Current Age is your age in the plan’s first month. Together with that month it fixes your birth year, which Social Security timing, the RMD start age (72, 73 or 75 under SECURE 2.0) and catch-up contribution eligibility are measured against. Retirement Age is where the Accumulate phase ends and the Retire phase begins. Finish Age is the plan’s last year.
Inflation Rate indexes the tax tables from the second simulated year on — brackets, the standard deduction, contribution limits and the Social Security wage base — and today’s-dollar figures are deflated by it. Expenses left at their default rate grow with it; every other asset keeps its own rate.
These are the same four fields as the settings row on the main page, for the scenario open there, and changing one here changes it for that scenario. Each scenario keeps its own. Once a plan is loaded, though, its Retire phase sets the Retirement Age, so change that on the main page, where it also moves the salary and benefit dates tied to retirement. Filing status and backtest year are set on the main page only.
Every run starts from one published set of federal tables, chosen by your filing status: brackets, capital-gains bands, the standard deduction, the Social Security wage base and the contribution limits. From the second simulated year each is indexed by your inflation rate, except the figures the law itself fixes, which are never indexed: the primary-home sale exclusion ($250,000 / $500,000), the net investment income tax threshold, the Social Security provisional-income thresholds and the 2025–2028 senior deduction.
This is not a setting; it shows what the engine loaded. See Rules → Tax Rates for the full detail.
Your inflation rate, applied from the second simulated year.
This adds a third category, 🧪 Engine diagnostics, to the “What needs attention” panel above your asset list, next to 💸 Paying for the plan and 🔧 Needs setting up. It reports where the simulation’s own bookkeeping doesn’t reconcile. These are notes about the engine, not your finances; most people should leave this off.
Charting Finance doesn’t keep your plans on a server. Everything you enter is stored in this browser’s local storage, on your computer. A share link carries the plan inside the link itself.
Restores the open scenario’s ages, filing status and inflation rate, and the property-tax deduction cap and engine diagnostics. Your other scenarios, your assets, guardrail parameters and backtest year are untouched.