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Explore the page
- 01
Choose a starting point
A plan begins one of two ways. The intake survey at /start asks about the household on a single page and generates a whole plan from the answers in one step. The guided walkthrough builds the same plan a section at a time, at /simulation/income, /simulation/real-estate, /simulation/investments and /simulation/spending, and then opens the projection.
Both end on the same workspace holding the same kind of plan; the survey only answers the four sections at once. Starting a new plan from the plan menu opens the walkthrough at its first section; generating from the survey lands on the projection, because the survey has already walked every section.
- 02
Complete the survey
The survey is ten sections: Household, Location & prices, Income, Housing, Spending, Children, Debts, Savings & accounts, Plan settings, and Assumptions & name. Questions appear as their gate is answered — a spouse’s ages, a mortgage’s terms, the seven named account kinds per person from a pre-tax 401(k) to an inherited Roth.
Anything unanswered keeps the default a blank plan would have: retirement at 55, a lifespan of 90, 3% inflation, 7.5% growth with a 1.5% dividend yield, a 6.5% mortgage over 30 years. The bare /start mints an unguessable address of its own and saves the answers there as they are typed, so the URL alone brings them back on any device.
- 03
Generate and check the plan
The bar at the foot keeps a live count. A blocker is an answer the plan cannot be built from — an age outside 16 to 90, a blank salary for someone marked as working, no answer to own, rent or neither — and pressing Generate walks to the first one rather than doing nothing.
A warning, such as a mortgage larger than the house, is said and not enforced. Generate turns the answers into a plan, hands it to the workspace and opens the projection. Signed out, the button reads “Generate & sign in to save”: the plan waits through the sign-in and becomes a new account’s first plan.
An account that already has plans gets it as another plan beside them. One already holding two plans cannot take it: the answers are kept and the page says why instead.
- 04
Follow the walkthrough
The walkthrough is five stops, each with its own URL, listed in the header as 1. Income, 2. Real estate, 3. Investments, 4. Spending and 5. Projection with the current one marked.
Each stop has its inputs on the left and live results beside them — year-1 federal and state tax, payroll tax where a job pays it, take-home and net worth at the end of the span on the income stop; year-1 spending and what is left over on the spending stop — with the charts redrawing as figures change.
From the second stop a summary bar carries the earlier sections’ year-1 figures forward. Next moves on; Back keeps the reader’s place. Every figure asked for is what is true today, not a balance the household hopes to reach.
- 05
Add and edit entries
Every section is a list of cards, and a card is one entry: an income stream, a property, a spending category, a child, a debt, an account. Collapsed it is a name and a number; open it is the full set of fields, and only one is open at a time.
A switch at the head takes a card out of the projection without removing it from the plan; the × at the other end removes it. On the walkthrough, “+ Add another …” puts a new card straight on the list, opening on the same illustrative figures a blank plan uses. A section holds as many cards as you need, during setup and after it.
Presets belong to the projection page’s + Add, which asks what kind of thing first — What kind of income? property? spending? account? — and lays down the shape: how it is taxed, when it starts and stops, whether it is let out. No preset carries an amount.
Cards carried in from the household’s finances arrive folded under a heading such as “Accounts from your finances”, with a switch but no ×.
- 06
Plan settings and new-plan defaults
Settings are the assumptions that are not entries on the plan: Household, Inflation, Investment returns, Cash flow, Selling order, Health cover and Life milestones, each row showing what the plan currently says. Two more — The year so far and any Capital losses carried in from before the plan — are facts about the household rather than assumptions, so they are answered only in Default settings and inherited by new plans.
The walkthrough puts three of them where they are first needed — Household and state on the income stop, Own or rent on real estate, Cash flow on investments — and the projection offers the whole list under its chart. In Dashboard, Plan defaults lets an account answer all eight once; every plan started from scratch afterwards opens on those answers.
Plans that already exist are not touched, and any new plan can still change every one of them for itself.
- 07
Save your first plan
There is no save button. Every edit is written on its own 900 milliseconds after the last keystroke, one write in flight at a time, and the header indicator says Saved, Saving…, Not saving or Last change not saved. A plan that could not be read is never written over.
