Release Notes

What’s new in cinder.fi — features, improvements, and fixes shipped to date.

July 2026 — v2.6.1: YNAB sync fixed

If you tried YNAB and gave up, it’s worth another go: Accounts → Connections → YNAB. Your existing token will work — no need to regenerate it.

July 2026 — v2.5: the cinder bar — one chat, everywhere

Ask cinder grew up from a panel into the way you talk to your plan.

July 2026 — v2.4: FIRE types, the Lifetime plan, and a fixed-up mobile app

July 2026 — cinder.fi 2.0: the Hearth release

The biggest update we’ve ever shipped. Every screen has been redesigned around Hearth — warm pastel chapters, our flame family, and a full dark theme — and the plan underneath got smarter too.

July 2026

Category Targets That Do the Math

Every budget category can now carry a target: fund an amount monthly, cap your spending, or save toward a date — and cinder.fi computes the required monthly set-aside for you. Underfunded categories warn you with a one-tap Fund button. Best of all, cinder.fi spots your irregular “true expenses” — the insurance premium, the annual trip, the December gifts — from your own history and suggests the right monthly set-aside so the lumpy months never hurt.

Split Transactions

The Costco problem is solved: split any transaction across categories. Open a transaction, tap split, divide it — $150 groceries, $30 household, $20 personal care — with a running remainder so the portions always balance. Every budget view counts each portion toward its own category, so budget-vs-actual finally reflects how you actually shop.

Budget Bars That Know What Day It Is

Budget progress bars now carry a pace marker — a small tick showing where your spending should be today if it were spread evenly across the month. On the 15th with 70% of your grocery budget gone, the bar turns amber before you’re actually over — an early warning no other budgeting app gives you. Each category also shows the number you actually want: how much is left this month. And while editing your budget, every category shows its month-to-date spending live — raise a cap and watch the bar respond instantly.

Watch Your Spending Move Month to Month

The Spending insights tab now charts your spending over time — stacked monthly bars by category across the trailing year. Spot the drift (that creeping dining total), see seasonality, and click any month to drill straight into its breakdown.

See the Batch Before You Approve It

The transaction review banner now summarizes what’s waiting: category chips with counts and dollar totals, plus the batch total — so “Approve all” is a decision, not a leap of faith.

AI Sorts Your Imported Transactions (Pro)

On top of the new review inbox, Pro plans get an automatic AI check: when synced transactions arrive, cinder.fi’s AI looks at each one — using your own categorization history as context — and confidently-matched transactions are categorized for you (with an ✨AI badge explaining the reasoning). Borderline calls become one-tap suggestions; genuine coin flips are left for you. Costco runs stop landing in “Miscellaneous.”

Review Imported Transactions Before They Count

Bank-synced transactions used to land straight in your spending with a best-guess category. Now they arrive in a review inbox: a banner shows how many imported transactions are waiting, and you can approve them one by one, fix a category (that counts as review), or approve all in a click. Your actual-spending numbers — and everything built on them, including your FI projection — only lean on data you’ve had the chance to sanity-check. Bonus for YNAB switchers: syncing your YNAB budget now keeps your category goals (monthly funding, spending caps, save-by-date targets) instead of dropping them, ready for per-category targets coming soon.

Track Your Withdrawals as the Year Unfolds (Pro)

Planning is annual, but retirement decisions happen mid-year. The required-withdrawals dashboard now has a “this year so far” tracker: tell it what you’ve actually withdrawn from your RRIF or IRA, and it shows how much of your minimum is still required, your projected taxable income and marginal rate right now, and — the number that matters in November — how much room you have left before the next tax bracket or the OAS clawback line. It resets every January, and it never changes your long-term projection: it’s your plan, reconciled against reality.

Build Your Retirement Paycheck

Retirement planning usually starts from your balances. The new Paycheck Builder starts from the question that actually matters: “how much do I need each month?” Set a target income and cinder.fi instantly shows where it comes from — your guaranteed floor (CPP/Social Security, OAS, pensions), the gap your savings need to fill, exactly which accounts to draw from, the monthly tax cost, and whether that paycheck lasts through your whole plan. Drag the slider to test different lifestyles and watch the trade-off live. Free for everyone, under Planning → Analysis.

