @powerfulWildfowl3 and @quasi_motive for continuing it.

I get a lot of reviews from real users by email, and those always make my day. I've collected them over the years and put a selection of them in the Testimonials section of the homepage. My favourites are those that share how MRA made a difference in their lives. One user even wrote an entire Blog post for me!

Feel free to add your own review!

Last week, we introduced Guardrails—automatic, dynamic spending adjustments that help reduce sequence-of-returns risk.

But markets aren’t the only risk. Retiring too soon, living longer than expected, inflation surprises, or simply overspending can all derail a plan.

That’s where SCANS come in. Scans let you sweep key scenario parameters (amounts, dates, life events) to test many “what-ifs” quickly to see how robust your plan is.  It’s one of MoneyReady App’s most powerful features—and now even easier to use.

We’ve added Canned Scans for common risks (longevity, survivorship, early retirement timing, and inflation). One click runs a full set of Time Machine scenarios. You can edit any canned Scan to fit your situation, then save your own for instant re-runs as your numbers change.

👉 Blog post for the details: Building a Resilient Financial Plan

Got ideas for additional canned Scans you think would help others? Post them here!
We’d also love to hear about the custom Scans you’ve built and how they helped your planning.

Hi Everyone,

Several announcements for the beginning of October.

1. Guardrails.
To stress-test your scenario, the 100 Monte Carlo simulation results show you the percentage of runs that did not have a cash-flow problem. 
You want that success rate to be high. If it is low, then your plan is at risk, and a common strategy to mitigate that risk is to reduce spending. Of course, you can adjust your EXPENSES entries to modify the amounts or the dates they apply. 

The new Guardrails feature allows you to explore, without changing your EXPENSE entries yourself, if a dynamic strategy to adapt your account withdrawals in years following years where the market returns have been lower than your expected returns, will help to not run out of money and thus your success rate in the simulations.

It works this way:
After 100 simulations, the success rate is calculated. If it is less than 90% then another 100 simulations are run, but these also reduce your EXPENSE entries by 10% for any years following a year where market returns were lower than the expected return of your entire portfolio at that time. 
Reducing expenses will reduce the required income from your accounts, thus reducing withdrawals, and that will lead to a higher success rate. 
If still not over 90%, it runs another 100 simulations the same way, this time reducing the expenses by 20%, then again by 30% if it has to.

Be patient, as although the 100 simulations are parallelised so that they complete faster, each set of 100 must be run sequentially, so it might take some time to run up to 4 sets. You’ll be able to see the results of each of the sets. 

What this analysis shows is that you may need to be vigilant with your spending, and you may need to monitor your actual returns in the market and adapt your spending to it.

2. New Chart in the TIME MACHINE results

The guardrails feature requires the calculation of your overall average expected returns in every year of the TIME MACHINE.
I thought this would be useful information, and it has been added as a new Chart in the TIME MACHINE results (new runs only).
You might be surprised at first that your overall average expected return can vary over time. This will happen when you have different expected rates of return for different accounts. 
The overall rate will change as some accounts are depleted or others increase in value. 
The new chart is right above the overall asset allocation charts, as that also varies with time for the same reason.

3. Last resort withdrawals.

The simulations showed us an issue if you set some Withdrawal Priorities limits to 0%. 
The TIME MACHINE follows your orders and refuses to withdraw from those accounts.
That is fine in cases you actually want to make sure those accounts are never withdrawn from, but often in simulations, where the market can go really bad on you, you may need to access that money or run into a cash-flow problem.
For that reason, in years there is a cash-flow problem the TIME MACHINE could not resolve (even if there's a spouse it can try to get money from), the TIME MACHINE will go through another round of your Withdrawal Priorities, ignoring any limits on withdrawals (except for CRA-imposed ones that are never ignored).
So as a last resort, you can always access all of your accounts. When that happens, a Warning is shown in the Timetable for the years it did so you know that happened.

4. Lots of styling changes on the web pages. 
The left menu is now collapsible, which gives you more room to see things on smaller screens. 
A new bottom menu is now visible on all the various reports of the TIME MACHINE, so you can navigate within and between the reports quickly and easily. 
In comparison reports, the scrolling of side-by-side TIME TABLE comparisons is synced both horizontally and vertically. 

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions,
Happy Thanksgiving!

The app takes into consideration capital gains because it knows not only the value of your investments  but also their book value (cost basis). Make sure you enter accurate book values for your non-registered investments.

The TIME MACHINE grows your investments with separate rates of growth you enter for dividends, foreign and eligible for the dividend tax credit, (which you can set to be reinvested or not) and capital growth. It also adjusts the book value as necessary with any deposits or withdrawals. So for taxes, it knows how to treat the capital gains, foreign dividends and eligible dividends.

You can see some details of your investment growth and taxation in the detailed reports.

A popular thing to do for non-registered withdrawals starting at retirement, is to set an AUTOMATIC Withdrawal of all dividends/distributions from any account you want.