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Repeating EXPENSES in forum Announcements

We've added a new way to add repeating expenses, so we now offer three options for entering the dates and amount applicable for an expense.

 
1. Yearly expenses: Regular yearly expenses that span multiple years can just be entered with a start and end date and a yearly amount. If the start and end dates are different, but less than a year apart, please annualize the expense. For example, if you are paying $1000/month for only 3 months, enter that as $12,000/year (with start and end dates 3 months apart), or use the new repeated lump sum feature (option 3 below) instead. The yearly amount will be pro-rated in any year for which the expense does not span the full year.
 
2.  Lump sum expense: If the start and end dates entered are the same, enter the actual lump-sum amount payable on that one date.
 
3. Repeated lump sum expenses: If you want to enter a recurring expense on specific dates, you can select those dates in the "OR enter multiple dates for repeated expenses" input box.
Clicking on that box will activate a date-picker from which you can select multiple dates. We allow up to 50 dates per recurring expense. 
You can also type or paste the dates in the box. The dates entered should be in YYYY-MM-DD format, separated by commas (no spaces). 
 
To make that easier with regularly recurring dates, we also show a widget for those recurrences. They can repeat from any date for any frequency by month or year. If that feature is used, click the Generate button to create the dates, then click the widget to "Accept" these dates to be entered. You will still only have one entry for that expense in your list of expenses table, but you will be able to see the multiple dates it applies to by hovering over its start date.
 
This new feature is meant to be used for non-yearly expenses like buying a car every 5 years, or paying for a sofa on credit for the next 5 months. The amount should be entered as the lump-sum amount on the dates picked. Don't use it for regular yearly expenses. For example don't enter a utility bill you will be paying monthly for several years as a monthly expense, just tell us one annual amount using option 1 instead. Also if you have a yearly expense on one particular date of the year, it's still a yearly expense you can enter with option 1. Remember The TIME MACHINE has mostly the resolution of one year, it pays all its bills from your Wallet account on Dec 31 of the year.
 
 
I’ve extensively edited the eBook section on EXPENSES (and the Help) page. There’s more details there.
Use AI to learn the MoneyReady App in forum Announcements

When logged in, you can select to search all the MoneyReady documentation using OpenAI from our forum search page. Just type in any question you may have and a response will be generated with an OpenAI large language model. The model has been fed all the information in the MoneyReadyApp eBook, all the app's help pages, all the forum posts, all our blog posts, the app's homepage, and our various other pages. It is instructed to answer only based on those documents. It does not know your data.

The answer given is sometimes surprisingly smart, sometimes disappointingly wrong, and often incomplete.  We attempt to provide the references to the top documents it used to form its answer so you can quickly find the source of the information.

If the AI answer is not useful, please don't hesitate to contact us with your question or post it on the Forum. You'll get a real human to respond.

 

 

 

Inflation multiplier in forum Announcements

To accomodate mostly pensions but also any other INCOMES, REVENUES, EXPENSES and AUTOMATIC SAVINGS/WITHDRAWALS that are indexed proportionaly to inflation, we' ve added a new parameter to fine tune indexing to inflation in the TIME MACHINE.

See the FAQ for (logged in) users: https://www.moneyreadyapp.ca/forum/topic/76-how-is-indexing-to-inflation-set for details.

CPP/QPP and OAS start age + months in forum Announcements

You can now specifify the months to add to the age you start/started taking the pensions. The CPP/QPP Optimizer will still only explore the starting dates on each of your birthdays after retirement.

Projection Assumption Guidelines in forum General

From the Projection Assumption Guidelines:

"Making projections is critical to creating financial plans that help clients realize their long-term goals," says Julie Seberras, CFP®, MBA, FCSI and Chair of the FP Canada Standard Council™ Standards Panel. "The Projection Assumption Guidelines are a useful tool for planners to ensure their projections are based upon sound assumptions."  

The Guidelines are intended to be used when making long-term projections of 10 years or more, and they're meant to look beyond the current day rate environment. For shorter-term financial projections (less than 10 years), financial planners may use actual rates of return on fixed-term investments held to maturity and dividend yields on equities.  

The Projection Assumption Guidelines for 2025 are as follows: 

Inflation rate 

2.10 %

Return rates 

  

Short-term 

2.40 %

Fixed income 

3.40 %

Canadian equities 

6.60 %

U.S. equities

6.60 %

International developed market equities 

6.90 %

Emerging market equities 

8.00%

YMPE or MPE growth rate 

3.10 %

Borrowing rate 

4.40 %

 

Note that these are all before fees.

 

EXPENSE Types, Subtypes, and Subtotals. in forum Announcements

To help with your expense planning, we've improved the presentation of the EXPENSES table.

You can now add a Subtype as well as a Type descriptions on expense entries to allow for more refined breakdown of expenses.

To make entering those expenses easier, there’s now a dropdown so you’ll be able to select for the Type from any previously entered types, or create a new type by typing it in. Same goes for the Subtype. 

Above the  EXPENSES table you’ll see buttons to group by date range (beg to end), by Type or by Subtype. The groups will have a subtotal in CAD and today’s dollars added to the table. The Type and Subtype groupings are still first grouped by date range (otherwise a subtotal makes no sense).

Below the table are additional graphs for the Type and Subtype groupings over time. These can be toggled to full screen by clicking on them. The graphs are also available in the pdf Report (for new runs). The Excel download EXPENSES tab of the TIME MACHINE results should show each  entry with its type and subtype.

