← Back to the simulator

The people who made it better

I built this alone.
It didn't stay that way.

Strangers checked my math, found a tax credit I had missed, and told other people it was safe to use. Nobody asked them to. This page is where I keep what they said.

Every quote below says where it came from and how it got permission to be here. Nothing is paid for, nothing is invented. Here are the rules I follow.

34public comments, collected by hand
5communities they came from
6things that changed because of them

A note from Chris

I built this expecting maybe five people to look at it.

Instead, complete strangers started auditing my work. One person caught a missing tax credit that fixed paycheque math for everyone. Another inspected their network traffic to confirm zero data leaves the browser, then vouched for it publicly so others wouldn't have to worry.

No one was asked. No one was paid. People just stepped up to help a solo builder get the details right. A few have even bought me a coffee along the way, which still feels unreal.

This isn't a marketing page. It's where I keep the receipts, so you can see who checked the foundation before you trust it with your own numbers.

Chris Coffin Built and maintains Finance Simulator

In their words

What people said

Public comments from r/fican, r/CanadaPersonalFinance, r/CanadaFinance, r/SideProject and a Facebook group. Quoted as written, without names.

A sceptic checked, so you don't have to
This is great! Thanks for sharing your work. I can also vouch for the fearful that this does not appear to be saving data anywhere external to your local browser
Public comment r/CanadaPersonalFinance
A CFP and CPA
This is very impressive. I like it a lot and previously paid for something similar before our planning software mostly covered this. For reference, I'm a CFP and CPA […]. Nice work!
Public comment r/CanadaPersonalFinance
Checked it against their own numbers
Hey, works pretty well, I put in my own details as a fellow Canadian and it pretty much lines up with numbers I've calculated in the past.
Public comment r/SideProject
Someone found out they had already made it
Pretty cool. Calculator just told me I've reached coast fi. Was nice to hear the hardwork has been working slowly
Public comment r/fican
Stayed twenty minutes
Wow, it's actually the most helpful financial calculation tool I have used online. Kudos to you, I just spent 20+ minutes playing around with it.
Public comment r/fican
Privacy
I'm Canadian, and I'm going to try this out. I really like the fact that it's private and just sits in your browser.
Public comment r/SideProject
Passed it on
Very nice tool, took a quick look, user friendly. I've forwarded it to friends and posted on my page. Appreciate your work and generosity in sharing it with the community. Cheers.
Public comment Facebook community group
Told them what to change
This is really awesome! Ty so much for making this. Def a little sad to see how far behind I am […] but at least it gives us the quick insight on how much to adjust/save to get on track.
Public comment r/CanadaPersonalFinance
Budgeting
I like it! I don't currently invest not really but I found this tool very streamlined and practical for budgeting
Public comment r/CanadaPersonalFinance

And a lot of short ones

  • "This is a phenomenal resource."r/CanadaFinance
  • "Wow this is spectacular!"r/fican
  • "Wow, that is an outstanding tool."r/fican
  • "Very nice planning tool."r/fican
  • "Cool model. Fun to plug numbers into"r/fican
  • "Your simulator is awesome!"r/fican
  • "Just started to try it and I love it."r/CanadaPersonalFinance
  • "Really cool. Saved this."r/CanadaPersonalFinance
  • "Excellent! I have forwarded to my kids."Facebook
  • "also in QC here :)"r/CanadaPersonalFinance
  • "Incredible app! Is it really free to use?"r/fican
  • "Thank you for this Chris!"r/CanadaFinance

Gratitude, as evidence

Six things that changed because someone told me

Every one of these is a real entry in the changelog, flagged at the time as having started with a person speaking up. Dates and wording exactly as they shipped.

Fixed Income 25 July 2026

Ontario tax estimates corrected, and every province re-checked

An Ontario resident flagged take-home looking off: the estimate was missing the LIFT credit. Ontario now matches TaxTips.ca exactly at every income tested. The rest of the country got benchmarked at the same time: 74 of 76 sampled points now land within $2 of the reference, up from 30. Quebec is the exception, with no end-to-end reference available, so treat Quebec figures as approximate.

One person mentioned their paycheque looked wrong. That is why everyone else's numbers got better.

