Today is not Jan 1. The MoneyReadyApp tries to be accurate as possible. Projections in the future make a lot of assumptions, but at least we can know the current situation today accurately, so we start from that.

We use your current account balances. One of it's best features is to our ability to keep your accounts current to today automatically with our free Fundata and Wealthica integrations. To give you accurate current projections, we run these projections with accurate data today, from today. When entering incomes/expenses and other components, enter their real start dates, you don't need to adjust those, you stick to reality for those, the TIME MACHINE adjusts.

What you do need to adjust are any taxes already paid this year in the screens right before running the TIME MACHINE as it will calculate taxes in full for the year, and if you've already paid some (via at source deductions, installments, withholding etc) you want to be credited for that.

With the current volatility in markets around the world, this announcement of new features to make updating all investments' properties easier is either timely or untimely. That depends on whether you closely monitor your investments or ignore them in such times.

Mock investments. You can now set any investment (except 'Cash' investments) to be ignored in the TIME MACHINE and in net worth calculations. This is useful to run scenarios with portfolios of different investments you are considering. Ignored investments will still have their values automatically updated with FUNData market data or Wealthica when applicable, so it's also useful to just follow these investments you are considering but may not own yet.

View/Edit all Investments in all Accounts now allows you to edit most properties of all investments entered all on one page. Besides price, shares, market value, and book value, you can now change the risk value, default current expected returns, fees, and whether to ignore the investment or not.

Update from a spreadsheet. If you have many investments that need to be entered or updated manually, you may want to update from a spreadsheet (particularly if you do not use Wealthica). Most financial institutions allow you to download your investment values into a comma-separated (csv) or other file format that you can then get into a spreadsheet program to view it. Once you have your data in a spreadsheet program like Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers, you can now import those data to update your investments in the MoneyReady App.  For adding new accounts and their investments, first add the Account in the app, then the spreadsheet can be used to add the investments into it. I refer you to the eBook to learn how to set up the spreadsheet for import. It's easy to get a template by simply downloading your current list of investments from the View/Edit all Investments in all Accounts page.

Many are asking me how to deal with the current market volatility. Do not panic. Keep a long-term view for long-term investments. Make sure the money that is needed short-term is there for you by not having it tied up in the market.

Remember, we provide the tools for you to determine how resilient your portfolio is and thus be prepared for market volatility: https://www.moneyreadyapp.ca/blog/post/14

All the Best to all my fellow Canadians,
Elisabeth

Yes, you can add investments to any account (so you may want to create a non-registered account to hold these).

Add a CAD or USD investment as appropriate.

The type of the investment would be "Other", and you would enter a name for it, say "art".

Enter 1 share, its value (current appraised value), its book value (what you paid for it after the costs of buying it), and the Asset Type as "Alternative or other investment".

Enter an expected Capital appreciation growth rate (% per year).

The other rates probably don't apply.

Update:

sparklingProkaryotepudding6 wrote:

do I need to change the age to convert to RRIF and do various runs to see by trial and error which results in the best for me in terms of minimum lifetime taxes or maximum estate at end of life? Thanks in advance!

You can now run SCANS on the age of conversion, with or without the Withdrawal Optimizer, to explore its impact on your plan automatically.

The feature is now implemented. We ask for the MER as that is simplest for users, but you can fudge it as you like if you want to make it higher to consider additional fees.

In my last Announcement, I mentioned users wanted more and more detailed reporting.

• We've added a new GAINS table in the year reports. 
  • This table breaks down the total investment gains by type (interest, foreign dividends, eligible dividends, capital growth), by account type and for each account. It also shows the total fees (account maintenance fees, trading fees, and MER fees) paid, and any foreign taxes withheld. Additionally, realised capital gains and losses are shown.
• A new Sankey diagram right above the GAINS table shows the cash-flows in and out for the different account types types. 
• To accurately report the MER fees, we need to capture these for your ETF and mutual fund investments (optional).
  • The Management Expense Ratio (MER) corresponds to the total cost of managing and operating the fund, expressed as a percentage of the fund's assets. It is charged indirectly to the investor by reducing the returns. Fund returns are always reported by the fund after deducting the MER. We ask if the expected rates of return have not already been reduced by the MER. If you check the box, then the MER entered will reduce the expected yields you entered in the TIME MACHINE. Leave the box unchecked if you do not want the returns to be reduced by the MER. In either case, you will see an estimate of the fees paid in total for each account in the GAINS table. 
  • We will be adding the current MER fees as defaults for the most commonly-held ETFs eventually, but you may need to look up up the MER fees for your fund.
• You can now run 100 market-model simulations on Optimized scenarios. 
  • When you run the Withdrawal Optimizer or the CPP/QPP and Withdrawal Optimizer, there will be a button to run 100 market simulations on the results of that run (under Tools). For these simulation runs, the market model is used, but also your scenario will be modified (in the background) with the changes made to your scenario to reflect the results of the optimization. This means each simulation run will use the withdrawal strategy of the optimized run, and the optimal CPP/QPP start age(s) it calculated in the case of the CPP/QPP and Withdrawal Optimizer.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

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.

Hi everyone,

The response to the press attention mentioned in my last two announcements has been phenomenal and has kept me very busy answering questions from new users. But I've also made improvements to the MoneyReadyApp over the last couple of months that I'd like to share with you today.