Smarter CPP Estimates (CPP2)

If you’re still working, your CPP estimate now includes the post-2024 enhancement (CPP2): earnings above the standard ceiling accrue extra benefit each year you contribute. Younger, higher-earning Canadians will see a noticeably higher — and more accurate — “CPP at 65” default. Already retired? Your numbers don’t change.

Give from Your IRA, Tax-Free (US)

US plans can now model Qualified Charitable Distributions. Set an annual giving amount under Planning → Strategy → Tax Optimization, and cinder.fi routes it from your IRA’s required withdrawal straight to charity — satisfying the RMD without it counting as taxable income, which also helps you stay under Medicare (IRMAA) surcharge thresholds and reduces tax on Social Security. The projection honestly reflects the gift leaving your plan.

See Your Withdrawal Handoffs

The “Where will my retirement income come from?” card now includes a withdrawal sequence timeline — one band per account showing which one funds each year of retirement and where the handoffs happen: taxable account runs out, RRIF/IRA takes over, TFSA/Roth goes last. Sequencing is one of the biggest levers in retirement tax planning, and now you can see yours at a glance.

RESP & Education Savings (Canada)

Saving for a kid’s education is now part of your plan. Add your children and an annual contribution under Planning → Inputs → Education savings, and cinder.fi models the CESG government match (20% on your contributions — up to $500 per child per year, $7,200 lifetime), tax-deferred growth, and the drawdown through their school years. Because contributions come out of the same dollars you’d otherwise invest for retirement, your projection now shows the real trade-off between the RESP and your FI timeline — most tools ignore it entirely. The RESP shows up as its own series on the balances chart, connects automatically from your bank (RESP accounts are now recognized on sync), works in Québec as the REEE, and there’s a free RESP calculator on the site if you want to play with the numbers first.

A Redesigned Strategy Optimizer

The optimizer got a ground-up redesign. Instead of a button and a modal, it’s now a single card that leads with your biggest win and walks through clear stages — find your best strategy → running → here’s what we found → applied → out of date. Applying a strategy is non-destructive: the result, when it ran, and whether it’s still current all stay put, and you can Revert to your previous settings in one click. Cinder.fi now remembers the optimization you applied across visits (per scenario), and flags when your plan has changed enough that it’s worth re-running. The full step-by-step breakdown opens on demand rather than interrupting you.

See Your Savings — Free

Free members now get a personalized preview of what the optimizer could do for them. The moment you’ve entered your own numbers, cinder.fi automatically finds how much lifetime tax an optimized strategy could save you and shows it right on the card — with the three strategies teased behind a Pro unlock. Not there yet? A short checklist shows exactly what’s left to add. (The strategy itself is worked out privately on our servers, so the preview reveals the payoff without giving away the plan.)

The Optimizer, in Your Language

The entire optimizer experience is now fully translated into French, Spanish, and Chinese.

Redesigned Pricing & Features Pages

Fresh, fully-translated Pricing and Features pages across all four languages, so it’s clearer what you get on each plan.

Polish & Fixes

June 2026

One Home for Every Connection

The Assets page is now Accounts — the single place to see everything you own and manage how it’s connected. Your bank connections and YNAB imports now live together under Accounts → Connections, instead of being split across Settings and the Spending view. Connection prompts from Spending and Home take you straight there, and older links to the Settings connections section redirect automatically.

Better Budgeting & Transaction Review

A round of improvements to the Spending and Budget tools:

Cross-Border Account Support

Users with accounts in both Canada and the US can now connect and classify them in the same plan. Turn on Cross-border accounts in Settings to reveal account-country controls and the other country’s manual account types without cluttering the default Accounts view. Plaid connections request both US and Canadian institutions, each connected account carries its own country and account-kind metadata, and the Connections tab lets you change an account between Canada and US before syncing. Account type labels switch with that country, so the same legacy bucket can safely represent RRSP vs Traditional IRA, TFSA vs Roth IRA, and Canadian taxable vs US taxable brokerage accounts.

