Charting Finance.
Help Guide

A section-by-section guide to the simulator. The ? in each section’s heading links to its entry here.

🧭

The Top of the Page

The settings row holds the assumptions every section shares. Under it, the Outcome strip answers the question most people come with — will my money last? — and the section bar takes you anywhere on the page.

Elements

Settings Row
Current Age, Retirement Age, Finish Age, Filing As, Inflation and Backtest from Year. On a loaded plan, changing Retirement Age moves the plan’s retirement: the Retire phase, and any salary that ends or Social Security or pension that starts on the old retirement date. Social Security never moves before 62, the earliest it can be claimed. A note under the row says what moved, and changing the age back moves it all back. Each scenario keeps its own settings, so switching scenarios switches them too.
Will My Money Last?
Three answers side by side, each labelled with what it assumes: Plan as entered (the ending net worth, in today’s dollars too, and whether the plan ever runs out), In 1,000 simulated markets (the Monte Carlo success rate and median) and With spending guardrails. They should differ: the simulations vary the markets and the guardrails vary spending. Click a tile to jump to its section.
Section Bar
The bar stays at the top of the window as you scroll and highlights the section you are reading. Click a name to jump there.
Collapsed Sections
Spreadsheet and Visualizer start collapsed, since they are for exploring rather than for the answer. Show in a section’s heading opens it, and the page remembers your choice.
🕐

Your Timeline

The Timeline draws your money’s path across your life phases on one chart, the wealth arc. It marks the milestones along the way, and its cursor sets the month every other section shows. The scenario menu in its heading switches between your saved plans.

Elements

The Wealth Arc
The curve plots the selected metric (Net Worth unless you choose another) for the whole plan. The starting value sits at the left end, the ending value in bold at the right, and a checkpoint marks the value at retirement. Ages run along the axis, with calendar years at each end.
Phase Bands & Growth Rates
Tinted bands mark your phases — Accumulate in green, Retire in coral. Each band is labelled with that phase’s annual growth rate, nominal and real (7.2%/yr · 4.0% real). A rate needs the value above $0 at both the start and the end of the phase; where it isn’t, for example when net worth falls below zero, the band shows a dash instead. A dashed line marks retirement.
Today's Dollars
A fainter curve follows the arc in today’s dollars, and the start, end and cursor values each show a today’s $ figure beneath them. It appears only where that makes sense — for a balance, not a rate. Over a long plan it is the honest number: $4M in 2056 buys far less than $4M today.
Milestone Pins
Pins on the curve mark asset milestones — buying or selling real estate, a mortgage opening or paid off, Social Security and pension starts. Pins stack when events fall at the same age. Click a pin to edit that asset.
"You are Here" Cursor
A vertical line with a chip showing the date, your age and the value at that moment. Drag anywhere on the arc to move through time, or focus the arc and use ← / → to step a month (Shift for a year). Every chart, badge and view on the page follows it.
Month & Year Details
The section directly under the timeline always shows the cursor’s month and its calendar year, in two rows with the same columns: income received, expenses, taxes and cash flow first, then what was withdrawn from your accounts, asset growth and net worth. Under them, the year’s taxes as a tax return would see them. More on reading it.
Phase Chips & Edit Popover
Below the arc, one chip per phase shows its name and age range. Click a chip, or its dot on the axis, and choose Edit to open the life event form. + Life event adds a new one.
Scenario Menu
The chip in the section heading names the active scenario — a complete, independent plan with its own assets, fund transfers, life events, settings and guardrail parameters. Click it to open the menu: each row shows a preview curve of that scenario (green if it grew, red if it shrank), its note and its ending value. The active row can be renamed (✏️) or deleted (🗑️). A shared plan opened with Open shows in the chip as not saved: nothing of it is stored, and your scenarios are as you left them. Save it from the menu with ＋ Save as scenario, or pick one of your scenarios, choose Close without saving or reload to go back.
Date Controls & ⚡ AI Summary
Year and month dropdowns in the card's upper right jump to an exact date, and the ▶ play button auto-advances one month per second (scrub the arc or adjust a selector to pause). The ⚡ button in the section heading generates a markdown summary of your timeline and phases.