1. SCANs can now be run with the Withdrawal Optimizer. This makes it possible to make sure your after-retirement withdrawal strategy is optimal for any value of the parameters being scanned.
2. It also makes it possible to determine the best withdrawal strategy that also considers the depletion from CCPC investment accounts by performing a SCAN on the Optimized Dividend INCOME from the CCPC. This is a feature I've gotten a lot of requests for from business owners. 
3. If you have a CCPC, the value of the CCPC at death is now shown in your list of saved runs so you can easily consider the value of both your CCPC and personal estate when comparing runs.
4. Using a younger spouse’s age to calculate the minimum required RRIF/LIF withdrawals is usually beneficial so we had made it the default behavior, but it is now optional. For accounts where that may be applicable, Edit the Account Properties until it asks you whether to use the younger spouse’s age. Uncheck the box if you want the account’s owner age used to determine the minimum withdrawal.
5. The 100 Monte Carlo simulation results now display how many of the samples did not have a cash-flow problem.
6. We now consider Preferred shares as having their own separate asset allocation separate from Equities (common shares). With the rise of Crypto ETFs, we also allow an asset allocation to Crypto (previously "Other") for these. Default rates for these asset classes have been added.
7. We are getting ready to capture Second Additional Contributions to CPP and QPP which started in 2024. The TIME MACHINE has always calculated those in the future, but as of 2025, we will need to capture the past contributions (from 2024 on). You will see some changes to your CPP and QPP contribution tables.

As always, the details are in the MoneyReady App eBook and appropriate Help pages. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

And I want to extend a warm welcome to all our new users!

Very well said @Runner4Life

Maybe we do make it a little too easy to overthink these things :)

Remember the TIME MACHINE makes deposits and withdrawals from your accounts as you order them, but it will also make sure that at the end of the year, after all that you told it to do with your INCOMEs, EXPENSEs, SAVINGs, etc.,  and after taxes, that it will deposit any excess or withdraw any deficit to/from your accounts. See the video on how the TIME MACHINE works

I said it has a one-year resolution because it checks that the cash flow works only once a year, not every month or day.

In some years where you have an excess, you may need money before your windfall and possibly you could have invested in your accounts earlier. In other years when you have a deficit, you would need to withdraw earlier. So it's a little off in the amount of growth in your accounts for those months compared to if you were actually investing every penny you could every day.

Yes, it will if you force the withdrawal.

The TIME MACHINE mostly has a resolution of one year. A monthly resolution would be more accurate, but would also slow it down quite a bit.

Crypto and Preferred shares have now been added as asset classes. Announcement tomorrow.

Did you set up your drawdown the way your logic tells you for the TIME MACHINE? You can do that with an AUTOMATIC withdrawal.

If you did, did the Withdrawal Optimizer beat that scenario?

If it does, then look at what it does, and learn from it.

If it doesn't, then your logic beats it, and you're good to go.

Well yes, you can add as many individual expenses as you like, starting and ending at any date, that's always there. 

Having an increase/decrease% starting linked to a date/event, would be a convenience feature I would add, if I can make it easy.

I appreciate what you're going through running these scenarios. It is unsettling, and unfortunately, a necessary part of financial planning.

My advice: don't tell your spouse you are doing this unless you are working with them on it. At least for my spouse, the "I killed myself off early in the TIME MACHINE today, and you'll be fine!" didn't go over as well as I thought it would 😀

Joint expenses are inherited in full by the surviving spouse, whereas they disappear at the death of their owner when not Joint.

So it's kind of all or nothing right now.

I do like your suggestion. It's just more questions to ask the user.

I explained in an earlier post on this thread how Joint expenses are attributed to each spouse, Most cases it's actually #1: last year's taxable income. I think it's CRA friendliest way to split the Joint expenses as usually you want the higher income spouse to pay for expenses so that the lower income spouse can invest or stay invested. The ratio is often 50% after retirement, because of pension income splitting in later years which equalizes the taxable incomes, then there is no lower-income spouse.

If you want to specify how the Joint expenses are attributed to each spouse, then enter individual expenses for each, as you did.

The only thing I would add is that expenses, Joint or not, are reassigned from one spouse to the other to solve a cash-flow problem in the TIME MACHINE, that is spouses can help each other out.

Yes, CPP and OAS do not qualify for pension.  I was focused on answering your question of why the LIRA was being converted.

This is a case of you want the money, for the pension split and tax credit. You can set up an AUTOMATIC withdrawal of $4,000, it'll be split with your wife and both of you will get the pension tax credit in the TIME MACHINE.  The year reports will show you the taxable income pre- and post-pension income splitting for both you and your wife.

I also explained that it also makes conversions after 65 if you need the money. But there's no optimization done by the TIME MACHINE, that's where the Withdrawal Optimizer comes in.

As you saw, the TIME MACHINE allows partial conversions of LIRAs and DCPPs. It does this by automatically allowing withdrawals from LIRAs after 65, regardless of when you set to convert it, if you want or need the money. We assume you will arrange it with your LIRA provider to make the required partial conversion to an LIF or RRSP/RRIF as allowed by your province's legislation so that the money can be withdrawn. That flexibility is usually what users want.

If you want the money, you would enter an AUTOMATIC withdrawal. People often do that to make a partial conversion to get the pension sharing and the pension tax-credit if they have no other sources of pension income. Not your case, but I need to mention it.

If you need money, the TIME MACHINE makes withdrawals from your accounts following your withdrawal PRIORITIES. You can set a limit of 0 for the LIRA account for the years before age 72 so that it will skip it and get money from accounts further down in the list instead. You will need the create a new PRIORITIES entry for the years 72 and up to allow withdrawals again.