Top to bottom
Explore the page
- 01
Choose future or today’s dollars
The page opens with a short heading and one switch, Today’s money. Off, every figure is in the dollars of the year it lands in; on, each year is discounted at the inflation the plan assumes (or, under a dealt run, the inflation that run lived), which leaves what the year would buy.
The projection is not run again to do this: taxes were worked out on the money actually earned, and the discount is applied to the finished rows afterwards.
The basis chosen is printed in the preview header, on the summary sheet, on the PDF cover band, and as a Money basis line at the top of every CSV, so a file read months later says which money it is in.
- 02
Choose a report
Six tiles sit under the heading. Financial plan summary is a PDF; Income & cash flow, Net worth & liquidity, Portfolio & withdrawals, Lifetime tax schedule, and Complete annual ledger are CSV files. Clicking a tile previews that report below; the small arrow on the tile downloads it without changing the preview, and a status line confirms which file was saved.
Filenames are built from the plan’s name made lowercase, with accents stripped and every run of spaces or punctuation collapsed to a hyphen, capped at 60 characters, followed by a suffix such as -plan-summary.pdf or -tax-schedule.csv. Under a dealt run the plan name carries the run number, so a PDF of one dealt market cannot be mistaken for the forecast.
- 03
Headline figures
Each report leads with four figures. The summary shows net worth in the final year with after-tax worth beneath it, income in the first year with that year’s living costs, taxes across the plan with the first-year bill, and the projection horizon in years. The cash-flow report totals lifetime inflows, lifetime living costs, lifetime account additions, and unfunded needs.
Net worth shows the final net worth, liquid worth, after-tax worth, and embedded tax. Portfolio shows the final invested balance, lifetime additions, lifetime withdrawals with the amount from required minimum distributions (RMDs), and the peak withdrawal year. The tax schedule shows lifetime tax, the peak tax year, federal tax, and withdrawal-related tax.
- 04
Preview the chart
Every report has one graph, and only series that are nonzero in at least one year are drawn; the first series carries a light area fill. Hovering previews a year, a click or tap pins it, the arrow keys step through years, Home and End jump to either end, and Escape clears the pin.
A tooltip and a readout under the plot give the calendar year, plan year, each person’s age, and every drawn series’ value; with nothing pinned the readout shows the end of the plan. Values below zero sit on the axis, and the gridline ceiling rounds up to a tidy step above the largest value.
- 05
Milestone years or the full table
The summary preview is a sheet: plan name, household, state, locality when one is set, money basis, the plan settings as the settings list words them, the resilience headline across 300 reshuffled histories, and a milestone table of up to four years (the first, about a third of the way, about two thirds, and the last) with income, taxes, living costs, net worth, and after-tax worth.
Every other report previews its year-by-year table, which scrolls sideways and down and holds the same rows as its CSV. Some CSV columns do not appear on screen: property purchased, other debt, pension contribution, and conversion tax in the four topic reports, and the complete annual ledger’s table shows 25 of its CSV’s 40 money columns.
- 06
Inside the PDF summary
The summary is a US-letter document with a page-numbered footer and the generation date on its cover.
Its sections run in order: plan overview; plan settings; nine headline results; a net worth and usable wealth chart; plan resilience; a balance sheet at the plan’s start, middle, and end; a money-in-and-out chart; five spreads (income by source, spending and living costs, saving and investing, withdrawals and distributions, taxes by type) showing the first five years in columns and a lifetime total; milestone years; the annual projection with all years in six columns; and a closing note.
A chart or spread with nothing nonzero to show is left out, as are the settings and resilience blocks when they have nothing, and a chart needs at least two years.
- 07
Inside the CSV exports
Each CSV starts with context lines (Plan, Money basis, Household, State, and Locality when set), a blank line, a header row, then one row per plan year with the plan year, calendar year, and household ages. The cash-flow file has 20 columns, net worth 18, portfolio 20, the tax schedule 13, and the complete annual ledger 43.
Amounts are rounded to cents and rates to four decimal places as fractions; the effective tax rate is blank in a year with no taxable income. The tax schedule’s local tax column is always present and reads zero for a plan with no locality. Account withdrawals include qualified charitable distributions alongside money drawn for spending.
What changes what
Controls & settings
Check what each control changes and whether it recalculates your forecast.
Discounts every row of the preview and of every download by the plan’s assumed inflation (a run’s own under a dealt run), and changes the Money basis printed on the sheet, the PDF cover, and the CSV context lines. Shared with the projection page.
Chooses which of the six reports is previewed: its headline figures, graph, and sheet or table.
Saves the selected report as a file named after the plan, and posts a one-line confirmation.
Previews or pins a year on the lifetime graph; the readout and tooltip show that year’s ages and series values. Escape clears the pin.
Scrolls the year-by-year table sideways by 96 pixels per press.
Reading the result
Read the results
After-tax worth is net worth less the embedded liquidation tax: what a single return selling everything in that year would owe, with pre-tax balances as ordinary income, house appreciation and brokerage growth as gains, and Roth and cash owing nothing. It measures exposure; the plan never pays it.
Living costs are spending, housing, healthcare, and debt payments. A house purchase’s down payment and closing costs, and a job’s own pension contribution, are kept out because they do not repeat; the CSVs carry each as its own column.
The resilience block counts 300 reshuffled histories dealt from a fixed seed, so the figure is the same on every visit; give or take is half the Wilson 95% range, rounded and never below one point. It is absent while the deal is still running and when no account in the plan follows a market.
Total tax is every bill the year was charged: federal, state, local, payroll, sale, withdrawal, sweep, and conversion tax together, with any other tax the engine charged. The effective rate divides that by taxable income, which includes Roth conversions.
Investment growth is the change in invested balances with account additions taken out and withdrawals put back; with Today’s money on it becomes growth in purchasing power.
One plan, several readings
Related pages
Projection →
The reports read the same series the projection chart draws, and the Today’s money switch is the same one, so the two pages always show the same money.
Plan resilience →
The resilience block on the summary is the resilience page’s headline dealt quietly with 300 runs and a fixed seed; the resilience page itself can choose 100, 300, or 500 runs and deal again.
Taxes →
The lifetime tax schedule breaks each year’s bill into federal, state, local, payroll, sale, withdrawal, and conversion tax; the taxes page explains a single year’s federal, state, local, payroll, sale, and withdrawal tax in more detail.
Estate →
After-tax worth prices selling everything in a year; it is not the legacy the estate page settles after death, where debts are paid and a stepped-up basis can be assumed.
Keep following the math
Key concepts
Keep in mind
Model limits
The page does not project anything: it reads the plan currently on screen and offers no editing, so a scenario has to be changed on the plan pages first.
The page and the PDF both say the figures are rough estimates for exploring scenarios, not tax or financial advice.
The PDF’s flow spreads show only the first five years and a lifetime total; complete annual detail is the six-column annual projection at the back or the CSV files.
The resilience section is omitted when nothing in the plan follows a market, and a PDF chart or flow spread that is zero in every year is left out rather than printed empty.
The on-screen tables omit columns the CSVs carry: property purchased, other debt, pension contribution, and conversion tax in the four topic reports, and most of the complete annual ledger’s flow detail.
This guide documents the page as built. The figures on it follow the plan’s own assumptions; none of it is individualized tax, legal, Medicare, or investment advice.