How To

Set up your life phases
1 Set your Current Age, Retirement Age and Finish Age in the settings row at the top of the page. On a new plan the Accumulate and Retire phases follow these ages; on a loaded plan, Retirement Age moves the plan’s retirement (see Settings Row).
2 Click a phase chip below the arc (or the phase's dot on the arc's axis) to select it and open its popover; choose Edit to adjust the phase in the life event modal.
3 Open an asset’s fund transfers (⇄ on its card). The transfers shown belong to the selected phase, so Accumulate and Retire can route money differently.
Navigate to a specific date
1 Use the Year and Month dropdowns to pick a date. All charts, the portfolio view, the visualizer, and every viewing badge update to reflect that month's data.
2 Alternatively, drag anywhere on the wealth arc. The cursor scrubs month by month as you drag — or focus the arc and step with the ← / → arrow keys (Shift jumps a year).
3 Click the ▶ play button next to the month selector to auto-advance one month per second. Everything animates in sync — sparklines, flow arrows, the Flows bars, visualizer conduit, and wealth tank. Scrub the arc or adjust a selector to pause.
Inspect a month and its year — Month & Year Details
1 Scrub the cursor to the month you're curious about. The Month & Year Details section directly beneath the timeline always shows that month and the calendar year it falls in — there is nothing to open.
2 The two rows share their columns, and the year is its months added up, so Income received, Expenses, Taxes and Cash flow mean the same thing over one month and over twelve. Cash flow is income received less expenses and taxes, so the four always reconcile, and it is the same Cash Flow that Reports, Projections and the Spreadsheet show. Income received is money from outside your accounts — wages, Social Security, pensions, interest and dividends. A withdrawal from your own IRA, 401(k), Roth or brokerage is not income here; it is under Withdrawn. Expenses include the whole mortgage payment, principal as well as interest. In retirement, cash flow usually runs negative: that is what your savings had to cover. Click Income received, Expenses or Taxes for what each is made of: income and expenses by account, with a mortgage split into interest and principal; taxes by kind — income tax, FICA, capital gains, NIIT and property tax. Each list adds up to the figure you clicked. Taxes are what was paid in the period, so a January includes the previous year’s year-end settlement, and the list says so. Net worth is a balance, not a sum: the year shows where it ended and how much it changed. A plan’s first and last years can be short; the row says which months it covers.
3 Withdrawn is money that genuinely left an account to meet an obligation — living expenses, rent, the full mortgage payment including principal, property tax, maintenance, insurance, and tax paid from an account. That makes it larger than the Expenses column, an accounting figure that leaves mortgage principal and property tax out. Click the amount for the list of obligations it paid, each with its amount. While you are working, its tax is usually $0, and that is correct: withholding comes out of your paycheck and never passes through an account, and the list says so. If a pink unfunded amount appears, the plan owed more than any account could supply.
4 Tax year, under the rows, is the year as a tax return sees it: Federal taxes owed on that year’s income (FICA, income and capital-gains tax, and the Net Investment Income Tax), then AGI, MAGI, and the effective rate on income and on AGI. It differs from the Taxes column, which is what was paid during the year: the true-up and NIIT for a year are settled the following January, so a year’s Taxes include the previous year’s settlement. The line under the amount owed says what January settled. A year the plan ends before December was never settled and has no tax-year figures.
5 Use Spreadsheet → or Credit memos → in the section heading to jump to that month's row in the detail views — both are already positioned at the cursor date.
Create and manage scenarios
1 Click the scenario chip in the section heading and choose ＋ New scenario. Pick a name and note, and choose whether to start blank or copy the current scenario's data. Either way it starts on the current scenario's settings.
2 Switch scenarios by clicking a row in the menu. Each row's preview curve and ending value show where that scenario lands. Scenarios are fully independent — assets, life events, fund transfers, settings and guardrail parameters are all scenario-specific.
3 On the active row, click ✏️ to rename the scenario or edit its note, or 🗑️ to delete it (hidden when only one scenario exists).
Quick Start
1 If you have no assets yet, the welcome banner offers four starting plans for different life stages, each with income, accounts, a home, expenses and fund transfers for both phases. Or choose Start from Scratch.
2 The four on offer follow your Filing As setting. Filing Single you get Early Career, Mid Career, Pre-Retirement and Retired; filing jointly you get Young Couple, Dual Income Couple, Couple Nearing Retirement and Retired Couple — the joint profiles carry two salaries and two Social Security benefits. Change Filing As in the Settings Row and the banner re-offers.
3 A profile sets its own ages and filing status when you load it — Mid Career, for example, starts at 45 and retires at 67. Change Retirement Age afterwards to move its retirement.
💼

Your Portfolio

Your Portfolio shows every asset in the plan, grouped into columns. Two views: Assets, what you own, and Flows, where your money goes.

