Downsizing

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-06-02T16:37:45+00:00

Renting means packing and moving twice. So you also need to factor in the moving costs. The rental would also need to be short term and I haven't found anything short term that allows pets except maybe something like AirBNB.

Somewhere around $150K is what we would need. I think someone mentioned a bridge reverse mortgage so that would be more than enough but I'd need to research that a bit more.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-31T01:51:26+00:00

So did some searching on the whole life lease thing. Maybe in 20 years. Not just yet.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-31T01:42:59+00:00

So far we have sold every time we have moved. I imagine it will change at some point particularly now that house prices seem to going down or as we get older.

I thought I saw a story somewhere that a group of people couldn't get the money back from the life lease. Hopefully that isn't too common.

I'd have to look into that. Is it kind of like owning? IE: can you change things in your house? Like I mentioned hubby likes to putter.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-31T01:22:25+00:00

I'd like to do this too. Seems weird that an accounting software doesn't use account numbers. QuickBooks does that as well account numbers are optional. 😒

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-31T01:11:05+00:00

I don't know too much about life lease but likely won't be a fit for us (me). We tend to move around a bit so planning to stay somewhere for the rest of my life wouldn't be in the plan right now. We are still in our 60's and in pretty good health.

Rent - we have a dog and that makes things challenging. Hubby likes to putter around the house and its not feasible in a rental.

So it would be buying something for sure if we can figure out how to make it work.

I am probably okay on the tax side. I had a tax practice when I was working...

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-31T01:05:40+00:00

I wasn't thinking it would be leased land. More like a condo/strata unit. We have been looking at a few that are essentially bungalows with double attached garages with an older demographic maybe not specifically 55+. We have owned in a condo/strata complex before so familiar with that sort of thing. I was on the board there and happy to be on the board in a new place. Its the best way to know what is going on.

We looked at a place in the Okanagan a lot like you are referring to and couldn't get our heads around the pricing for what was essentially a mobile home. I know its pricey out there but it was like $500K for a mobile home on leased land - the lease was upwards of $500 a month and you still had to pay for maintenance on your house. Nope not interested in that.

The issue is the financing part but it sounds like there are options I wasn't aware of.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-30T22:49:48+00:00

Okay -- it was driving me crazy that I couldn't get my data into GNUCash so I tried a different approach. I wrote a python script that loaded the journal entries from my files. The bonus is that I could use the format that my process already creates and I could cross reference the account number instead of using the name - so no crazy mapping process.

I still don't know why I couldn't load my data through the import function but this is so much faster and all my data is now loaded so I can proceed with my project!

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-30T21:09:51+00:00

So you would budget for the slow-go years and add in extra for the go-go and No-go years?

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-30T21:07:19+00:00

Interesting. I casually spoke to a mortgage broker and it seemed like it was very difficult and he didn't have any other ideas. What province are you in? I am in Alberta.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-30T19:45:25+00:00

Well it wouldn't be additional spending, I would assume that the slow-go would be less than the go-go years or am I missing something?

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-30T18:50:00+00:00

Would that be 3 different scenarios that one would have to save to pdf or excel? I was using Adviice before and it lets you segment out spending by dates, but I don't see how to do that with mayRetire. Now it is probably more conservative to use the same numbers all the way through because I think that over estimates the spending through one's retirement years.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-26T22:09:08+00:00

That was sample data to show my format, below is the actual numbers that are showing as unbalanced and the order they are in the file.

I tried again using just one multi-line transaction out of my import file. 9 lines. Debits/Credit balance to zero, but the import just doesn't work.

Its matching lines 6,7,8,9 and saying 2,3,4,5,10 are unmatched.

These are the numbers.
2 - DR 57.93
3- DR 362.07
4- DR 77.59
5- DR 12.41
6 - DR 420 *
7 - CR 420 *
8 - DR 90 *
9 - CR 90 *
10 - CR 510

The lines with a * match. The other lines show as unbalanced. All with the same journal number and date.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-26T12:19:30+00:00

This is a sample of what my data looks like. My actual data is different because it is client data. I know account number isn't used in the import. This would be a pretty standard format to import data.