A plan someone else shared reads “Shared with you · view only” and is never written.
On an account’s first visit, before any plan is saved, a six-step tour opens — a welcome, the route, the inputs, the live results, the charts, and the account tools — and it can be replayed later from the account menu as “Replay setup tour”, which opens the walkthrough at its first stop.
What changes what
Controls & settings
Check what each control changes and whether it recalculates your forecast.
Builds a complete plan from the answers, hands it to the workspace and opens the projection; with blockers outstanding it scrolls to the first one instead. Signed out it reads “Generate & sign in to save”.
Change one entry of the plan; the results beside the inputs and the charts redraw.
Takes the card out of the projection while keeping it, and everything typed into it, in the list.
Puts a new card straight on the section’s list, opened on the same illustrative figures a blank plan uses. The projection page’s + Add is the one that asks what kind of income, property, spending or account is being added and opens the entry’s fields with everything but the amount filled in, added only when the dialog is saved.
Moves between the four input sections and the projection; each stop is its own URL, and Back keeps the reader’s place on the page.
The three settings the walkthrough asks in place: your own age, how far to look, the state, the locality and any planned move on the income stop, with the spouse asked between the incomes; whether the household owns on real estate; what each year’s leftover does on investments.
Stores the settings as the account’s own defaults for every plan started from scratch afterwards; no existing plan changes.
Opens the six-step first-visit tour again over the walkthrough’s first stop.
Reading the result
Read the results
The walkthrough’s opening cards are illustrations, not estimates: a $100,000 salary, a $600,000 house and $50,000 in each of the Cash Reserve and Brokerage accounts. Replace them before reading anything off the charts. A new plan started while the household’s finances are already on record opens on those cards instead.
A plan generated from the survey is built from the answers alone; nothing illustrative survives, and a blank amount is zero rather than a guess.
“Ready — 2 things worth a look” on the survey bar means warnings, not blockers: the plan can be generated as it stands, and the warnings are worth checking afterwards.
A switched-off card stays in the list with its figures but the projection reads past it; the summary bar and the year-1 results count only what is on.
Year-1 figures on the walkthrough are the first plan year at today’s prices; a salary or balance typed as what it might be in five years makes every year of the projection wrong from the first.
One plan, several readings
Related pages
Default settings →
Set reusable assumptions and current-year income before starting your next plan.
Examples & tours →
Explore a sample household or replay setup when you want a guided introduction.
Projection →
Both ways in end here: the survey’s generated plan opens on the projection, and the walkthrough’s fifth stop is the projection, where every section stays editable, + Add offers the presets, and the whole settings list sits under the chart.
Overview →
The household’s accounts, property and debts are kept once on the profile and dealt into every plan, so a new plan’s sections open on those cards folded under a heading such as “Accounts from your finances”; their figures are edited there, not on the plan.
Plans & sharing →
New plan from the plan menu goes through the walkthrough from scratch; a plan generated by the survey for an account that already has one is another plan, which needs room under the limit of two, and a plan someone shared is view-only and never written.
Overview →
The settings the walkthrough asks in place — household and state, own or rent, cash flow — sit beside the eight groups under Dashboard’s Plan defaults page; a default set there is what a from-scratch plan opens on.
Keep following the math
Key concepts
Keep in mind
Model limits
The survey does not guess: a missing housing answer, a blank salary for someone marked working, or an age outside 16 to 90 blocks generation rather than being filled in for the household.
A preset never carries an amount. Picking one sets the shape of the entry — tax treatment, timing, whether it is let out — and the figure is always the reader’s to type.
New-plan defaults change only plans started from scratch after they are saved; they never alter an existing plan, a copy, an import or a shared plan, and they cannot name any account or stream in a plan.
Autosave writes nothing for a plan that failed to load and nothing for a plan shared with the household; the indicator says which is the case rather than pretending a save happened.
The walkthrough shows the plan as it stands today; it is not a recommendation about what to add, and its opening figures are stand-ins for a household not yet described.
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.