Elements

⚠️ What Needs Attention
A panel above the asset list reporting what went wrong with the plan — not with the app. Findings are grouped into 💸 Paying for the plan (an obligation nothing could pay, an account that ran dry and was covered by the next one down) and 🔧 Needs setting up (no funding account configured, contributions that hit the annual limit, a required distribution that was not met, Social Security dated before 62). If the plan runs out of money, that month leads as its own callout above the list.

The panel opens itself once, on the transition from clear to not-clear — after that the badge is the only nag, so it won't fight you while you type. Not to be confused with the Issues 🐛 button in the page header, which is the form for reporting a bug in the tool itself.
⚠️ on an Asset Card
A warning marker on a card means an obligation this asset owed could not be paid. It does not mean the account is empty — a retirement account is supposed to draw down, and a zero balance alone never raises a flag. Open the card to see which months failed and why.
👓 Asset View
Hover an asset card and click 👓 (“View results”) to open a read-only view of what the simulation actually did to it, over three windows: This month, This year (January through the selected month) and Life to date. Below the numbers sit rule notes — plain-language explanations of the rules that fired, such as why a Roth withdrawal was untaxed, where the tax on untaxed income was settled instead, what was withheld from a pension before it paid out, or why a contribution was capped. Nothing here is editable; it is all simulation output.
Asset Columns
Assets sit in six columns: Income, Capital, Real Estate, Retirement, Expenses and Taxes, each headed by its total. All start expanded.
Asset Cards
Each asset card shows three layers: the asset's value at the selected date, a sparkline showing the full simulation trajectory with a "you are here" dot, and a flow row with colored arrows showing monthly inflows (green), growth (blue), and outflows (red). Hovering reveals four actions — ✎ edit, ⇄ transfers, 👓 view results, ✕ remove. Clicking the card body instead selects it, highlighting that asset across the charts.
Assets / Flows Toggle
Switch between the Assets view (grouped asset cards) and the Flows view (where the money went, and the transfer rules that sent it). Both views update as you navigate the timeline; Flows shows the transfer rules of the life-event phase in force at the selected month.
Viewing Badge
Shows the currently selected month and year. All values, sparkline dots, and flow amounts reflect the simulation state at this date.
Taxes Column
A virtual group that surfaces hidden taxes: FICA, income tax, capital gains, net investment income tax, the premium tax credit settled on the return, and property tax. Click any tax item to highlight the contributing assets with a pulse animation across all columns.

Most rows show the selected month annualized. Net Investment Income and Premium Tax Credit are the exceptions: each settles once a year, so its row shows the trailing twelve months instead — otherwise it would vanish for eleven months and read twelve times too high in the twelfth. Each appears only in years with something to settle.
🩺 ACA Health Insurance
An expense card for a marketplace plan, with the premium tax credit worked out on it. Enter this plan year’s monthly premium before any credit and the benchmark premium (the second-lowest-cost silver plan for your household, which healthcare.gov shows). The Premium Growth % defaults to inflation; marketplace premiums usually rise faster, so set your own. Estimated Income is the ACA MAGI you tell the marketplace for a year you were not on it all of the year before; Advance Credit % takes less of the credit monthly; Household Size overrides the one your filing status implies. Leave the finish date empty and the card ends the December before you turn 65. See Rules for how the credit is worked out.
Where the Money Went
The top of the Flows view draws one bar per source of money over the selected month, or its year with the Month | Year toggle: each paycheck, pension or benefit, each account that paid for something or sent money on, and the dividends, interest, refunds and windfalls that came in. A bar's parts are where its money went, colored by what it did: into your accounts (purple), spent (red) or paid in tax (amber). Each part carries its destination's group icon, as on the Assets view.