The projection engine now avoids folding foreign registered accounts into the wrong domestic tax bucket. For example, a Canadian plan will not treat a US IRA as a Canadian RRSP. Foreign registered accounts still appear in Assets and net-worth views, but they are marked as excluded from domestic tax projections until full cross-border tax treaty, foreign-tax-credit, withholding, and residency modeling is added.

Plaid Institution Country Metadata

Plaid items now persist institution country codes in Supabase and return them through the account-fetch Edge Functions. That lets cinder.fi infer whether a connected item is US or Canadian on refresh, preserve user overrides locally and in synced plan inputs, and heal already-linked managed accounts on the next balance sync.

April 2026

Savings Modeling Now Respects Your Account Setup

Household savings are now routed only to accounts each partner has actually entered — matching what you’ve told cinder.fi about your real setup. If a partner hasn’t opened a TFSA, RRSP, or non-registered account yet, the engine won’t model contributions into one until you add it. The Savings Split setting and Accounts page both point you to Assets when a partner doesn’t have a destination configured, so you can enable them with a single click. Applies to Canadian RRSP/TFSA and US Traditional IRA/Roth IRA/HSA alike.

Optimizer Now Runs Server-Side (Pro)

Running the Strategy Optimizer on a phone used to mean a 30-60 second wait with the tab frozen — mobile Safari throttles CPU hard and the sweep ran in a web worker on your device. The optimizer now runs on Cinder’s servers and streams progress back to your browser in real time, completing in a few seconds regardless of device. The brute-force sweep is also wider now, covering CPP and OAS claiming ages alongside the existing withdrawal, meltdown, and spousal strategies, so the recommendations catch tax wins the old version missed.

Historical Backtesting (Pro)

Test your retirement plan against every starting year from 1871 to 2024 using real Shiller market data — over 150 years of stocks, bonds, and inflation. Four spending strategies model different withdrawal approaches: Fixed (inflation-adjusted), Constant Dollar (nominal), Guyton-Klinger (dynamic guardrails that cut or raise spending based on portfolio performance), and Variable Percentage Withdrawal (age-based percentage of remaining portfolio). Results show success rates, worst-case and median outcomes, and per-cohort survival timelines. Validated against Trinity Study benchmarks.

Couple Windfall Optimization

The windfall simulator now works for couples, not just individuals. When you enter a lump sum, cinder.fi generates six candidate allocation strategies across both partners’ accounts — balancing TFSA, RRSP, FHSA, and employer-matched contributions for each person — then picks the one that produces the highest Cinder Score. Allocation rows now show which partner each account belongs to.

Rental Property Modeling (Pro)

Model up to 3 rental properties with gross rent, vacancy rate, operating expenses, appreciation, and optional mortgage amortization. Rental income flows into your projection as taxable income with expense deductions. Plan a sale at any age — net proceeds after transaction costs are reinvested into your portfolio. The engine handles mortgage interest deductions, principal paydown tracking, and property value growth. Rental properties appear on the Accounts page with a blurred preview for free-tier users.

Mortgage Amortization

Primary home and rental property mortgages now use true amortization — tracking principal, interest, and remaining balance year by year instead of a simple payoff-year cutoff. Mortgage interest on rental properties is deducted from rental income for tax purposes. Existing users with the old mortgage format are automatically migrated.

US Account Rules Enforcement

The projection engine now enforces real IRS rules for US accounts. Roth IRA contributions phase out based on income. Traditional IRA deductions follow AGI limits. Early withdrawals before age 59½ incur a 10% penalty, and the withdrawal strategy automatically defers registered accounts until the penalty window closes. Every rule is surfaced as a tooltip note in your projection so you can see exactly what’s being applied and why.

Per-Account Return Rates (Pro)

You can now set a different expected return rate for each individual account — for example, 8% on an aggressive RRSP and 4% on a conservative TFSA. Toggle it on from the Strategy Bar or manage rates on the Accounts page. Monte Carlo simulations use each account’s rate as its mean return. Previously, all registered accounts shared one rate and all non-registered shared another.

