Methodology

What: The inputs a plan can't compute for you — inflation, investment return, planning horizon, and how dollars are displayed.

Why: Assumptions drive every projection, so small changes compound over decades.

When to use: Review them whenever a result surprises you; they are visible and editable beside your plan.

Limitations: Assumptions are estimates about the future, not forecasts. Chapterwise labels each one and its confidence rather than hiding it.

What: A year-by-year projection of income, taxes, accounts, and net worth under one set of assumptions.

Why: It answers 'if things go roughly as assumed, am I funded?' and every projected year reconciles within a dollar.

When to use: As your base case, and to see the mechanics of a single scenario clearly.

Limitations: A single path can't show the range of market outcomes — that's what confidence analysis and simulations add.

What: Two distinct measures. Confidence describes the credibility of your data and calculations (High / Moderate / Low). Plan readiness describes how many simulated market-return paths stayed funded through your horizon.

Why: They answer different questions — 'how solid is this estimate?' versus 'how comfortable is the margin?'.

When to use: Use confidence to judge whether to refine your inputs; use readiness to judge how much margin your chapter has.

Limitations: Readiness is a margin, not a guarantee. A high number reflects a comfortable margin across modelled paths, not certainty about markets or your life.

What: Around 1,000 reproducible market-return paths applied to your plan to test it across a range of outcomes.

Why: Sequence-of-returns risk means the order of good and bad years matters, not just the average.

When to use: When you want to understand resilience and how guardrails change the range of outcomes.

Limitations: Simulations sample modelled distributions; they can't predict actual markets, and results depend on the assumptions behind them.

What: Different orders and rules for drawing income — a constant benchmark, adaptive spending within guardrails, a more conservative variant, and custom tuning.

Why: The withdrawal order changes lifetime tax and how long a plan lasts.

When to use: To compare approaches; each strategy opens a plain-language guide with its full methodology.

Limitations: Dynamic-spending guardrails can improve how long a plan lasts, but they reduce risk — they do not eliminate it.

What: Spending shapes over time, such as steady spending or a more active early-retirement period.

Why: Real spending is rarely flat; modelling the shape makes projections more realistic.

When to use: When your planned spending changes across the chapters of retirement.

Limitations: A pattern is a planning assumption about your choices, not a prediction of them.

What: CPP, OAS, RRSP/RRIF, TFSA, non-registered accounts, and federal and provincial tax are modelled with governed rule packages tied to a tax year.

Why: Canadian rules — RRIF minimums, OAS clawback thresholds, credits — materially change results.

When to use: Always; they run beneath every projection. The tax year and rule date are shown with your assumptions.

Limitations: Rules are modelled to a governed year and are estimates, not a tax return. Verify amounts against official CRA and Service Canada sources.