Next in the series: Get Started Series 5: Retirement Planning
Transcript
This transcript was converted to text by AI
Canwi — Events Overview — Transcript
Hi, I'm Cam, one of the founders of Canwi. In today's video I'm going to give you a tour of events — what they are, how they work, and how to think about using them in your plan. By the end you'll understand what an event is, what's available, and when you might reach for each one.
The Lego analogy
Think of your financial plan in Canwi like a set of Lego blocks. The base plate everything sits on is your income, your expenses, your money flows, your home and real estate, your assets, and your debts. Events are the blocks you snap on top — each one represents a financial decision or a life moment, like buying a house, retiring, or changing your work hours.
When you add an event to your timeline, Canwi recalculates your entire projection. So you're not just recording where you are today and how that plays out — you're modelling the changes you want to make and seeing the impact in real time.
Adding an event
To add an event, hit "Add new event" in the top right, and a panel slides out with everything that's available. You can drag and drop any event straight onto your timeline.
For example, I'm dragging "Take a Holiday" onto 2027. I can configure it — say I want to spend $10,000, and I want it to recur every two years until I turn 60. When I hit add, you'll see increases in our expenses across the plan, and it also shows we're using savings — in 2027, for example, we're drawing down $7,944 from savings to afford the holiday.
Now watch what happens when I drag the event to a different year — the projection updates straight away, and the impact moves with it. The charts all update in real time, and that's the core mechanic: you move things around, and the model does the work.
A deeper example
That's a simple example, but let me show you something with more depth. In this plan, I already own my home, but I want to move to a new home and keep the existing one to rent out. I can say I want to rent out my current home and rent somewhere else, factor in some moving expenses, and control what happens to my current home — assumptions around rental yield, deductions, and so on. Then I set a new rental budget — say $500 a week — and move myself around.
Behind the scenes, this is converting your current home into a rental: the loan on it becomes tax-deductible, it creates deductible expenses like property expenses and depreciation, and it generates rental income. All of that happens automatically — this is the kind of modelling that's genuinely hard to do yourself. In Canwi, you just add the event, adjust your assumptions, and see the full picture play out. You can also dive into the individual impacts and look at the itemised breakdown.
What's available
One thing to keep in mind: Canwi is very flexible, so there's often more than one way to model something. Think of events as options, not rules — use whichever fits how you like to think about your plan.
Family and Life — personal milestones like getting married, having kids, child care, school years, holidays, and gifts. Most are recurring expenses (like having a child or early years), but some are one-offs (like receiving a gift or taking a holiday). "Take a Holiday" is a good example of an event you could model multiple ways — you could build a holiday budget into your living expenses, or use the "Take a Holiday" event for a specific trip or a recurring schedule. Both are fine; same outcome, different approaches.
Work and Income — how you earn, pay changes, and retirement. You can start an income, get a promotion (you can also use "Get Promoted" to simulate a reduction in income), or change your work hours — for instance, dropping to three days a week in your 50s, then fully retiring at 60, using two events in sequence. There's also a dedicated Retire event.
Property and Vehicles — buying and selling big assets, including investment properties. Most of these come in buy/sell pairs. Behind the scenes, Canwi handles all the tax treatment for you — capital gains tax when you sell, stamp duty, all of it.
Investing and Super — define things like a regular investment plan. If you're buying shares, you can do that here, either buying a new asset or continuing to invest in an existing one. You can sell shares with a drawdown schedule — for example, selling $50,000 of shares a year to draw down a portfolio. You can also contribute to super — a flexible event that lets you simulate personal super contributions and taps into rules like the bring-forward rule, carry-forward rule, and non-concessional caps, all handled for you. "Change Super" lets you change the assumed return rate on your super — for example, moving from a high-growth portfolio to a balanced fund as you enter your 60s. There's also a downsizer contribution event, another way to make super contributions.
Debt — getting personal loans, making additional loan repayments, and refinancing.
Generic Events — think of these as your blank Lego bricks. "Receive Money" is a good example: it's more flexible than, say, "Receive a Gift," but could be used to model the same thing. If you're planning to get a $10,000 gift from a family member, either event works — the named event ("Receive a Gift") might be more recognisable on your plan, while the generic one gives you more control and flexibility. If something doesn't fit neatly elsewhere, a generic event can almost certainly handle it.
Bringing it together
Broadly, events fall into a few patterns: starting something (a new income, a new investment, a new property), changing something (your work hours, super contributions, expenses), or ending something (stopping a job, selling an asset, retiring). Some are one-offs — holidays, bonuses, big expenses.
Stack the right blocks in the right sequence, and you've got a complete model of your financial life — not just where you are today, but where you're headed and what levers you can pull to change that.
That's a quick overview of events in Canwi. In some other videos, we go deeper on specific scenarios — retirement planning and buying property, for instance — where you can see these events working together in real plans.
To explore further, head to canwi.com.au/learn, or reach out via the chat bubble in the app or on the website.
Thanks for watching!