Spending Strategies

Four spending strategies are now available for advanced modeling: Fixed (constant inflation-adjusted withdrawals), Constant Dollar (nominal spending stays flat), Guyton-Klinger (dynamic guardrails that cut or raise spending based on portfolio performance), and Variable Percentage Withdrawal (age-based percentage of remaining portfolio). These lay the groundwork for the upcoming historical backtesting feature.

Copilot Money CSV Import

You can now import transactions from Copilot Money — just export your CSV from Copilot and drag it into Cinder’s import area. Categories are automatically mapped using keyword matching, and you can adjust any mapping before importing.

Inline Transaction Editing

Click any transaction’s category or description to edit it in place — no more opening a modal. Tap the emoji to quickly recategorize with the full category picker.

SEO Content Library

Launched 39 content pages across three sections: 7 calculator landing pages, 24 retirement planning guides, and 8 tool documentation pages. Every page includes structured data (JSON-LD), FAQ sections, breadcrumb navigation, hero screenshots, and cross-links to related content. Topics cover both Canadian and US retirement planning — from RRSP meltdown and CPP timing to Roth conversions and Social Security spousal benefits.

Bug Fixes

Late March 2026

Strategy Optimizer & Presets (Pro)

The Optimize My Strategy button evaluates hundreds of combinations of withdrawal order, meltdown settings, benefit timing, TFSA toggles, and PLOC configurations. It produces three one-click presets — Minimize Tax, Maximize Estate, and Maximize Funded Years — each showing exactly how much you’d save or gain compared to your current settings.

True Cost & Future Value Simulators

Two new what-if tools on the Home tab. True Cost shows what a purchase really costs in retirement terms — not just the sticker price, but the lost investment growth and how many years sooner your money runs out. Future Value shows the opposite: how a bonus or windfall improves your retirement if invested optimally. Both show animated counters and retirement age shifts.

Windfall Allocation Advisor

When you enter a windfall in the Future Value simulator, cinder.fi now tells you exactly where to put the money. It checks your TFSA, FHSA, HSA, and RRSP contribution room and allocates in tax-optimal order with exact dollar amounts for each account.

GIS & Provincial Senior Supplements

The projection engine now calculates the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income Canadian retirees, with three different clawback rates depending on income type (employment, other income, and TFSA — which is exempt). Six provincial supplements are also modeled: Ontario GAINS, Alberta Seniors Benefit, BC Senior’s Supplement, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. These benefits appear automatically in your projection when your income qualifies.

FHSA, HSA & RDSP

Three new account types are fully modeled. FHSA (Canada) tracks contributions against the $8,000/year and $40,000 lifetime limits, with automatic transfer to RRSP at age 71 or after 15 years. HSA (US) models the triple tax advantage and stops contributions at 65 when it begins acting like a traditional IRA. RDSP (Canada) models mandatory LDAP withdrawals starting at 60 with the taxable/non-taxable split.

Spousal RRSP Attribution Warnings

If your target retirement date is within 5 years, cinder.fi now warns you about the 3-year attribution rule — contributions made in the 3 years before the annuitant spouse withdraws get attributed back to the contributing spouse for tax purposes.

Real Estate Planning

Model your home as part of your net worth. Enter your home value, appreciation rate, mortgage balance, and payoff year. Plan a downsizing at a specific age — sell, deduct transaction costs, reinvest the net proceeds. Or model a sell-and-rent scenario by setting the new home value to $0. A HELOC option lets you use home equity as a drawdown buffer during market downturns instead of selling investments at a loss.

Account Insights Panel

The Accounts tab now shows personalized insights: which accounts to contribute to first (based on your tax situation), unused RRSP/TFSA/HSA room alerts, GIS clawback warnings when RRIF withdrawals reduce your benefits, spousal RRSP attribution timing, and FHSA transfer deadlines.

Individual Account Tracking

You can now add multiple accounts per type — for example, two RRSPs at different brokerages. Each appears separately with its own balance. Cash accounts (checking, savings, credit cards) and debt accounts (personal loans, student loans, auto loans) are tracked as separate categories that contribute to your net worth calculation.