The bars are what actually moved, read from the ledger, not your rules' percentages applied to a balance. The tiles above them add up: Came in, less Spent and Tax paid, is what went into your accounts. They are Income received, Expenses and Taxes from Month & Year Details, to the dollar, less only what the bars leave out: income that had no account to go to, bills that could not be paid (both listed beside the bars), and property tax, which is drawn the month after it accrues while Taxes counts it when it accrues (the Tax paid tile says by how much). Each bar's parts add up to the bar. One-time windfalls and purchases are in the bars but not the tiles, as they are not in Month & Year Details.
Rules in Force
Under the bars, each transfer rule of the phase in force, with its setting beside what it moved. A setting says what its percentage is of: a 401(k) deferral is a percentage of gross pay, a Roth or brokerage deposit of take-home pay, an expense rule of the bill. A rule's close percentage is a row of its own, since a closing account's balance moves out of it: a home that pays its property costs from the brokerage sends its sale proceeds the other way. Rules that moved nothing in the period, such as those of a paycheck that has ended, are folded away.

Moved automatically lists the money no rule sent: tax withheld from income or from withdrawals, estimated tax paid from your accounts, last year's tax settlement, required minimum distributions, take-home pay no rule claims, bills no rule covers (paid by the funding backstop), an account running short and the next one paying, and sale proceeds. Hover or tab to a bar part or a rule to light the other. Click a rule to edit its transfers, in the life-event phase that set it.
Fund Transfer Modal
Accessed by hovering over an asset card and clicking the ⇄ button, or by clicking a rule in the Flows view. Configure percentage-based transfers that are phase-specific (Accumulate and Retire phases have independent configurations).
Funding Backstop
Bills, mortgage payments, property tax and taxes still have to be paid when no fund transfer covers them. The simulator falls back to your everyday accounts, in this order: Cash → Savings → Taxable Account → US Treasury → Corporate Bond — the first one holding a positive balance pays. Sale proceeds and leftover take-home pay land the same way.

Retirement accounts are never used automatically. Spending a 401K, IRA or Roth has tax and penalty consequences the simulator will not choose for you, so if your plan means to fund expenses from retirement savings, set up an explicit fund transfer. When nothing is eligible, the obligation is marked Unfunded in that asset's Credit Memos rather than being quietly skipped.
⚡ AI Summary & + Add Asset
The ⚡ generates a markdown summary of your portfolio composition. The + button opens the asset creation dialog.

How To

Add an asset
1 Click the + button at the bottom-right of the portfolio card.
2 Choose an asset type (for example Working Income, Taxable Account or Mortgage). The type decides how the asset behaves: how it grows, how it is taxed and which transfers it can take part in.
3 Fill in the display name, start/end dates, starting value, and annual return rate. Click Save to add the asset to your portfolio.
Configure fund transfers
1 Hover over an asset card and click the ⇄ button, or switch to the Flows view and click any rule under Rules in force to open the fund transfer modal.
2 Set a percentage (0–100%) for each destination asset. For example, route 15% of your salary to a 401K and 10% to a brokerage account during Accumulate.
3 Switch to the Retire phase on the timeline and configure different transfers — e.g., draw from retirement accounts to cover expenses.
Edit or delete an asset
1 Hover over the asset card and click the pencil icon to edit, or the ✕ to remove it.
2 In the edit dialog, modify the asset's fields — name, dates, values, return rates. Click Save to apply changes.
3 Removing an asset permanently deletes it and all its fund transfers from the current scenario.
Work through “What needs attention”
1 Start with the callout at the top if there is one — the month the plan runs out of money. That is the first month an obligation came due and no eligible account held a positive balance, so everything after it is downstream of the same failure.
2 Read 🔧 Needs setting up next. These are usually configuration, not arithmetic: no cash or savings account exists to pay from, a transfer is asking for more than the annual contribution limit allows, or a required minimum distribution has nowhere to land. They are often the cause of the row above.
3 Treat “Ran dry” notices as the early warning. The obligations were still met — the next account down covered them — but the plan is now leaning on its backstop. Scrub the timeline to that month and open the asset's 👓 view to see what drained it.
4 Remember that the simulator never spends a 401(k), IRA or Roth on its own. If a plan is meant to fund retirement from retirement savings, that has to be an explicit fund transfer — an unfunded obligation beside healthy retirement balances almost always means the transfer is missing.
Explore the Flows view
1 Click Flows in the Assets/Flows toggle at the top of Your Portfolio.
2 Read the bars: one per source of money, its parts colored by what the money did. Switch Month | Year to see the whole year.
3 Hover a bar part to find the rule that made it under Rules in force, or the automatic flow it belongs to. Click a rule to open the fund transfer modal for its asset.
🎲

Simulations

Two ways to stress-test the plan: Monte Carlo, which runs it through 1,000 simulated markets, and Guardrails, which adjusts spending as the portfolio rises and falls. Both re-run on their own whenever the plan changes; until a new result arrives, the previous one is dimmed.

