Global settings

Your information

Your birthdate is used to calculate your current age, years to retirement, and all age-based filtering on income cards.

Enable I have a partner to unlock two-person modelling throughout the app — separate income, separate retirement ages, joint expenses, and combined tax analysis.

Retirement ages

Use the −/+ buttons to set when you (and your partner) plan to retire. This controls:

• When pre-retirement income stops and portfolio withdrawals begin
• When retirement expenses take effect
• The years-to-retirement calculation used in the Retirement Expenses inflated totals

Budget tracking

Check Enable budget tracking to reveal the Budget section in the sidebar. This unlocks bank CSV import, tagging rules, and actual vs planned spending comparisons. See the Budget overview for full details.

Export

Two export options are available here — see Export & Reports for details.

Summary bar

The dark bar at the top shows your gross income, partner's gross income (if applicable), and combined gross income — updated live as you type.

Adding income sources

Click Add income source to add a card. Each card has:

Tax deductions breakdown

The per-person tax breakdown below the income bars shows:

• Income tax — federal + provincial combined
• CPP — Canada Pension Plan contributions (employment income only)
• EI — Employment Insurance premiums (employment income only)
• RRSP/Reg. deduction — sum of tax-deductible investment contributions
• Spendable after-tax — what's left to spend

Income splitting

The Optimize income splitting toggle (two-person plans only) finds the spousal income split that minimizes combined household tax. Most effective when there's a large income gap between partners.

Household totals bar

The bottom bar shows combined household after-tax income, total annual expenses (including debt), and the resulting surplus or shortfall.

Summary bar

Shows total monthly payments, total annual cost, and total outstanding balance across all debts — updated live.

Adding a debt

Click Add debt. Each debt card includes:

Recurring expense items

Add each regular monthly expense (groceries, utilities, insurance, subscriptions, etc.). The summary bar shows total monthly and annual spending including any debt payments.

One-off expenses before retirement

Large one-time costs you expect before you retire — a new car at 45, a home renovation at 52. These are:

• Shown as separate bars in the Spending chart
• Deducted from your accumulated pre-retirement cash surplus in the year they occur
• Not drawn from the investment portfolio (that's pre-retirement)

Summary bar

Shows total current investment value, total annual contributions, and total tax-deductible contributions.

Global return rates

Use Set default return rates to quickly apply a pre and post-retirement return rate to all investments at once. You can override rates on individual cards afterward.

Investment cards

Account type and tax treatment

Preset benefits

Click the preset buttons to quickly add standard Canadian programs:

Custom benefits

Click Add custom benefit for defined benefit pensions, employer pensions, or any other regular post-retirement income. Enter the annual amount and the age it begins.

How benefits affect the projection

Each year in retirement, your benefits are subtracted from your spending needs before the portfolio is drawn on. Benefits that haven't started yet (e.g. OAS at 65 when you retire at 60) are phased in at the right age.

Summary bar

The top bar shows three views of your retirement expenses:

• Today's spending (monthly) — total of all expense amounts as entered
• In retirement (slider %) (monthly) — after applying each slider percentage
• At retirement date — annual (inflated) — the retirement-adjusted amount grown by inflation to your retirement date using the global inflation rate

Syncing from Current Expenses

Click ↻ Re-sync from Expenses to pull items from your Current Expenses tab. Each item gets a slider to set what percentage continues into retirement (default 100%). This is a quick way to start — then adjust individual items as needed.

Spending phases (Go-Go / Slow-Go / No-Go)

Most retirees spend differently across retirement stages. Set optional phase multipliers:

The From age of each phase is automatically set to the previous phase's end age + 1. Set To age on each phase; the next phase's start updates automatically.

One-off expenses in retirement

Large one-time costs during retirement (new car at 70, home modifications at 80). These are withdrawn from your portfolio in the year they occur and shown as separate bars in the Portfolio and Spending charts.

Enabling the budget module

Go to Personal → Budget tracking and check Enable budget tracking. The Budget section will appear in the sidebar between Pre-Retirement and Post-Retirement.

The budget workflow

Creating a format

Column field types

Managing formats

• Delete removes the currently selected format
• Delete all removes every saved format (with confirmation)
• Formats are saved automatically when you click Save format

Import steps

Import validation

RetirIQ automatically skips rows that can't be reliably imported. Skipped rows appear highlighted below the valid rows with a coloured badge showing the reason:

The summary line above the table shows exactly how many rows were accepted and how many were skipped by each reason.