PDF Export (Pro)

Download a branded 2-page retirement plan summary as a PDF. Includes your Cinder Score, key metrics (estate value, lifetime tax, financial freedom age, depletion probability), a condensed projection table at 5-year intervals, and your assumptions. Designed to share with a spouse, advisor, or print for your files.

Income Tracking in Budget

You can now tag budget transactions as income using six categories (Employment, Investment, Government Benefits, Rental, Side Income, Other). Income is tracked separately from spending so your savings rate — one of the most important leading indicators of retirement readiness — is calculated automatically from real data.

Mid-March 2026

Onboarding Wizard Overhaul

The wizard was rebuilt from 10 steps to 12, with employment status detection (working, retired, semi-retired) and conditional step skipping — retired users skip income and savings questions that don’t apply to them. Account balances are now pre-populated based on your age and income as sensible starting estimates. The budget step seeds a reasonable spending plan from your income instead of requiring manual entry.

Landing Page & Home Tab

The Home tab launched with the Cinder Score front and center — your 0–100 retirement readiness number displayed with an animated flame. Below it: personalized insight cards, a purchase impact simulator, and quick-action scenario buttons. The landing page shows your projected retirement age as the hero headline, with country badge, trust signals, and a location-aware CTA.

Cinder Score

A composite retirement readiness score from 0 to 100, built from six weighted components: portfolio survival (25 pts), budget adherence (25 pts), income coverage (20 pts), tax efficiency (10 pts), buffer/estate (10 pts), and savings rate (10 pts). Seven tiers from Cold Ash to Roaring. Score history is tracked daily and displayed as a sparkline on the Home tab.

Score Insights

Up to three prioritized recommendations based on your Cinder Score breakdown — “Your tax efficiency is low — consider an RRSP meltdown to fill lower brackets before RRIF conversion” or “You have $23,000 of unused TFSA room.” Each insight links to the relevant guide for deeper context.

YNAB Live Sync

Connect your YNAB budget with a personal access token for automatic transaction sync, monthly category budget import, and account balance pull. Supports incremental sync (only new transactions each time) and smart account matching so you don’t get duplicates. Works without sign-in — your YNAB config persists across devices once you create an account.

Budget System

Set monthly spending targets across 16 categories, import transactions from CSV (auto-detects RBC, TD, BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank, and generic formats), OFX/QFX files, or YNAB. Three spending modes let you progress from a rough estimate (manual) to a detailed budget (budget plan) to real data (actual spending from imported transactions). A deduplication engine catches duplicate transactions when importing from multiple sources.

Stripe Integration (Pro)

Pro tier launched at $12/month or $99/year. Unlocks Monte Carlo simulation, Strategy Optimizer, unlimited scenarios, PLOC modeling, spousal RRSP, per-account returns, and PDF export. Billing is managed through Stripe with a self-service portal for plan changes and cancellation.

Early March 2026

cinder.fi Launch

The initial release shipped with the full Canadian and US projection engines, 15 analysis chart tabs, Monte Carlo simulation, scenario comparison, four withdrawal strategies, RRSP meltdown and Roth conversion modeling, pension income splitting, PLOC strategy, and dark/light theming. Tax engines cover all 13 Canadian provinces and territories and all 50 US states. Three-language support (English, French, Spanish) from day one.

15-Tab Analysis Dashboard

The Planning view launched with 15 interactive chart tabs: Summary, Income, Spending vs Income, Withdrawal Sources, Tax, Effective Tax Rate, Balances, Monte Carlo, Contributions, Break-Even (CPP/OAS or Social Security claiming optimization), Annual Contribution Room, Contribution Room utilization, PLOC, Estate, and a full year-by-year Table. Scenario comparison overlays dashed lines on any chart for side-by-side analysis.

Couple Planning

Full dual-person modeling from day one — separate accounts, income, benefit timing, and tax returns for each partner. Pension income splitting automatically optimizes the allocation between spouses. The equalize-income withdrawal approach balances draws between partners to keep both in the lowest tax brackets.

Plan Sharing

Share your retirement plan via URL — no server storage needed. The link encodes your plan as a compact diff, and recipients see a read-only view with all free charts, a branded banner, and a CTA to create their own plan. Every shared link is effectively a product demo.

· 20min read

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