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How long does it take?

In programming, we have a saying, GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. The Money-Ready App is built to provide you with accurate calculations, which requires accurate and complete data. We make it easy, but it can take some time to gather that data. Depending on how complicated your financial situation is, how detailed you want to be, and the depth of your financial knowledge, plan 15 to 45 minutes before your first TIME MACHINE run. Take your time to do it right and your patience will be rewarded. Financial planning is a skill that requires continuous learning and will last you a lifetime. 

Limitations

We endeavour to have accurate calculations for Canadian taxes, rules, and benefits for all Canadian residents, however we cannot always include everything in the various Federal and Provincial legislations.

We endeavour to cover all financial products available to Canadians, however the complexity of some products cannot always be captured completely.

We point out these deficiencies when we know of them.

We do not and cannot guarantee the accuracy of anything in The Money-Ready App.

We are continually improving The Money-Ready App.

We welcome feedback so please suggest features that are not currently implemented.

We will work on implementing the most popular requests first.

How safe are my data? Security Policy.

To develop accurate financial plans the MoneyReady App requires some personal and financial information from you. Nothing is more important to the MoneyReady App than trust and protecting this data. Please see our Security Policy.

How does the MoneyReady App TIME MACHINE work?

The MoneyReady App is not a financial planner itself. It is a calculator that can be used to assess financial plans using its powerful iterative cash-flow engine, the TIME MACHINE. The MoneyReady App can answer even the toughest financial questions by considering a person's current and complete financial position, and future aspirations, fears, and goals. It takes all of the inputs for a financial scenario, and then crunches the cash-flows, and outputs a detailed financial picture calculated for every year. Running the TIME MACHINE is a very empowering exercise for people. They can immediately see the results of any financial decision, recommendation and assumption.
Video explaining the TIME MACHINE (3 minutes).
However, the TIME MACHINE only provides guidelines and ideas for creating a financial plan. It is not designed to predict the future. The results generated by this program are based on user estimates of many factors like rates of return, life expectancy, and inflation and important assumptions such as tax rates and government benefits. The results are only an illustration, and none of the information can be guaranteed.
In crunching the numbers we try to include the latest tax rules and regulations, both federally and for all provinces and territories. We avoid short-cuts and estimates as much as possible. Although accuracy is our aim, we do still need to make some assumptions and approximations, and we have not yet covered the entire Canadian tax code nor all available financial products. The TIME MACHINE does not verify the validity of transactions according to the CRA.
For more information please register and get the free eBook which explains all the features of the MoneyReady App .

What are your investment recommendations?

We do not recommend or sell investments.

Can the MoneyReady App handle families?

Yes. Once logged in, a user can add a spouse to their profile so that the spouse's finances will also be considered. A spouse does not need a separate subscription. Children are only considered for their financial implications on the parent or parents and cannot have accounts or investments (except RESPs and RDSPs), so that adult children would need a separate subscription to the MoneyReady App for their own financial planning. 

What are the features/capabilities of the MoneyReady App?

A summary of all the features of the MoneyReady App can be found on the homepage.

A full description of all the capabilities/features of the MoneyReady App can be found in the eBook (login required)

Consulting income
In the TIME MACHINE, your income goes into your Wallet. Expenses come out of your Wallet. Taxes come out of your Wallet. If you set up automatic savings/withdrawals, that also moves money to/from the account specified from/to the Wallet.
If there is money in your Wallet after all that at the end of the year, it gets deposited to accounts or spent, according to your deposit Priorities.
If on the other hand, the Wallet balance is negative, money will be taken from accounts according to your withdrawal Priorities.
This is to zero the Wallet balance for the following year.
 
So if you have other income that covers the expenses, taxes, and automatic savings for the year, and the 50K from consulting is not needed and ends up in your Wallet, the TM will consider your deposit Priorities to determine how much to deposit to each of your accounts. If you want to spend a portion or all of the extra money instead, set Spending as your first deposit Priority with a limit set to the % you want to spend. If that limit is set to 100%, nothing will be saved in your accounts. You’ll see the total spending in the Timetable.
Not showing any CPP survivor benefits

For CRP: I see you entered the dependents and your spouse as their caregiver, that’s good.

However for the CRP to make any difference, your spouse would have to have had  lower than her career average earnings in those child-caring years.
Her CPP table shows 50% of max for all years, so no years are below average. To get an accurate CRP, you should enter an accurate CPP table. I think myAccount at the CRA is still down so it’s not easy to get the actual table at the moment, but you might have it in your records?
 
For the survivor pension, this depends on both your calculated pensions, so again make sure the CPP tables entered are accurate.
CPP and Defined Benefit Pension plan

The pension doesn’t affect CPP, she won’t lose any CPP benefit.

Defined-benefit Pension plans vary a lot, but usually, the way it works is that if the workplace pension is started before 65, it provides a bridge benefit to 65 on top of the regular pension payment.
Pension plans assume you start CPP at 65, whether you do or not, and that bridge benefit is meant to provide a CPP-like amount to 65, and then they stop paying it. 
Look at her pension booklet, it should explain, and her yearly statement should give an estimate of both the bridge benefit and the pension depending on when she takes it.
If you’re still not clear, you can ask the Pension Plan provider.
 
