WalkAwayFI

Every tab shows the scenario selected here, and each scenario keeps its own accounts, cash flows, holdings and strategy. Use ⧉ Duplicate to branch one, then change the copy — the Compare tab puts them side by side.

"Expense streams" spends what your Cash Flows tab says; the other modes withdraw per the strategy and spending becomes what's left after tax. Fields that don't apply to the active mode are grayed out.

These are nominal rates — inflation included, so a 7% return with 2.5% inflation is roughly a 4.4% real return. The before retirement rate grows accounts while you work; the plan switches to the in retirement rate the year you retire (typically set lower to reflect a more conservative mix). Together they drive the single deterministic projection used everywhere in the app; Monte Carlo (Insights tab) draws random yearly returns around its own mean and volatility settings, shifting by your pre/post spread at retirement — Monte Carlo's own volatility/sampling settings live on the Insights tab. Per-account Ret% overrides on the Accounts tab beat these plan-wide rates, and the Portfolio tab's Apply button writes its blended CAGR here (Restore undoes it).

USD accounts: enter balance, contribution and cost basis in USD — everything is converted to CAD at the rate above before any calculation (charts and projections always show CAD; the rate is held constant over the plan). Min balance is a per-account liquidity reserve: withdrawals (and every optimizer solution) leave at least that much and pull from the next account in the withdrawal order instead — today’s $ in the account’s own currency, inflation-indexed, breached only if every other account is empty. Ret% pre / post: blank uses the scenario’s plan returns; enter numbers to pin the account to its own rates before and after retirement (e.g. equities 8/6, GIC 4/4). Vol % works the same way — blank follows the plan’s volatility, so a pinned account still swings with the market around its own return; enter 0 only for a return that is genuinely certain, like a GIC held to maturity; enter a number to use that volatility. Surplus cash sweeps by the Savings priority; the retirement withdrawal order lives in the Withdrawal strategy panel (both on the Plan tab). RRSP withdrawals are taxed as income; taxable gains at 50% inclusion; TFSA is tax-free.

USD debts (margin loans) convert at the live rate, held constant over the plan. Interest marked Deductible (borrowed to invest — margin, Smith manoeuvre) reduces taxable income by each year's interest, so a 5.5% loan effectively costs ~half that at a high marginal rate. Debts with a monthly payment amortize normally. Debts with $0/mo accrue interest until either working-year surplus (Savings priority) or the post-retirement paydown configured on the Plan tab clears them — the paydown is withdrawn from your accounts through the normal order, with withdrawal taxes included.

Total net worth, including these assets, is the dashed line on the projection chart. Retirement spending is drawn from liquid accounts only, so a house adds to your net worth without moving your FI date. Set its current value in the table above.

Working out the blend. List the tickers and weights that make up each account (or the whole plan). ↻ Fetch history pulls each ticker's full price history; the stats line then shows the blended portfolio's CAGR, average return and volatility, computed year-by-year across the weighted mix — so correlations between holdings are preserved, not assumed. Returns are real calendar-year returns, dividend-adjusted where the source provides it. The 10y/20y/Max toggle picks how much history feeds the stats — but only years all tickers share are used, so one young listing (QQQM, 2020) caps the whole blend at a few years however the toggle is set; the stats line names the culprit. A share class that tracks the same index as an older fund can borrow its twin's history (QQQM → QQQ, VOO / IVV / SPLG / SPYM → SPY) with one click on the row — weight, name and quote stay the row's own.

Mutual funds. US funds work by ticker (VFIAX); Canadian funds have no ticker at all, so type the FundSERV code (TDB902, INI220, PHN350 — ~50 of the common ones resolve automatically) or use 🔍 Find a fund to search by name and pick the right series. The fund's real name shows under the box — check it matches what you hold.

⊕ Manual rows need no ticker at all: type a CAGR and volatility yourself (from the fund's own Fund Facts long-run return, say), and they blend in as a steady sleeve, with their volatility added assuming it is uncorrelated with the rest.

Where the numbers land. Each press is a one-time copy, not a live link — change a weight or refetch history later and your plan keeps the old number until you press again. Rows set to Whole plan blend together and feed the two buttons on the stats line: Apply CAGR overwrites the Plan tab’s Return % pre/post, and Apply avg + vol overwrites the Monte Carlo mean and volatility — ↺ Restore puts back whatever you had before. Rows tagged to a specific account blend separately, per account, and that group’s Pin button writes its blend into that account’s Ret% pre, Ret% post and Vol % on the Accounts tab, which from then on override the plan return for that account in both the projection and Monte Carlo. Two consequences worth knowing: a plan-wide Apply does not reach accounts you have pinned — it only moves the rest — and a pinned account carrying a Vol % moves in lockstep with the market each simulated year, scaled by its own volatility, so a concentrated account stays genuinely risky instead of averaging out. (The applied ✓ badge is worked out by comparing the account’s Ret% against the current blend, so if you change a weight it turns back into a Pin button — that is the panel noticing its copy is stale, not losing your setting.) Past performance is history, not a promise — everything here is a starting-point assumption you can edit anywhere it lands.