Elements

Monte Carlo Chart
Runs 1,000 simulations with returns drawn from market history (1970–2025, or from your backtest year on), and shows the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile bands with your plan’s own path overlaid. The draws are seeded, so the same plan always gives the same answer.
Calibrated / Historical
Calibrated, the default, keeps your own return and inflation rates and adds each drawn year’s swing around its long-run average. Historical uses the drawn years’ actual returns, as they happened.
Summary Cards
Under Monte Carlo: the success rate (the share of runs that never fall to $0 after retirement), the median, the 10th and 90th percentile endings and the horizon. Under Guardrails: the ending value, the final year’s withdrawal, and how many spending cuts and raises fired.
With Guardrails Checkbox
When checked, Monte Carlo simulations apply your guardrail parameters (withdrawal rate, preservation, prosperity, adjustment) to each trial. When unchecked, simulations use your raw fund transfer percentages without dynamic adjustments.
Guardrails Chart
Visualizes the guardrail withdrawal strategy applied to your portfolio. Shows how dynamic spending adjustments respond to market conditions — cutting withdrawals in down markets and increasing them in up markets.
Guardrail Parameters
Four configurable inputs, defaulting to Target Rate 5%, Preservation 15%, Prosperity 15% and Adjustment 15%. The two bands are relative drift from the target rate, not absolute rates — at these defaults, spending is cut once your withdrawal rate exceeds 5.75% and raised once it falls below 4.25%. A reset button restores the defaults. Parameters are saved per scenario.

How To

Run a Monte Carlo simulation
1 Monte Carlo runs on its own when a plan loads and after every change. Its button pauses and resumes a run in progress, or starts a fresh one.
2 Review the percentile fan chart. The median (50th percentile) shows the expected outcome; the 10th percentile shows a stress-test floor.
3 Check With Guardrails to apply your guardrail rules in every run; the simulation re-runs on its own.
Configure and run Guardrails
1 Set the Target Rate (e.g., 5%) — this is your baseline annual withdrawal percentage from the portfolio during retirement.
2 Set the Preservation and Prosperity bands. Each year the simulator compares your actual withdrawal rate — annual expenses over investable assets — against the target. Drift above the target by more than the preservation band and spending is cut; drift below it by more than the prosperity band and spending rises. It is the rate that triggers the rule, not the portfolio balance, which is why a falling market and rising expenses both set it off.
3 Set the Adjustment percentage — how much spending changes when a guardrail is triggered (15% means every open Monthly Expense is scaled by that much; an ACA Health Insurance premium is not, since its price is set by the plan year). Adjustments only apply after your retirement date; the accumulation years are left alone.
4 The chart updates after each change, showing one run with the guardrails applied and marking each spending cut or raise.
📊

Projections

The Projections section displays two side-by-side charts that visualize your portfolio's trajectory over the full simulation period. The Macro chart shows the big picture; the Micro chart shows the detail for the currently selected date.

Elements

Macro Projection Chart
A stacked bar chart of every asset over the whole plan, colored by asset group, for the current metric (the one shown in every viewing badge).
Micro Projection Chart
A companion chart showing the individual assets from the currently expanded portfolio groups. Updates as you expand or collapse groups in Your Portfolio.
Metric Selector
A dropdown on the Macro chart that switches the metric. Options include Net Worth (balances), Net Worth Change (month-over-month change), Growth, Cash Flow, Income, Expense, Taxes and more. Changing it updates every section of the page.
Click-to-cycle Badges
Every Viewing: Oct 2026 · Net Worth badge (Portfolio, Projections, Visualizer, Simulations, Details, Spreadsheet) is clickable: click one to step through the main metrics, and the dropdown, timeline, asset cards, charts and visualizer all follow.
Phase Date Markers
Vertical dashed lines on the Macro chart marking the boundaries between life event phases (e.g., the transition from Accumulate to Retire). Helps you see how your portfolio behaves across phases.
Fullscreen Button
Click the ⛶ in the upper-right of the Macro or Micro chart to expand it to fullscreen. Press Escape or click × to exit.

