Cash flow planning

Every dollar has a story.
Follow yours.

See where your money comes from, where it goes, and what stays with you. Move from a lifetime overview to the flow of a single year.

Build your forecast Explore an example

MoneyWhatIf cash-flow Sankey tracing income into taxes, housing, spending, investments, and remaining cash, beside an annual ledger. — Follow each source of money to the expenses and accounts it funds.Illustrative example

See what’s possible

What changes when the paycheck stops?

Follow working years into retirement and see when income covers the year, when savings take over, and where shortfalls appear.

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Understand the annual rhythm

See income and outflows across the whole plan, including the years a purchase or retirement changes the pattern.

Trace a year, dollar by dollar

Open the money-flow diagram to connect individual sources of income with taxes, living costs, investment contributions, and cash.

Give spare cash a purpose

Model cash reserves and surplus priorities, then explore how withdrawal order funds years that need more than they earn.

Explore the details

Give extra cash a destination

A positive cash-flow year is the start of another decision. Keep a reserve, save to an account, direct money toward debt, or invest what remains. The reserve can follow months of household outgoings, so the cash cushion responds to the costs already modeled in the plan.

Choose a reserve in months of costs or dollars.
Review the steps that receive cash after the reserve is met.

Cash-flow priority keeping four months of outgoings as a cash reserve. — Connect the cash cushion to the household’s modeled costs.Illustrative example

From a question to a clearer picture

Start with the yearly balance, then trace the money

The cash-flow chart and money-flow diagram are two readings of the same projection: what the household receives, what it needs to pay, and how the gap is handled.

Describe income and commitments
Enter income streams, spending, account contributions, property, and debt. Set cash reserves and surplus priorities, along with the order the plan uses when income alone does not cover a year.
Find the years worth opening
Choose Cash flow in the chart picker and scan the annual inflows and outflows. Click a year around a retirement, purchase, or other change to pin its detailed ledger.
Follow the connections in Flow
Turn on Flow to trace that selected year from its sources into taxes, housing, living costs, investments, and remaining cash. Return to the lifetime chart to place the year in context.

Connect the whole plan

Connect surplus years with withdrawal years

Working years can build the balances that later support retirement. The lifetime cash-flow chart makes that handover visible without losing the annual detail. Following account additions alongside later withdrawals helps explain how an earlier saving choice changes the resources available when earned income becomes smaller.

Locate the transition from contributions to withdrawals.
Compare adjacent years when income or benefits change.

Annual cash-flow chart showing household inflows, outflows, and a net-worth line. — Follow the changing balance between income, costs, and investing.Illustrative example

One way to use it · illustrative scenario

Buying a home during a working year

Imagine a household considering a home purchase three years from now while continuing to earn their current salaries.

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The choice to explore

They add the proposed purchase, financing, closing costs, and ownership costs, then compare the forecast with their starting plan.

Where to look

They pin the purchase year to trace the cash required and any account withdrawals, then inspect the following year to separate the one-time purchase from ongoing payments. They also check what happens to planned saving.

What you could learn

The comparison separates a one-time purchase from its continuing costs and shows what happens to planned saving when the same income must fund a different set of commitments.

Make sense of what you see

Read the flow without losing the bigger picture

The diagram explains one selected year

Its connections show where money comes from and where it goes in that year. The lifetime bar chart shows how that pattern changes across the whole horizon.

A transfer is different from money earned

Moving cash into an investment account appears in the funding story, but the transfer itself does not create wealth. Use net worth alongside cash flow to distinguish saving movements from growth.

Withdrawals can carry their own tax cost

A withdrawal that funds spending may also create taxes requiring funding. The settled ledger incorporates that interaction, so the amount drawn can exceed the original spending gap.

A little more detail

Good questions to start with.

What happens when a year has money left over?

Cash-flow settings determine the reserve and surplus priorities the plan follows. Depending on those choices, leftover money can remain as cash, fund investments, or pay down debt. The chart shows the outcome of those configured instructions.

What happens when income cannot cover a year?

The model follows the configured funding and selling order, including supported account withdrawals and property sales. If the available resources still cannot meet the need, the projection records a shortfall rather than assuming additional income arrives.

Is this a transaction history from my bank?

No. This view projects annual flows from the plan’s assumptions. It is a forecast, not a record of individual purchases, deposits, or bank transactions.