FinSim guide
FinSim projects your finances forward month by month, so you can test real decisions — rent vs. buy, raise TFSA or RRSP, retire early — against realistic Canadian tax and account rules.
How it works
Build config blocks
Set up reusable pieces — salary, expenses, contributions, tax, assumptions. Enter each once.
Compose a scenario
Combine blocks into a plan. Fork it to explore a "what if" — change one thing, share the rest.
See the projection
Watch net worth, account balances, and monthly cash flow play out over your whole horizon.
Compare & tweak
Overlay scenarios side by side, and live-edit contributions to see the impact instantly.
Planning terms
Scenario
A complete plan you can project — a set of config blocks plus its own timeline of changes.
Config block
A reusable piece of configuration (salary, expenses, contributions, tax…). Blocks are shared across scenarios by reference, so editing one updates every scenario that uses it.
Fork
Make your own copy of a scenario or a shared block, so you can change one thing without affecting the others.
Baseline
A frozen, stamped run of a scenario — the resolved input and the projection it produced, kept as a fixed reference even after the scenario itself keeps changing.
Default scenario
The scenario everything else is measured against — comparisons show every other plan as a delta from it. A separate idea from a Baseline: a Baseline is one frozen run; the Default scenario is a live scenario that can keep changing.
Change point
A scheduled change to a value — "salary +3% every year", "at age 30, raise TFSA to $800/mo". Authored inside a block; the scenario merges them into one timeline.
Projection terms
Net worth
The sum of all your account balances at a given month.
Cash flow
What's left each month: income − expenses − contributions. A surplus builds your cash buffer.
Principal vs. growth
How much you contributed versus how much investment return added on top — shown as a split on every balance.
Nominal vs. real $
Nominal is the future dollar figure as-is; real deflates it to today's purchasing power, so a later balance is comparable to money now.
Shortfall / halt
If an account would go negative, the projection stops that month and flags it. FinSim never silently borrows — you resolve it by adjusting the plan.
Your accounts
Growth and withdrawals are tax-free. Annual room carries forward; withdrawals free up room next year.
Contributions are deductible; growth is tax-deferred; withdrawals are taxed. Employer match uses room too.
First-home account — deductible in, tax-free out for a home. $8K/yr, $40K lifetime; rolls to RRSP if unused.
No limits. Growth is taxed as capital gains when you sell (50% included in income).
Chequing / savings. One is your salary deposit account — pay lands here, expenses and contributions come out.
Estimates, not advice. FinSim shows outcomes so you can judge — it never tells you which plan is "better".
Real tax rules. Contribution room, brackets, CPP/EI and capital gains use current Canadian rules, indexed forward.
Same inputs, same result. Projections are deterministic — nothing is random.
Edits stay in a draft. Live-editing a shared block never changes other scenarios until you choose Update all or Fork.