How To

Analyze your portfolio trajectory
1 Review the Macro Projection chart for the overall shape of your plan — steady growth during accumulation, drawdown during retirement.
2 Step through metrics by clicking any viewing badge, or use the dropdown. Net Worth shows balances. Net Worth Change shows how fast wealth is changing month by month — when spending outpaces growth it turns negative even while you still have money. Growth, Cash Flow, Income and Expense isolate one contributor each.
3 Click on the timeline or use the date selectors to move the cursor. The Micro chart, asset cards, visualizer, and every reactive element update to show that specific month.
📋

Details

The Details section provides two complementary views into the financial transactions that make up your simulation: Credit Memos for individual transaction records, and Reports for aggregated summaries.

Elements

Credit Memos
A ledger of every transaction in the selected month — income, transfers, expense payments, tax withholding, growth and more. Each row shows the date, the asset, the amount and a note describing it. The engine writes each line as it acts, so the ledger records what happened rather than a summary built afterwards.
Memos Worth Looking For
Unfunded — an obligation nothing could pay; the first one in the plan is the month you ran out of money. Spillover from depleted … — an account hit $0 mid-payment and another covered the rest. Contribution capped — a transfer asked for more than the annual limit allows, or than its paycheck had left after taxes. Social Security deferred to age 62 — a benefit dated before it can be claimed, which starts at 62 instead. Income tax withholding — tax withheld from a paycheck, a retirement distribution or a pension payment. Each of these is also explained in plain language by “What needs attention” and by the asset’s 👓 view.
Reports
Monthly and yearly summaries for the selected date: income by type, deductions, contributions, debt paydown, cash flow, taxes and growth. A yearly report also shows the year’s adjusted gross income and the modified AGI each tax rule measures against. The simulator uses two of them itself, for the Net Investment Income Tax and the senior deduction. It does not model Medicare’s IRMAA surcharge, the IRA deduction and Roth contribution limits, or the ACA premium credit; their figures are there so you can check them against those rules’ thresholds yourself. Taxes in a report are what was paid in that period. The previous year’s true-up and Net Investment Income Tax are settled after it ends, so a yearly report shows them as its Prior-Year Settlement, not as part of the year above them.
⚡ AI Summaries
Both Credit Memos and Reports have their own AI Summary buttons. Click ⚡ to generate a natural-language explanation of the transactions or financial statements for the current period.
Date-Sensitive Display
Both panels update automatically when you navigate the timeline. Moving to a different month shows that month's specific transactions and reports, letting you inspect any point in your financial plan.

How To

Inspect a specific month's finances
1 Navigate to the month you want to inspect using the timeline or date selectors.
2 Scroll through Credit Memos to see every individual transaction — useful for verifying fund transfer routing, tax withholding, and expense payments.
3 Check Reports for the big picture — total income, total expenses, net cash flow, and account balances as of that month.
📊

Spreadsheet

The Spreadsheet is a table of the whole simulation — every asset, every month. It starts collapsed; Show in its heading opens it.

Elements

Data Grid
A table with a row for each month and columns for each asset’s metrics, with amounts to the cent. It covers the whole plan.
Copy & Download
Two buttons in the section heading: Copy (📋) puts the table on your clipboard for Excel or Google Sheets, and Download (⬇️) saves it as a CSV file. Both write plain numbers, without $ signs, so a spreadsheet can calculate with them.

How To

Export your data
1 Scroll through the spreadsheet to review monthly values for each asset across the full simulation period.
2 Click the Copy button to copy the entire table to your clipboard. Paste into Excel, Google Sheets, or any spreadsheet application for further analysis.
3 Click the Download button to save the data as a .csv file. This preserves all values and can be opened in any spreadsheet tool.
🚰

Visualizer

The Visualizer draws your plan as plumbing: income feeds in from the left, capital and retirement accounts sit above a central pipe, expenses, housing and taxes drain below, and a tank on the right holds your net worth. It follows the timeline cursor and the selected metric. It starts collapsed; Show in its heading opens it.