Re-tagging after import

If you update your tagging rules after importing, go to Tagging Rules and click Tag untagged transactions. This applies your current rules to any transaction with no category — already-tagged transactions are never changed.

How rules work

Rules are applied in order — the first rule that matches a transaction wins. Each rule has:

Match types

Inactive rules

A rule with no match text is inactive — it's shown with an amber inactive — no text badge and a yellow border. It won't match anything until you type a value. This lets you save a partial rule and come back to it.

Test a rule

Use the Test a description box at the bottom to paste a real transaction description and see which rule would match it. The result shows the matched category, or category → subcategory if a subcategory is also assigned. Shows "No match" in grey if nothing matches.

Choosing a period

Summary tiles

Three tiles show one per section — Income & Benefits, Investment Contributions, and Expenses. Each tile shows the budget target and actual side by side, a progress bar, and the variance. Colour logic: income green = above target, expenses/investments green = under budget. When actual expenses exceed budget, the tile turns orange with a ⚠ over by $X badge.

A Net position tile below the three shows: Income − Investments − Expenses = net, for both budget and actual side by side. Surplus in blue, shortfall in orange.

Category table

The table is split into five sections with coloured headers:

• Employment Income — employment income cards
• Benefits & Pensions — benefit cards (CPP, OAS, pensions)
• Investment Contributions — investment cards with annual contributions
• Expenses — current and retirement expense cards
• Debt Payments — debt cards (mortgage, loans, lines of credit)

Which categories appear is controlled entirely by the Budget Categories panel — use toggles there to include or exclude any item.

Each parent row shows the budgeted amount (prorated to the period), actual amount, variance, and a progress bar. Click any row with a ▶ arrow to expand subcategories.

Subcategory budget override: If a category has subcategories whose monthly budgets add up to more than the parent's monthly budget, BvA uses the subcategory total as the budget. If they add up to less, the parent budget is kept.

Use Expand all and Collapse all buttons to show or hide all subcategories.

Budget proration rules

Subcategory drill-down

If a category has subcategories defined, clicking the row expands them. The parent total always includes subcategory amounts rolled up — subcategory transactions are never counted twice.

Clicking any bar in the charts below also opens a subcategory drill-down modal for that category.

Charts

Three bar charts — Income & Benefits, Investment Contributions, Expenses. Each shows Budget vs Actual bars per category. Scroll/pinch to zoom, drag to pan, Reset zoom to restore. Click any bar to see the subcategory breakdown.

Print / Save PDF

The Print / Save PDF button in the BvA header opens a styled print page in a new tab showing: the period header, all four summary tiles including net position, and the complete category table. Use your browser's Print → Save as PDF to download it.

How it works

Every card you've added in the Income, Investments, Expenses, and Debt tabs appears here as a toggle row. Turn any category off to remove it completely from the Budget vs Actual table and charts. Turn it back on to bring it back.

Categories are grouped into four sections matching Budget vs Actual colours: Income (employment + benefits), Investments (contribution accounts), Expenses (current and retirement), and Debt Payments (loans, mortgages, lines of credit).

The Subcategories parent dropdown only shows categories that are toggled ON here — so turning off a category also removes it as a subcategory parent option.

Age-based defaults

On first load, toggles default based on your current age:

You can override any default manually. A yellow "check age" badge appears on rows that are toggled on but may not be age-appropriate — it's a reminder, not a restriction.

Adding and removing categories

To add a new category: go to the Income, Expenses, or Investments tabs and add a new card there. It will appear here automatically. To remove a category from Budget vs Actual: either toggle it off here, or delete the card from its tab entirely.

Each row shows

What subcategories are

Subcategories are a budget-only feature. They let you split a broad category like "Groceries" into specific stores or types (Costco, Safeway, Farmers Market) and track each one separately — with its own monthly budget and its own actual spend from imported transactions.

Subcategory amounts always roll up to the parent category in Budget vs Actual. The parent row shows the combined total of direct transactions + all subcategory transactions.

Your planning tabs (Income, Expenses, Investments) are completely unaffected.

Adding a subcategory

Tagging transactions to subcategories

Once a category has subcategories, a Assign subcategory dropdown appears in your tagging rules when you select that category. This lets you automatically assign imported transactions to the right subcategory.

