How to set Windfalls to pay down debts - Canada

Using a Windfall to pay down debts

In addition to scheduling regular or onetime debt overpayments or scheduling the future payoff of debts, all options that you will find when editing a debt, the option is now also available to apply surplus windfalls toward outstanding debts. This special sweep option is found only on default Cash Sweep Accounts, as pictured below on the Dashboard screen.

 

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Selecting a default cash account and you will find a Sweep Option link in the left navigation, as pictured below.

 

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The Sweep Options shows the accounts and now also debts into which surplus windfalls can be swept. Debts receive priority. If you select one or more outstanding debts, then the software will apply any leftover surplus windfalls toward those debts and in the order specified, until these debts are all paid off, after which funds may then be deposited into one or more specified accounts.

 

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Note –Debts will be paid down in the order in which they are selected. Paydowns are not spread evenly across multiple selected debts. The software will apply swept surpluses to the first debt, the debt positioned at the top of the list of selected debts, until it is paid off before moving on to the next. Click a selected debt and arrows will be shown allowing you to move it up or down in the list, in addition to an option to delete/remove the debt form the sweeps list.

About Surplus Windfalls and Default Cash Accounts

Voyant is set to assume that surplus habitual income – that is, income from earnings or withdrawals from investments – is spent if you don't make any plans to save it. We make this assumption to prevent the accumulation of large and usually very unrealistic surplus cash reserves when in most cases clients would probably spend this money on various discretionary purchases that are not accounted for in the plan.

The software does make exceptions, however, for special kinds of windfalls. If you schedule a windfall, if a profit is cleared from the sale of a property, if a person dies and their estate is distributed, if there is a lump payout from a pension or an insurance policy, these lump sum inflows are assumed saved. And if you don't use a transfer or contributions tell the software where to invest this money, Voyant will deposit it by default into the owner's default cash account (e.g. Julia's Cash). Every person in a plan is given a eponymous default cash account automatically by the software. These notional accounts are designed specifically to hold such surplus windfalls. 

Sweeps rules can be set to automatically move balances from Surplus Cash

It might be fair to assume that your client would never leave such large sums of cash in savings. The software has a convenient option to set a rule to automatically sweep any leftover surplus cash from the earner's/owner's default cash account (e.g. John's Cash) into to one or more target accounts.