New Retire 25 July 2026

Defined-benefit pensions are now part of the retirement plan

If you have a DB pension you can model it properly (lifetime amount, bridge benefit to 65, inflation protection, and early-retirement reduction) instead of guessing at a lump sum. There's also a commuted-value comparison if you're weighing the transfer, and room for two pensions if you're planning as a couple.

New Income 4 August 2026

Your bonus counts now

Add a typical annual bonus alongside your salary, as a dollar figure or a percent of your base (whichever your offer letter uses), and it flows through everything: tax, take-home, your budget, your percentile and what you can invest. It's assumed to repeat and to grow with your raises.

Improved Invest 4 August 2026

Raises can go up to 10% a year

The annual raise slider used to stop at 6%, which didn't fit anyone on a promotion track or early in a fast-growing career. It now runs to 10%, lands exactly on your province's default, and says so plainly once you push it past about 5% a year for decades.

New Summary / Retire 8 August 2026

Share your results, bookmark any tab

You can now export clean visual summaries of your financial standing and retirement plans that strictly protect your privacy by omitting sensitive data like income, balances, and net worth. Share links are now more durable and transparent, every tab features a unique bookmarkable link for direct access, and pressing the back button on mobile now navigates sequentially through your tabs instead of closing the app.

New Retire 26 August 2026

Know when your retirement is already funded

Coast FI has its own home in the Retire tab now. I built this so you can see the exact investment balance you need today for compound growth to finish the job on schedule. Input your age, current portfolio balance, and target spend, and the app calculates your CPP and OAS estimates automatically. Reaching Coast FI does not mean you quit working tomorrow, but it guarantees your future nest egg is locked in so your current income goes toward living right now.

Keeping the lights on

Supporters

People who put something in. No amounts, ever, and nothing here changes what the tool does for anybody.

Being on this wall unlocks nothing. No extra features, no hidden settings, no special math. Two people running the same plan get the exact same answer: always. A calculator that gave supporters better math would not be worth supporting.

Four ways in, and money is only one of them

  • Bought a coffee
  • Wrote about it
  • Found something broken
  • Checked my French

Three of those cost nothing. If you want the fourth, there’s a tip jar — and it is the only thing on this page that involves money.

Nobody is on the wall yet.

It opened in September 2026. The first 25 people to contribute anything, in any of the four ways above, are founding supporters. Then it closes.

25 founding places left

If you want in

Get on the wall

If you wrote about this somewhere public, send me the link and I'll add you however you'd like to be shown.

Must be a publicly viewable link. Screenshots and private groups can't be verified. Blogs, LinkedIn, YouTube, newsletters, and open forums all work.
Only so I can reply and confirm how you want to appear. It is never published and never added to any list.
Entirely your call, and you can change it later by emailing me.
Skip this if you picked anonymous.

Got it. Thank you.

I read these myself, usually the same day. If you left an email I'll reply to confirm how you want to appear before anything goes on the page — nothing gets published until you've had the chance to see how it will look.

A note on Reddit compliance
Reddit posts and comments do not qualify for a spot on this wall under any circumstances. To comply with Reddit ToS and subreddit rules against incentivized sharing, I do not accept Reddit links, track Reddit activity, or offer perks for mentions. Independent discussion on Reddit according to local community guidelines is always welcome, but it remains strictly unrewarded and decoupled from this site.

The fine print, in plain words

How anything gets onto this page

Three ways. There is no fourth, and nothing here skipped one of them.

Public comment

Quoted from a comment posted in public. No permission was asked, because none is needed for a public post, and it's shown without a name. Worth being straight about: a quote is searchable, so this is unattributed, not anonymous. If you wrote one of these and would rather it came down, email me and it's gone in the next update.

With permission

I emailed and they said yes, then chose how they appear: anonymous, first name and last initial, or full name with a link. Their choice, not mine.

Submitted by them

They filled in the form above and picked what to show. Nothing on this page was put here by anyone other than the person it belongs to.

No star ratings and no review markup here, deliberately. Nobody rated anything, so there is nothing to average, and calling these a 4.8 would be the first dishonest thing on the site.