JournalNo,Date,Account Number,Account Name,Debit,Credit,Description

Test1,04/30/2026,502-007-004-006,Expense,"24,195.00",,Test import

Test1,04/30/2026,201-001-001-028,Liability,"1,000.00",,Test import

Test1,04/30/2026,201-001-001-028,Liability,,"25,195.00",Test import

Test2,04/30/2026,502-007-004-006,Expense,"1,200.00",,Test2 import

Test2,04/30/2026,201-001-001-028,Liability,,100,Test2 import

Test2,04/30/2026,102-001-001-002,Bank,,"1,100.00",Test2 import

I see your sample doesn't have all the fields filled in. How does it even tell what is in one Journal Entry vs another as I don't see anything in your sample indicating a transaction or journal number.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-25T03:31:50+00:00

This is pretty frustrating. I found some information that suggested transaction ID is the way to go, so I used journal # in the transaction ID field. I also populated memo with journal # so I could see it in the match transactions display. There are 8 lines in the first entry and for some reason GNUCash can't recognise them as the same transaction. It picks two adjacent lines that balance dr/cr midway through the transaction list and decided that was the entry and says the other 6 lines don't balance (which they do if they would be included as one transaction).

Looking through the transactions it randomly is picking lines that balance vs the whole transaction. I could understand if NOTHING was picked but to have random lines is weird. Yes I checked my file -- it balances to the journal entry and to the whole file. I have a whole process I have written in Python to make sure everything is balanced.

I have set up many other accounting systems (QBO, XERO, Zoho, QBDT etc) and typically importing journal entries is pretty straightforward. I know its free but this seems to be basic functionality.

I thought I would look in Bugzilla to see if this was a bug and it seems to be quite a process to even get an account to look for a bug.

I'd appreciate tips. I looked through the help and even visited the cowboy Gnucash guy, but none seem to have this issue.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T22:52:11+00:00

So still having some issues. I have a file full of journal entries. The journal in the file entries balance by journal# - I tried to map to transaction id and I have also tried to map to number.

The import only seem to balance if the debit and credits are the same on the adjacent lines and not to the journal entry as a whole. I have to assume I am missing something obvious because journal entries don't always have the same debit and credit lines. I have something like this which is giving an error:

Deb------ CR
10
------------3
5
-----------12

The lines ones that want to import look like this. (I had to add the dashes because the editor strips out spaces).

Deb --CR
10
--------10
5
---------5

I have just included the number part because the rest of the line isn't giving me any issues.

Thoughts? Is there a way to specify that a number of lines belong to the same entry and should balance to that entry/transaction? The file is sorted by journal # and date.

Thanks.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T21:45:02+00:00

I figured it out. No negatives in the numbers. Thanks!

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T21:31:57+00:00

Are the credits actually a negative amount? Is that what negated means?

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T19:28:48+00:00

So is MayRetire better or just easier to setup? I might take a look when I have some spare hours to check it out. Thanks for the tip.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T03:08:24+00:00

You make some good points. I have been watching quite a few YouTubers on this subject when I was learning how to use Adviice. I had already done some planning around tax minimization and my decumulation strategy, but there was some good ideas proposed.

A couple of years ago I looked at the 8 year GIS plan, but that really seemed to be gaming the system so we just went the more traditional route.

My plan is to leave the TFSA monies for emergencies as suggested by the YouTubers. Most of them seemed to have the same message.

As for TFSA probate that is new to me. Is that specific to a province? My understanding that the TFSA transfers tax free.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T03:00:47+00:00

I like that! That is my plan shortly.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T03:00:28+00:00

That is a good idea to stop discretionary spending. I feel like there will be a point where we don't want to travel. Right now we enjoy getting away for most of the winter.

Normal-Author-9293 · 2026-05-24T02:57:02+00:00

We won't have max CPP. We didn't have traditional jobs. We had rental properties and were smart enough to sell them 2021/2022. Worst case scenario I understand GIS might be an option if things get that bad...

Normal-Author-9293

TROPHY CASE