What happens after purchase

Receive a welcome email

After purchasing online, you’ll receive an email from us outlining your next steps and the information to gather, where and how to submit it, and how to book your virtual session with us. We’ll provide a quick summary here, as well.

Collect your numbers

To help tailor our interactive scenarios to your situation, we’ll ask you for the summary info below (additional guidance is here). It’s best if you have online or paper statements for the past few months available for reference.

Info we ask for and why:

Your age: it determines the amount of time you have to reach your goals

Retirement savings: any money you might have set aside for retirement only, which impacts how much you might need to set aside regularly

Your income (after-tax): the money that goes into your bank account from your job(s), which helps determine a realistic budget

Current debt: any debts where you carry a balance you pay back over time (except rent or mortgage) since they are part of your budget. This part of the conversation can be stressful, but we’ll support you through it

“Life Happens” Savings: sometimes called ‘emergency savings’. This isn’t only reserved for emergencies because...life happens. Don’t have anything? Don’t stress - skip this entry if you need to and we’ll propose a budget to help you build a (financial) cushion

Committed Money: the total amount of recurring, fixed expenses in your budget (such as fees, subscriptions, housing costs, etc.). This number helps us understand your budget and serves as a starting point for estimating your future costs

Depending on the specific plan you purchased, there will also be some additional questions we ask.

Submit your numbers

In the welcome email, you’ll receive a link to an input sheet that guides you step-by-step through the specific numbers we need. Simply make a copy, fill it out, then email back to us. Want to see the inputs we ask for? The sheet is here.

Schedule your session

In the welcome email, you’ll also receive a link to book a time slot to connect with us over Zoom.

Attend your money session

We recommend attending your session using a computer or tablet so that you have a larger screen for viewing the scenarios. During your session we’ll introduce you to the key elements of your NOW money and FUTURE money.

Then, through interactive scenarios, we’ll make changes to the inputs and instantly illustrate how your financial decisions affect both your budget and future wealth:

After the session is over, you’ll receive a summary document for your reference with graphs of your financial projections based on the different scenarios we’ve covered.

We are so excited to help you along your financial journey. You can feel confident knowing we’ll be with you every step of the way as you Untangle Money.

FAQ

What if I’m in a relationship and share finances with someone else?

That’s great! You can decide whether you want to look at your ‘own’ numbers, or collect them as household numbers (e.g., household income, household savings, household expenses, etc.). This may largely depend on how the finances are arranged and what your personal goals are for looking at your finances.

What if I don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal information?

You only need to share as much as you feel comfortable sharing. Where possible, we ask only for total numbers and nothing that could be used to personally identify you - how you spend your money is up to you! Feel free to share as much information as you feel comfortable up-front as adjustments can be made during the interactive scenarios. Other than your name and email, we do not store any other personally identifiable information.

Is the information you provide specific to any city / region / country?

We’re based in Canada and most familiar with Canadian circumstances. We’re aware of many of the variations across the country, but our approach can accommodate national and even international differences (e.g., we work with after-tax income). The foundational information and financial frameworks are generally applicable, but we may need to rely on additional research or estimates for specific local details.

How is the information you provide specific to women?

We believe that it’s always nicer to get a ‘bonus’ by planning for less and ending up with more. In making our financial projections, we start with conservative assumptions we believe are better representative of women’s realities. We assume: your salary only increases with inflation, your default investment return is based on the average women’s portfolio, and you have a longer life expectancy. We’ve also built-in the ability to consider questions like how taking unpaid leave will affect your finances - a deceptively simple question that our own experience showed was difficult for some advisors to answer.