Timeline events do more than simply mark a point in time. Many events also trigger changes within your financial plan, such as ending employment income, modelling retirement, paying insurance benefits, settling an estate, or simulating unexpected life events.

This article explains what each built-in timeline event does and how it affects your plan.

Start of Plan Event

The Start of Plan event marks the first year of your financial plan.

Many planning items default to starting at this event, including:

• Income
• Expenses
• Assets
• Savings
• Transfers

Using the Start of Plan event allows these items to automatically adjust if the plan's start date changes.

Retirement Event

What does the Retirement event do?

The Retirement event marks the point where an individual is assumed to retire from employment.

When the Retirement event occurs, Voyant automatically:

• Ends all employment income linked to that individual.
• Ends contributions to employer-sponsored retirement accounts, such as Registered Pension Plans (RPPs), Defined Contribution Pension Plans (DCPPs), Group RRSPs, and other workplace retirement arrangements.
• Ends employer-linked benefits that are tied to that employment, where applicable.

The Retirement event does not directly trigger retirement income or withdrawals. It does not automatically:

• Begin Canada Pension Plan (CPP) or Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) benefits.
• Begin Old Age Security (OAS) benefits.
• Begin withdrawals from RRIFs, LIFs, or other retirement income accounts.
• Initiate withdrawals from retirement accounts or other assets.

These items are controlled independently using their own timing settings.

However, once employment income ends, the plan's cash flow engine continues to fund any remaining spending needs. If there is insufficient income to cover expenses, Voyant will begin drawing from available assets according to the software's liquidation order and account-specific rules.

Tip: Moving the Retirement event changes the retirement date for any employment or planning items linked to that event, allowing you to easily model retiring earlier or later.

Note: The Retirement event does not automatically begin withdrawals from RRSPs, RRIFs, TFSAs, LIFs, or other investment accounts. These are controlled by each account's own distribution settings and the plan's cash flow requirements.

Mortality Event

The Mortality event is automatically created for each individual based on their Life Expectancy settings in Plan Settings. It represents the point at which that individual is assumed to pass away within the plan.

When the Mortality event occurs, Voyant models the financial impact of that person's death. Depending on the assets and planning strategies in the plan, this may include:

• Ending any income that is no longer payable following the individual's death.
• Paying eligible life insurance proceeds to the named beneficiary.
• Transferring jointly owned assets to the surviving owner, where applicable.
• Applying beneficiary designations and estate planning instructions to determine how assets are distributed.
• Recalculating any government retirement benefits payable to a surviving spouse or partner, including applicable CPP/QPP survivor benefits, where appropriate.
• Calculating any applicable taxes, probate or estate administration costs (where applicable), and legacy outcomes.

If a spouse or partner survives, the plan continues using the surviving person's timeline and reflects the financial impact of the first death before continuing to their own Mortality event.

The Mortality event can be moved to model different life expectancy assumptions in a What-If scenario to evaluate the impact of an earlier or later death.

Note: Changing the Mortality event immediately models the financial consequences of that person's death in the newly specified year, including ending applicable income sources, updating ownership of assets, recalculating survivor benefits, and applying the plan's estate settlement logic from the date of the event.

Disability Event

What does the Disability event do?

The Disability event models a temporary loss of employment income.

When the Disability event occurs, Voyant will:

• Stop employment income for the affected individual.
• Trigger eligible Income Protection or Disability Insurance benefits.
• Continue disability benefits until a Disability End event occurs or the policy's benefit period ends.

If the Disability End event occurs before Retirement, employment income resumes automatically.

Disability End Event

The Disability End event marks the end of a disability period.

When it occurs, Voyant:

• Stops Income Protection or Disability Insurance benefits.
• Resumes employment income if the individual has not yet reached their Retirement event.

Critical Illness Event

The Critical Illness event models the diagnosis of a covered critical illness.

Unlike the Disability event, a Critical Illness event does not automatically stop employment income.

Instead, it:

• Triggers eligible Critical Illness insurance policies.
• Pays the policy benefit according to the policy settings.
• Leaves employment unchanged unless the employment is separately configured to end at the Critical Illness event or Income Steps are used to reduce earnings.

Major Loss Event

The Major Loss event is designed to model a significant decline in the value of investment assets, such as a stock market correction or financial crisis. Rather than changing income or employment, this event applies a temporary reduction in the market value of eligible investments at a specific point in the plan.

You can use the Major Loss event to stress test how a client's financial plan would perform under adverse market conditions.

When the Major Loss event occurs, Voyant:

• Applies a temporary reduction in the value of eligible investment assets.
• Calculates the reduction using the Major Loss Event Settings configured in Plan Settings.
• Continues the plan using the reduced asset values, allowing future growth assumptions to apply from the lower starting value.
• Recalculates the client's cash flow, withdrawals, and long-term outcomes based on the new investment values.

The Major Loss event does not:

• Permanently change an asset's growth rate.
• Affect employment income or other non-investment income.
• Change expenses or retirement dates.

Instead, it creates a one-time market shock that allows you to evaluate how resilient a financial plan is under adverse market conditions.

Configuring the Major Loss Event

The severity of the market decline is controlled through the Major Loss Event Settings in Plan Settings.

These settings allow you to specify:

• The percentage loss applied to each asset class.
• Which asset classes are affected by the event.
• Whether different asset classes experience different levels of decline.

Because the event uses the plan's asset allocation, diversified portfolios will often experience different overall losses than portfolios concentrated in a single asset class.

Common Uses

The Major Loss event is commonly used to model scenarios such as:

• A significant stock market correction.
• A global financial crisis.
• A recession affecting investment portfolios.
• A stress test before or during retirement.
• Evaluating sequence-of-returns risk.

Tip: The Major Loss event is particularly useful when comparing different investment strategies or retirement dates. By applying the same market shock to multiple What-If scenarios, you can compare how resilient each strategy is under identical market conditions.

Default Events vs. Custom Events

Voyant automatically creates several default timeline events, including Start of Plan, Retirement, and Mortality. These events can be moved to model different scenarios, and many planning items are linked to them by default.

You can also create custom events to represent milestones such as:

• Selling a business.
• Purchasing a home.
• Receiving an inheritance.
• Starting post-secondary education.
• Downsizing.
• Any other significant financial event.

Multiple planning items can be linked to the same event. This allows you to change the timing of an entire strategy by moving a single event on the Timeline.

Important Things to Know

• Timeline events often control when planning items begin or end.
• Multiple planning items can be linked to the same event.
• Moving an event automatically updates the timing of every item linked to it.
• Most planning items can be linked to either a built-in event or a custom event.
• Using events rather than specific calendar years makes it much easier to compare planning scenarios and update plans over time.

FAQ: What is the difference between an event and a goal?

Although both events and goals appear on the Timeline, they serve different purposes within the plan.

An event marks a point in time and may control when other planning items begin, end, or change. For example, the Retirement event ends employment income and employer-sponsored retirement contributions, while the Mortality event triggers estate and survivor calculations.

A goal represents planned spending that the household would like to fund. Examples include retirement spending, purchasing a home, education costs, travel, or other lifestyle objectives.

In simple terms:

• Events control timing and may trigger changes within the plan.
• Goals create a spending need that must be funded.

An event does not normally create an expense on its own. For example, adding a Retirement event does not automatically create a retirement spending goal. The adviser must enter the household's desired retirement spending separately as a goal or expense.

Goals are also included when Voyant evaluates whether the plan can meet the household's spending needs. Events may affect that outcome by changing income, contributions, asset values, insurance benefits, or estate arrangements at a particular point in time.

In Summary