Transactions that match the parent category but no subcategory rule simply count toward the parent total — there is no "unsubcategorised" row.

Viewing subcategories in Budget vs Actual

Parent category rows with subcategories show a ▶ arrow. Click the row to expand and see the subcategory breakdown. All rows are collapsed by default. Use Expand all to open everything at once.

Filtering

• Search — filters by description, tag, or amount
• From / To — date range filter
• Category — filter to a specific tag

Editing tags

Use the category and subcategory dropdowns on each row to reassign a transaction. Changes are saved immediately.

Splitting a transaction

Click ✂️ on any row to split a single transaction across multiple categories — useful when one bank charge covers several expense types (e.g. a Costco trip split between Groceries and Household).

Split children show a yellow ✂️ split badge. The original transaction is hidden but preserved for unsplitting. Click unsplit on the parent row to restore the original. Split children can themselves be re-split.

Works for both withdrawals and deposits (income splits).

Deleting transactions

Click × on any row to delete that transaction. Use Clear all to delete every transaction (with confirmation).

How it works

RetirIQ looks at your imported transactions and groups them by period, then compares actual spending vs your budget target for each period. Four lines are shown on one chart — Income, Investments, Expenses, and Net.

Controls

Reading the chart

• Solid lines — actual transaction amounts per period
• Dashed lines — budget target (constant — same monthly budget each period)
• Green — Income, Blue — Investments, Red/Orange — Expenses, Grey — Net

A summary table below the chart shows exact amounts per period for all four metrics. Scroll/pinch to zoom, drag to pan.

What's shown

• Blue bars — your employment/regular income (stops at your retirement age by default)
• Light blue bars — partner's income (stops at their retirement age)
• Orange bars — post-retirement earned income (part-time work, consulting)
• Green bars — government benefits and pensions (CPP, OAS, DB pensions) — each gets its own bar starting at its configured age
• Dark navy line — total income across all sources each year
• Red dashed line — portfolio withdrawal estimate (requires Portfolio tab to be run first)

Controls

• Project to age — how far to extend the chart (independent of global setting)
• Inflation (local) — inflation rate used for this chart only
• Reset zoom — returns to the full view after zooming

Interacting with the chart

• Scroll / pinch to zoom in on a time range
• Drag to pan left/right when zoomed
• Click legend items to show or hide individual income sources
• Hover over any bar to see exact values in the tooltip

What's shown

• Blue bars — pre-retirement annual spending (expenses + debt)
• Orange bars — post-retirement recurring spending (adjusted for phases)
• Light orange bars — one-off expenses in retirement
• Light blue bars — one-off expenses before retirement
• Green/red area — cumulative pre-retirement cash surplus (green = surplus, red = deficit)
• Green line — household after-tax income + benefits each year
• Dark dashed line — spending trend

Reading the chart

In pre-retirement years, when the green income line is above the blue spending bars, you're accumulating savings. The green/red shaded area shows how this surplus grows or shrinks, including the impact of one-off expenses.

In post-retirement, the income line includes your benefits and any post-retirement earned income. The gap between the income line and the spending bars represents what needs to come from your portfolio.

Controls

Age snapshot

Use the −/+ stepper to move through ages and see a detailed breakdown at any point in retirement — your portfolio value, withdrawal needed, benefit income, tax, and net available cash for both you and your partner.

Banner at the top

• Green banner — your portfolio survives to the projection age with money remaining
• Red banner — your portfolio depletes before the projection age — shows at what age it runs out

Market crashes

Add crash events to simulate a portfolio shock at a specific age (e.g. 40% drop at age 67). The portfolio immediately loses that percentage and then continues growing normally. Crashes work at any age — before or after retirement. Use this to stress-test your plan against early downturns as well as post-retirement shocks.