Elements

Horizontal Conduit
The central pipe carrying money across the system. Its blend color reflects net flow at the cursor — green when inflows dominate, red when outflows dominate. Hover for a tooltip showing the net change since the prior month.
Income Sources
On the left: salary, self-employment, pension, and Social Security. Line thickness is log-scaled to the flow amount, so both small and large streams remain visible side by side.
Capital & Retirement (Above)
Taxable accounts, IRAs, and 401(k)s sit above the conduit. Each asset shows dual lines: a green line for inflows (contributions, growth) and a red line for outflows (distributions, withdrawals).
Expenses, Housing & Taxes (Below)
Outflows drain below the conduit: monthly expenses, mortgage/property, and taxes as a meta-flow aggregating every federal and local tax the plan pays — FICA, income tax, capital gains, net investment income tax, and property tax.
Wealth Tank
On the right: a vertical tank showing total portfolio value. Fill color signals health — red when under 15% of your peak, blue between 15–50%, and green above 50%.
Metric-Driven View
The visualizer follows whichever metric is selected globally. Cash Flow shows pipeline routes for the month. Value shows each asset's share of the portfolio. Other metrics render from history. Closed assets appear with a ⛔ emoji in place of their line.

How To

Read your money flow
1 Move the timeline cursor to any month. The visualizer re-renders automatically for that date — no Run button to click.
2 Cycle the metric badge (Value → Net Worth Change → Growth → Cash Flow…) to change what the lines represent. The conduit, assets, and wealth tank all update together.
3 Hover the conduit to see net change since the previous month. Compare Accumulate vs. Retire phases by scrubbing the cursor — watch the conduit blend shift from green to red as income sources close and expenses dominate.
🔮

Maximizer

The Maximizer searches for the fund transfer percentages and guardrail settings that best serve your goal. It uses a genetic algorithm: 50 candidate plans evolve over 200 generations, balanced between spending more and leaving more at the end.

Elements

Spending ↔ Terminal Value Selector
A row of discrete notches (0–100% in 5% steps) controlling the fitness objective. Left favors maximizing cash flow and spending; right favors maximizing end-of-plan portfolio value. Click any notch to set the balance.
Evolution Chart
A live stacked bar chart of the best plan found so far. Updates every time the genetic algorithm discovers a better solution. Renders the full simulation timeline with phase markers.
Generation Counter
Displays progress through the 200-generation run (e.g., "Running Generation 45 / 200"), centred below the chart between the two best-value readouts.
Best Spending & Best Terminal
The two ends of the fitness objective, one under each end of the selector. Best Spending (left) is the annual spend in the last full year of the plan; Best Terminal (right) is the end-of-plan portfolio value. Both update in real time as better candidates are found — slide toward Spending and watch the first rise as the second falls. Hover Best Spending for lifetime spending, which is the figure the fitness function actually maximizes.
Recommendations Button
Appears when a run completes. It compares the optimized fund transfers and guardrail settings with your current ones, and Apply to Baseline writes them into your plan.
Real-World Constraints
The optimizer keeps to real-world limits: mortgage, real estate and debt transfers are fixed, expenses can move by up to ±25%, contributions to retirement accounts are capped (25% of income while working, 10% in retirement), and a negative balance counts against a candidate.

How To

Run the Maximizer
1 Set the Spending ↔ Terminal Value balance. All the way right means "maximize my ending portfolio value." All the way left means "maximize my spending/cash flow." A middle notch balances both.
2 Click Run. The genetic algorithm launches in a Web Worker (your browser stays responsive). Watch the chart update as better solutions are discovered over 200 generations.
3 When “Complete” appears, click Recommendations to see the optimized fund transfers and guardrail settings next to your own.
4 Adjust the Spending/Terminal Value selector and click Run again to explore different optimization targets. Each run is independent.
Apply recommendations
1 Open the Recommendations popup after a completed run and review the suggested changes for each phase.
2 Click Apply to Baseline to write them into your plan. The simulations re-run with them straight away.
3 To take only some of the changes, set them yourself instead: fund transfers through an asset’s ⇄, and guardrail settings in the Simulations section.