Fees are already in these numbers. A fund or ETF deducts its MER from its own assets every day, so the price history fetched here is net of it — the CAGR, average return and volatility above are all after-fee. That is also why the share class matters: the same fund in a cheaper series compounds visibly faster (RBC Canadian Equity Income returned 10.5%/yr in Series A and 12.5%/yr in Series O over the same 2018–2026 window — that 2pp gap is the fee). Not included: brokerage commissions, sales loads and any advisor fee billed outside the fund.

Past ≠ future: single-stock CAGRs (AAPL, NVDA…) are survivor-biased, and a young ETF’s “Max” window may be all bull market — prefer Max or 20y over 10y. Canadian mutual funds carry no history before 2018 on the data source, however old the fund is, so their “Max” is ~8 years of an almost unbroken bull run — the published long-run return from the fund’s own Fund Facts, entered on a ⊕ Manual row, is usually the more honest input. History fetches need the hosted (http) version.

Unvested shares vest at the per-year rate while their owner still works. Each vest is employment income at that year’s share price (today’s price grown at Grow%), taxed like salary — that is the sell-to-cover. Anything still unvested at retirement is forfeited: the walk-away cost on the Insights tab. The Sell-to-cover % below only drives the Net/yr column (what actually lands in your brokerage as shares) — the projection taxes vests at your true marginal rate, since over-withholding comes back at filing.

Vested (held) shares are already yours: they count in net worth and are modelled as a taxable stock holding growing at Grow%, shaken in Monte Carlo and sold only when the withdrawal order needs the money — you never enter a sell price. Vest $/sh is their cost basis (the FMV on your broker’s vest confirmation); the gain from there to the sale price is taxed at 50% inclusion. Left blank it defaults to today’s price, so any gain since vest is invisible to the tax engine. Batches that vested at different prices: enter the weighted average, or one grant row per batch.

Keeping it current: after a real vest, move the kept shares from Unvested to Vested held and update the weighted Vest $/sh; after a real sale, reduce Vested held and add the after-tax proceeds to an account (that tax was already paid, so the model shouldn’t re-tax it). Vest mo + Every set the schedule: Vest mo is the first vest and each later tranche steps on from it, so an Aug grant vesting quarterly lands Aug, Nov, Feb, May. Unvested is always what is still unvested today — tranches dated on or before today never count again, so keeping the row current is just that move from Unvested to Vested held. A grant with a cliff: enter the first vest as the cliff date and put the cliff chunk in its own row. Price is today’s market price (RSUs have no cost base until vest); USD grants convert at the FX rate, ↻ Quotes refreshes prices and ⏪ Back-date estimates historical vest prices.

Each stream is a block of spending with its own dates: enter the amount per month or per year (stored yearly), partial years prorate by month, and Repeat every N years turns a dated block into a recurring one — a car with 5 years of payments every 10 years is one stream, not one per decade. Essential vs Discretionary matters beyond tidiness: Lean FIRE is computed from essential-only spending, so marking cuttable costs Discretionary lowers your lean target. Streams active in your retirement year drive the FIRE targets when auto-sync is on (Plan tab). Dollars: Today's $ · rises = the amount is in today's dollars and grows with inflation; Start-year $ · rises = the amount is what you'll pay in its start year, then grows (for lines that start later); Fixed $ · never rises = the same dollar amount every year, like a loan payment — so it shrinks in today's $. End year 0 = end of plan. once = a one-time purchase: the whole amount lands in the start year (0 = this year, charged in full — delete the row if it's already paid), End year is ignored, Repeat every N years makes it recur (a new car every 10 years), and it never inflates your FIRE number. In the fixed-amount and strategy spending modes, a one-time purchase is withdrawn on top of the strategy amount in its year (as a gross withdrawal — those modes don't gross up for tax, so budget the sticker price). Debt payments are handled on the Plan tab — don't duplicate them here.

The playbook turns your projection into a year-by-year withdrawal outline — a readout of your plan, not new input and not advice. Amounts follow the Future $/Today’s $ toggle in the header.

Exports from some other planning tools are also recognized and converted automatically. Your plan auto-saves in this browser (localStorage); the self-hosted server.py additionally syncs it to the server's data file.