For US Tax reasons my wife does not have a TFSA. However, the Withdrawal Optimizer insisted that she have a TFSA account in order to run. So I created an account with a zero balance. I also made it the lowest priority for Deposits and Withdrawals with a Minimum of $0. However, when I run the Withdrawal Optimizer, it is putting funds into my wife’s TFSA which, of course, I don’t want it to do.  Is there a way that I can stop it from doing that?

I am wondering how can I set up reverse mortgage?

We have 2 RRIF Accts at same institution (one in CAD, one in USD). The institution takes the combined automatic minimum withdrawal for the 2 accounts out of the CAD account alone. How should I best handle that within MRA? When I ran the TM, it looked like MRA is assuming that the USD account's minimum RRIF withdrawal still needs to be paid, even though it has already been paid via the CAD account. I tried to handle it by specifying that the USD account's balance on December 31st of 2022 was zero. But when I then ran the TM, the amount that MRA wanted to withdraw from that USD account increased. Not sure why. Thoughts?

Ah yes! Thank you!  I’m curious as to why the dividend yield isn’t automatically pulled in for each holding, along with the price etc. Would that be possible to do?

The report for my favorite TM run shows  zero "Foreign Dividends 100%" for every year in the report. Yet there are multiple US dividend-producing holdings within entered Non-Registered accounts.

I am wanting to determine the optimal withdrawal strategy each year, with a target legacy amount of $0. When I specify that I want the legacy amount to be $0, the software assumes that I want to increase expenses by the same amount each year, but that's not my goal. Is there a way of getting the software to assess each year individually (including the tax bracket, the available room to top up the tax bracket, tax implications of RRIF RMDs, OAS clawback, etc per year) to then recommend how many extra dollars would most optimally be spent each individual year in order to be most tax efficient and achieve the legacy goal of $0?

Hello,

I had some questions about the handling of GIS with partial OAS and of QPP in your application that I wasn't able to answer by looking at the handbook.

1) I have heard from multiple sources that the GIS is "topped up" to achieve a certain minimum income level in the case of a partial OAS pension, even though it is hard to find documentation on this directly on the government's website. This makes the income threshold for receiving GIS higher than with a full OAS pension, and also affects taxes since GIS is not taxable while OAS is. This is explained well here: https://retirehappy.ca/receiving-partial-oas-pension-affects-gis-amounts/ Is this handled by your application? I am looking to run some calculations for my parents who have QPP and who immigrated later in life and so will get partial OAS, and wanted to make sure this would be handled correctly.

2) I also found this blog post explaining that the GIS tables don't exactly claw back GIS by 50% of marginal income, contrary to what some sources say: https://medium.com/swlh/building-a-canadian-oas-gis-calculator-efe96ddea714 Do you use the 50% clawback approximation or the actual GIS tables?

3) How do you handle the situation where someone has started QPP and still works for a significant income? Do you implement the QPP supplement?: https://www.rrq.gouv.qc.ca/en/programmes/regime_rentes/rente_retraite/Pages/supplement_rente_retraite.aspx

Thanks in advance!

Section 7.6 Saving and comparing time machine runs says up to 6 runs. Does this mean I can delete a saved run and save a new one as long as total is always 6 or less, or I can only ever save 6 runs so I should chose very carefully?

Thanks, that makes good sense.  I didn’t realize that social security was eligible for income splitting.  That must be what is evening up our incomes to the penny.

 I notice in the reports after running Time Machine that my wife and my "Taxable income after any income splitting” is always exactly the same for every year even though most of our separate incomes are not eligible for income splitting such as OAS, CPP, IRA, and money drawn from individual bank accounts. I can see that they would be the same if all of our incomes were eligible for splitting but that’s not the case. Am I missing something?  Thanks a lot.

Got a question regarding how Income is handled in your app.

As I’m semi-retired and doing some consulting, I’m estimating the amount of income I will make this year.  In TM, I’ve entered, as an example, $50,000 / year.  Is this amount just used for calculating taxes, etc. or do you apply the $50,000 towards my expenses?

Not only does there appear to be no CPP survivor benefits, but is there any way to include child-rearing drop-out provisions when calculating CPP?

My wife is a teacher and I have entered CPP information for her in the app, but I am learning that her pension will be affected by CPP once she turns age 65? Do you know how this works and how much of her CPP she will loose when she turns 65? How do I account for this loss in the money ready app? Thanks,

I am wondering why that is that the wallet goes negative when there's a cashflow problem for a few years but there is space available to either take from HELOC (smith manoeuvre) AND LOC.

I haven't explicitly included the annualized monthly payments for the car loan in my expenses.  The expense items I have in the Expenses section do not include the loan payments. I thought that adding the loan would take care of this for me.  Do I need to add the loan expense into the Expenses section for 2022, and/or for subsequent years?

Thanks a lot.  In my case, I would convert to an annuity with the same US company.  It would be US funds.  Apparently no withholding tax on payments.  

Hi. Is there any way to convert an IRA or 403B plan from the US to a registered annuity at a future date? I tried to do it through the "Incomes" section but the options for the purchase of the annuity are limited to RRSPs and RRIFs. Maybe there's a workaround but I couldn't figure one out. Thanks

Thanks for your quick and detailed response. I had not fully appreciated the implications of rebalancing each year, and your explanation of the behaviour I'm seeing now makes sense. I've changed the asset allocation as you suggested and the results are much better!

I am encountering results that don't make sense to me. In my second year of retirement (2023 in my scenario) the software is calculating a massive taxable capital gain, and selling-off many of my assets to pay for the taxes. Although I do have one particular equity with large (unrealized) capital gains, the detailed table that I exported to EXCEL shows that it is not even being sold. It's possible that I misconfigured something. I have been making adjustments to my accounts/investments trying to understand where the large taxable capital gain is coming from with no success.

Hello, I

was wondering if you have any suggestions on how to model a GIC ladder?  For example a 5 year ladder - with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 year rungs - where the maturing terms are reinvested into a new 5 year term - i.e. 1 year matures and is reinvested into a 5 year, 2 year matures and is reinvested into a 5 year, and so on.

I see that in the RATES/YIELDS/CURRENCIES section, I can select to have a specific GIC renew, but I'm assuming it keeps the same term length as it was originally set with - i.e. 1 year renews as 1 year, 2 year renews as a 2 year, and so on. What I'm doing as an alternative is just using a cash account (or 1 year GIC), with a yield set to the average annual interest rate of the GIC ladder. I imagine this gets me close enough, although it doesn't let me accurately model the length of time the GIC's are locked in and not available to be "spent". I thought I would ask you in case you have a clever way to model the ladder?

thanks