u/HardRainDPK

I see people make feature requests from time to time, but I dont see a central place here to track them. Is it possible to have such a section, and perhaps allow users to vote on those they want to see?

Here are mine at the moment....

Optiml Feature Requests

-Rental modelling far too limited, no ability to change rental costs in the future, for example, downsizing from a larger rental to a smaller one, and then perhaps to a long term care facility

-still very unrealistic limitations on tracking real home equity, no ability to add sales commissions and selling expenses, mortgage payout costs, etc, is a major gap that causes Optiml to vastly over-calculate real home equity

-IMO need an option that does not require estimating expenses, one that focuses purely on after tax cash flow. I prefer to maximize net cash flows, and knowing what that is, I can then choose how to spend. I think optimizing retirement income and choosing expenses are two different things that should be able to be distinct when a user desires

-Debt is a very useful tool, for some people far too easy to abuse, but used correctly, can vastly improve after tax cash flows., I say this as someone who literally has a perfect 900 credit score, proof that making extensive use of debt is not automatically a very bad thing

-note that the truly wealthy use a zero income strategy, they borrow at preferred rates secured against investments, and as borrowings are not income - they are tax free. Yes, they ultimately have to pay interest, but if the investments are growing faster than the interest costs, this strategy is sustainable, that’s how the truly rich do it. Optiml should be able to model at least a partial tax optimization strategy that way

-similarly, need to be able to manage using credit lines, such as HELOCs, to model optimal after tax cash flow strategy, for example if in the near term tax bracket may drop significantly, then far better off to borrow money short term if doing so can yield a larger next after tax cash flows

Optiml is better than anything else I have come across for modelling retirement spending, so major congratulations there.

But I am losing confidence in the software, and realizing most (not all) of my time spent with it is still a giant waste of time.

Why? Because of all the individual strategies one must choose from. They are all "artificial". In reality, there is only 1 strategy for everyone. Maximize the amount of money I can spend, while leaving if desired, some money for others. That's it.

When you have 8 different strategies that you have to choose 1 at a time, any individual strategy is likely suboptimal. It doesn't give you the overall best answer, instead you are left with a lot of results to sort through, after taking a lot of time to run different strategies. It wastes so much time having to run multiple strategies, none of which seem to encompass everything that matters.

I don't care about how much tax I pay, I care about how much money I have to spend and leave to others. Everyone wants to optimize CPP and OAS, so why even ask? RRSP meltdown strategy.. why should a user be expected to worry about this? This is something the system should automatically optimize every time.

IMO, this simplicity, is essential for accurate, optimal, confident results. IMO this is what Optiml should have 100% focus on fixing right now. Until then how can anyone trust they have chosen the optimal strategy?

I can't find any place within the website itself to contact anyone so I am posting here. I had a monthly account, was planning to cancel. Decided to look at annual rate before doing so. At that point I accidentally clicked confirm, and despite immediately trying to click cancel and back, the payment went through. Insult to injury there were still 2 paid weeks left on my monthly plan and it charged me for a full annual plan immediately.

How do I contact someone for a refund? I have decided this is not the platform for me.