The app allows you to enter a bridge benefit amount, separate from a work pension amount, that ends at 65. In INCOMES, select Defined benefit bridge pension. The regular pension should be entered as a Defined benefit pension.
Not borrowing from Lines of credit (LOCs)
It should allow you to borrow from an LOC if you haven’t set a withdrawal PRIORITY limit of 0, and you haven't reached the credit limit of the LOC.   For an  HELOC that is setup for the Smith Manoeuvre so it’s tied to mortgage loan and to an investment account, there usually is no additional credit to borrow from the way it’s done in the TIME MACHINE (it’ll all go to the investments). I’d be happy to check over your scenario if you would like me to.
Car loan

No don’t enter the loan expenses, they’ll be taken care of automatically.

What happens in the TM is when you take out a loan in the future, is that the amount of the loan is put in your Wallet, and the Loan gets a balance that starts accumulating interest and payments are made (from your Wallet). For an amortizing loan the amortization schedule is used and recalculated anytime there is a pre-payment (which can happen with Deposit Priorities kicking in). Normally for a car loan, you would enter an EXPENSE for the car as a one time (same start and end date) expense on the same day the loan is taken out. That expense will be taken out of your Wallet, so should be mostly covered by the loan taken out, unless your cost is higher due to a downpayment. The loan is not actually linked to the car, it’s just a personal loan, but you do need to enter the car expense. This is the way it works for all LOANS in the TM started in the future. You go to the bank/dealer, get a cheque for the loan, then spend the cheque. 

 

Convert a US IRA or 403B plan to a registered annuity

Ok,

I’ve changed it so it allows IRAs to buy registered annuities in the future, and Roths can buy prescribed annuities. They will be treated the same as Canadian annuities in the TIME MACHINE. Let me know if you have any issues.
Convert a US IRA or 403B plan to a registered annuity

I looked up the rules on US retirement plans to conversions to Canadian registered annuities. It looks to me like you have to convert the plan to RRSP/RRIF first.  What does your insurance salesman say? 

Large taxable capital gain?

The TIME MACHINE rebalances your accounts to their set asset allocations first thing every year. The account holding the shares has a target allocation set to 100% Cash, so it sells all the shares and the money is put into the Cash investment of that account. This generates a large taxable capital gain as the book value of the shares is so low compared to the market value, in a taxable account. The tax bill is not paid from that account because although you need the cash to pay it, the TIME MACHINE uses your Withdrawal PRIORITIES to determine where to get the money, and you set the other accounts to have higher priority for withdrawals.

Just set the shares ACCOUNT target asset allocation to 100% Equities. 

So it’s not a bug, it's a feature :) Accounts with current asset allocations far off from their target should show up with a red or orange "Edit Allocation" link in the ACCOUNTS  list. But I’ll see if I can’t change the default asset allocations for accounts holding individual equities, as I realize it’s an easy mistake to make to just leave them to the current default of 100% Cash. 

 

GIC ladder

When you edit a GIC investment, you can set the term of the GIC to what you want it to renew to (say 5 years), not necessarily what it was originally, so that the “Renew” button in RATES/YIELDS/CURRENCIES will renew the GIC for that length of term, from its current maturity date that you set.

Then you can renew for additional terms.

When renewed in the future the TIME MACHINE will set the new maturity date to the end of the rate, so the funds should be blocked as long as the GIC is renewed. So you don’t have to renew rates forever and to make the funds available eventually, I think it sets the last rate end date of None so that the funds continue to grow at that last rate forever, but then they’ll be no maturity, so not blocked and available for spending. What you are doing is quite reasonable, and will get you very close.

Private Lending

You can now add LOANS specifying that you are the lender and "Other” is the borrower. This feature was added recently so you might want to get the latest eBook version and read the "Loans payable to you, your spouse, or your CCPC” section. The interest, and any principal repayments, will go to your Wallet account in the TIME MACHINE.  My understanding is that interest income does not count as earned income so would not add to the RRSP room and we haven’t set up any way to directly contribute interest income to RRSPs. But I suppose you have RRSP room from other sources of income and there are 2 ways the TIME MACHINE can move the money from the Wallet into an RRSP:

1. Put the RRSP at or near the top of your deposit PRIORITIES, so any funds left in the Wallet will go there, up to your RRSP room.

2. You can also set up an AUTOMATIC deposit to the RRSP.  You’ll have to estimate the interest amount you will be receiving when entering that, so that’s a little trickier. The TIME MACHINE results will show you the net amount of payments from the loan, so you can use that to guide you.

TFSA Deposit in TIME MACHINE

The TIME MACHINE will make the deposit as you asked for in AUTOMATIC deposits, but it can make additional deposits to accounts if you still have funds not saved or spent in the year. Those could go to your TFSA if you have TFSA room, and your TFSA is high enough in you deposit PRIORITIES. Set a limit on the deposit PRIORITY for the TFSA to 0, and/or bring it lower in your list of deposit priorities so that extra funds are deposited in one of your other accounts if that is what you want.

 

CCPC Investment Income

You need to add an ACCOUNT, select the type as CCPC  Investment account, the owner will automatically be set to your CCPC once you click submit.  You can have it grow as Cash at 5%  and leave it that, or you can add specific investments to that account as you can for your own. This is advisable to do as the tax treatment and will be different if your CCPC is collecting dividends itself trough stock investments.

The MoneyReadyApp (as the CRA) separates your CCPC from your own personal finances. If you entered accounts/investments owned by your CCPC with you as owner, please delete those accounts and instead enter them as CCPC accounts. The TIME MACHINE will not allow dividend income to be taken if the the CCPC can not pay them out (from revenues, or from depleting it’s investment accounts).
You may want to read over sections of the MoneyReadyApp eBook that explain how it deals with the CCPC.
 
OS requirements

It's a Web app. It works on all modern browsers under all Operating Systems.