Type and Subtype are completely optional, they are just separate tags, so not truly hierarchical, and if no types or subtypes are entered anywhere, these columns will not appear on the web, pdf, or Excel download.

We've tried to make this very generic to suit everyones needs to use as they like to set things up. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

CPP/QPP switch in forum Announcements

In most cases, if your province was set in your PROFILE to Québec, the default is you will be eligible for QPP. If set to another province, the default is you will be taking CPP. However there can be exceptions to that. For example if you lived and worked in another province, but choose to retire in Québec, then you will be eligible for CPP and not for QPP. For this reason, we allow you to select the other plan by checking the box in the input form. The province in your PROFILE will still determine where provincial taxes are payable.

Changes to QPP / Changements au RRQ in forum Announcements

We have implemented the changes for QPP that were announced in the March 21 2023 Québec budget to apply from Jan 1, 2024. Although these changes will require legislative and regulatory amendments and as of this writing on April 1 2023,  we have not yet seen the details of their implementation. We'll be monitoring closely and will make changes as necessary. 

Nous avons mis en œuvre les changements pour le RRQ qui ont été annoncés dans le budget du Québec du 21 mars 2023 et qui s'appliqueront à partir du 1er janvier 2024. Bien que ces changements nécessitent des modifications législatives et réglementaires et qu'à ce jour, le 1er avril 2023, nous n'ayons pas encore vu les détails de leur mise en œuvre, nous les surveillerons de près et apporterons les changements nécessaires.

 

Canada.ca new OAS/GIS Calculator in forum General

There's a new calculator for OAS and GIS at https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/cpp/old-age-security/payments.html#estimate-benefits.

It's not complete as it wimps out if you don't have a full OAS pension (less than 40 year residency in Canada), but it works well if you do.

I'm excited about it because it's the first time I see any source code (the javascript is right there in the html source of the page) for calculations available for any calculations from the Canadian government. The US social security system has provided full source code for their calculations for many years.

 

 

 

The MoneyReady Forum in forum Announcements

I'm happy to announce the MoneyReady Forum!

As a registered user of the MoneyReady App, you are automatically registered for the Forum.

Logging in to the App will also log you into the Forum so you can post there. A forum username has been created for you that is separate from the app's username. You can change it in your forum profile.

I have pre-populated the forum with loads of information:

  1. The Questions/Answers (Q/A) board has been pre-populated with a curated set of questions that you have sent me. These are all attributed to the fake user "anonymous" for your privacy/security. If you recognize your words and want your forum username credited, just let me know. If a past question of yours is not there already and is still relevant, feel free to post it so others can benefit.
  2. The Feature requests board replaces our Votes capability. Post a reply to any feature to vote for it.
  3. The General forum is for providing useful resources, discussions, and more general questions on personal finance that you think would be useful or interesting to MoneyReady App users.
  4. There's an Announcements board for all our past and future announcements. This is read-only.
  5. There are 2 FAQS boards, one general (public) and a more specific one for logged-in users. These are also read-only. If you have any questions about the Announcements or the FAQs, you can post them in the Q/A.

Posting is free, however to prevent spam, all topics and posts from users without an active paid subscription to the MoneyReady App will be hidden from view until they are approved by a moderator. We aim to take less than 24 hours to approve posts. You will be notified by email once your post is approved.

Please read the Forum rules for all the details.

Looking forward to reading your posts!

 

Your comments and feedback are always appreciated.

Read Me First in forum Q/A

The MoneyReady App was launched in the summer of 2019. Almost 4 years later, after answering many questions, getting great feedback, and having many discussions with users by email, I decided to start this community forum in March 2023 so that everyone can benefit from these discussions.

Because nobody likes an empty forum, meet user anonymous:
This is a fake user created to populate the forum with real questions that were sent by email to the MoneyReady App. Those emails and our responses have been curated to select the most common, interesting, and still relevant today. They have been edited for clarity and to remove any identifying information for privacy and security. Typos are all mine.

If you recognise your words because you are the original writer of a topic and want proper attribution, let me know so we can fix the attribution.

Welcome to the Money Ready Forum. Looking forward to reading your posts!

Now please go read the Rules before proceeding.

 

Marginal tax rate in forum Announcements

A new graph for the marginal tax rate has been added to the TIME MACHINE results.

Currencies for REVENUES, INCOMES, EXPENSES, and AUTOMATIC SAVINGS in forum Announcements

For REVENUES, INCOMES, EXPENSES, and AUTOMATIC SAVINGS/WITHDRAWALS, you can now specify a currency (previously assumed to be CAD). LOANS, ACCOUNTS, and INVESTMENTS already had that feature.

USD/CAD exchange rate model in forum Announcements

A model for the USD/CAD exchange rate was added to the Market model for Monte Carlo simulations.

What do your reports look like? in forum FAQs

Click to download a sample plan pdf file

What securities do you update prices for? in forum FAQs

For Canada, we cover listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) and Aequitas/Neo Exchange. For the USA, we cover listings on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the NYSE American exchange, the Nasdaq, and the OTC. We do not cover warrants or options. We do not cover the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE). We cover most series of Canadian mutual funds, segregated funds, hedge funds, and closed-end funds. This market data is provided by Fundata Canada Inc. and updated nightly.

We update regular currencies nightly from the European Central Bank.

We update Cryptocurrencies nightly and on demand using CoinGecko.

For ACCOUNTS, INVESTMENTS and LOANS linked to Wealthica, values are updated from Wealthica on demand.

How long does it take? in forum FAQs

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 in forum FAQs

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. in forum FAQs

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? in forum FAQs

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 .