Chart elements

• Black line — total portfolio value
• Orange bars — net annual cash withdrawal from portfolio
• Purple bars — income tax + OAS clawback on withdrawals
• Green bars — benefit income (CPP, OAS, pensions) offsetting withdrawals

Tax on withdrawals

• Withdrawals are split between partners (or fully to you if no partner)
• Each person's share is added to their benefit income to calculate marginal tax
• Tax brackets and the Basic Personal Amount are inflation-adjusted each year
• OAS clawback applies when total income exceeds $90,997 (2026, indexed)
• This is a simplified estimate — actual tax depends on account types, income-splitting strategies, and other deductions

What you can vary per scenario

• Retirement age (yours and your partner's) — use the −/+ steppers
• Post-retirement return — a more conservative or optimistic rate for each scenario
• Market crashes — up to 2 crash events per scenario, each with an age and magnitude

Reading the chart

• Navy solid line — Scenario A portfolio value
• Orange solid line — Scenario B portfolio value
• Navy bars — Scenario A annual gross withdrawal
• Orange bars — Scenario B annual gross withdrawal

The portfolio at retirement for each scenario is shown in the scenario card. A larger portfolio at retirement means more buffer and smaller required withdrawals.

Export to Excel

Downloads a .xlsx file with four sheets:

• Summary — personal info, income totals, investment summary, benefits
• Portfolio Projection — year-by-year table of portfolio value, withdrawals, and benefits
• Income Sources — all income cards with age ranges and amounts
• Expenses — current and retirement expenses

Export PDF Report

Generates a multi-page .pdf with:

• Page 1 — cover, key stats, income sources, investments, benefits
• Page 2 — expenses, retirement outlook tiles, portfolio projection table (every 5 years)
• Page 3 — charts captured from your current session

Saving history

RetirIQ doesn't have built-in version history. To keep a yearly record of your plan, export a PDF each year and save it with a date in the filename (e.g. RetirIQ_2026.pdf). This lets you compare your situation year over year.

Backup & Restore

Your data lives in your browser's local storage — it can be lost if you clear your browser, switch devices, or reinstall. Two backup options are available in General → Backup:

The last backup time (manual and auto) is shown next to the backup buttons. Auto-backup interval can be set to 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

First-time welcome

On your first visit (or after clearing data), a welcome modal explains how data storage works, the risk of browser data loss, and the two backup options. It appears once and is dismissed with "Got it — let's get started". It reappears after you use Clear data in General settings.

Opening the assistant

Click the navy circle button in the bottom-right corner of the screen. The assistant opens with three options:

Bug and feature reports

AI responses require the server

Get Help responses are powered by Claude AI. The assistant requires node server.js to be running with your API key set. If the server is not running, the assistant falls back to a local documentation search and still gives useful answers for common questions.

Is my data saved?

Yes — RetirIQ saves your data automatically to your browser's local storage as you type. Your data persists between sessions as long as you use the same browser on the same computer. It is never sent to any server.

What happens if I clear my browser data?

Clearing browser data or local storage will erase your RetirIQ data. Use Export to Excel regularly as a backup.

How accurate is the tax calculation?

RetirIQ uses 2026 Canadian federal and provincial tax brackets, the Basic Personal Amount, CPP contribution rates, and EI premiums. Brackets are inflation-adjusted in the portfolio projection. This is a simplified estimate — it does not model all deductions, credits, or personal circumstances. Consult a tax professional for advice specific to your situation.

Why does the portfolio chart show different numbers than I expect?

A few things to check:

• Make sure your retirement expenses are entered on the Retirement Expenses tab (not just Current Expenses)
• Check that benefits start ages are correct — OAS at 65 vs 67 makes a significant difference
• Verify post-retirement return rates on your investment cards or the Portfolio controls
• Inflation compounds significantly over long periods — the inflated future amounts will be larger than today's dollars

What does "nominal" mean in the charts?

Nominal means the amounts are shown in future dollars — not adjusted back to today's purchasing power. A portfolio value of $2M in 30 years represents $2M in that year's dollars, not today's. This is the standard way financial projections are presented.

Can I model multiple income streams that start at different ages?

Yes — use the Active from age and Until age fields on each income card. For example, you could set up: salary (now to 62), part-time consulting (62 to 67), CPP starting at 65. Each stream activates and deactivates at the right age in the charts.

My partner and I retire at different ages. How does that work?

Set separate retirement ages on the Personal tab. The system models each person independently — your income stops at your retirement age, your partner's income stops at theirs. Portfolio withdrawals begin when you retire, but if your partner is still working, their income offsets some of the withdrawal need.

The charts are not updating when I change a value

Charts update automatically when you change most input fields. If a chart seems stale, try navigating away and back to that chart tab — navigating to a chart tab re-renders it. The Portfolio chart can also be triggered by changing any of the control fields at the top of that tab.