Glossary

Every term Retirement Forecast uses, defined plainly. Where a term has its own help page, there's a link. Nothing here is financial or tax advice.

COLA (cost-of-living adjustment)

A yearly bump to an income stream to keep up with rising prices. Social Security and many pensions apply one; many private pensions don't — enter 0 for those. In the app the raise lands once a year in January, so a benefit is the same figure all year and steps up in January, matching your award letter. Compare with inflation, which grows your expenses smoothly instead. Full detail in COLA — how your income grows.

Category

A bucket you sort spending into on the Spending tab — groceries, utilities, car loan, and so on. Categorizing your imported transactions is what lets the app tell you what you spend, and where.

Cost basis

What you originally paid for the investments in a taxable brokerage account. When you sell, only the growth above the basis is taxed as a capital gain. Set it on each brokerage account; if you're unsure, leaving it equal to the balance means only future growth gets taxed.

Difference

On any screen that puts your plan beside your real spending, Difference is actual minus plan. A positive figure (shown in amber) means you spent more than the plan assumes; a negative one (green) means less. A dash means nothing imported was tied to that line for the month. It is the only such column in the app; there is no separate "variance".

Duplicate detection

When you import transactions, the app recognizes rows it has already seen (same date, amount, and merchant) and won't add them twice — so re-importing an overlapping file is safe. It also flags near-matches in the import preview: same amount, same or near date, but worded differently — which happens when two exports of one account describe a payment differently, or when a statement arrives carrying something you entered by hand. Same-day matches are skipped unless you tick them.

Excluded / transfer

A mark you put on a transaction to leave it out of all budget math. Use it for things that aren't real spending — a credit-card payment (moving money you already counted when you bought things), or a transfer between your own accounts. Excluding these prevents double-counting. See the FAQ on doubled spending.

Filing status

Your tax category — for example, single or married filing jointly. It affects your standard deduction and tax brackets. In the app, taxes are currently informational unless you turn tax modeling on.

Forecast history (snapshots)

A copy of your whole plan, saved automatically once a month while you use the app, so you can see whether your projected run-out date and ending balance are drifting better or worse over time. Read-only — it's a trend line, not a backup. See Forecast history.

Free / Premium / Trial

Free features work forever with an account: the forecast, run-out date, charts, month detail, and cloud save. Premium unlocks the stress-test tools and the budget import. Trial is the free premium period every new account gets before dropping to the free plan. See Accounts and billing.

Full Retirement Age (FRA)

The age at which you get your full Social Security benefit — 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Claim before FRA and each check is reduced; wait past it (up to 70) and each check is increased. See Social Security timing.

Inflation

The general rise in prices over time, so a dollar buys a little less each year. The app grows your expenses forward by an inflation rate from the plan's start. It's why a future month's costs look bigger than today's.

Guardrails (flexible spending)

A simple spending rule used in the odds-of-success simulation: when withdrawals run above about 6% of what's left, trim spending ~10%; when they fall below 3.5%, restore a cut. At most two cuts, and taxes and care costs are never trimmed. The simulation shows your odds both with and without this flexibility — the gap is what being willing to adjust is worth. Explained in Flexible spending and your income floor.

Income floor (guaranteed income)

The share of your monthly spending covered by income that arrives whatever markets do — Social Security, pensions, and annuities. Wages, rent, and withdrawals don't count. The app measures it at age 75 and shows it under the odds of success. Two plans with identical odds can have very different floors, and the one with the higher floor is far more comfortable to live in. See Flexible spending and your income floor.

IRMAA (Medicare surcharge)

An extra monthly Medicare premium charged when your income (MAGI) crosses set thresholds. The thresholds are cliffs — one dollar over buys the whole surcharge for the year — which is why big withdrawals or Roth conversions after 65 need care. Included in the tax model.

Life expectancy (in the app)

The age you tell the app the plan should run until, entered in whole years under My Plan. The projection ends when the longest-lived person in the plan reaches theirs. It's a planning horizon you choose, not a prediction — and if everyone has already passed the age entered, the app withholds its verdict and says so. See Profile & assumptions.

Local mode

Running the app without an account, saving your plan only in your browser on one device. Private and quick, but not synced and erasable if you clear your browser. See Accounts and billing.

MAGI (modified adjusted gross income)

The income figure the government uses for Medicare IRMAA surcharges and ACA marketplace subsidies — roughly your taxable income including capital gains and taxable Social Security. In retirement you partly choose your MAGI through withdrawals and conversions, which is what makes these cliffs plannable.

Merchant

The store or biller on a transaction — "Safeway," "PG&E." The app tidies up the raw text so the same merchant is recognized across imports, which powers duplicate detection and category rules.

Monte Carlo

A method that runs your plan hundreds of times with random year-by-year investment returns, to see how often it succeeds. See Odds of success.

Override

A month's budget for a category is normally the plan figure — the matching expense line under My Plan. An override is a figure you type for one particular month instead (a trip, a repair, a one-off), marked with an "Override" badge. Clearing it puts the plan figure back. Overrides never change the plan itself; edit the line under My Plan for that.

Plan / Actual / Compare

The switch at the top of the Spending tab (and on the Forecast tab's month detail). Plan shows only the fixed figures your forecast runs on; Actual shows only what your imported statements say you spent; Compare puts the two side by side with a Difference column. It changes what is shown, never what the forecast calculates — the forecast always runs on the expense lines in My Plan.

Plan vs Actual

The app's central distinction. Plan is forward-looking, in today's dollars — what you expect. Actual is backward-looking, from your imported transactions — what happened. Never compare one to the other without noticing which is which. See Understanding your numbers.

Probability of success

The headline number from Monte Carlo: the share of randomized runs in which your money never runs out. 85% means 85 of every 100 runs lasted the whole plan. See Odds of success.

Projected

A Plan figure grown forward by inflation (expenses) or COLA (income) to a future month, so it's in future dollars and looks bigger than today's. You see Projected figures in the month-by-month detail.

Provisional income

A special income total the IRS uses to decide how much of your Social Security is taxable. It's roughly your other income plus half your Social Security. Relevant only if you turn on tax modeling.

Refund (money back)

Money coming back on something you bought — a return, a chargeback, a reversed charge. It is not income: it reduces what its category cost you, so a $800 grocery month with a $120 return really cost $680. Shown as a green credit (+$120). On import, only unmistakable refund wording is treated this way; anything ambiguous is left as income for you to file. See Refunds and credits.

RMD (Required Minimum Distribution)

The amount the IRS requires you to withdraw each year from tax-deferred accounts (like a traditional 401k or IRA) once you reach the required age, so those savings don't grow untaxed forever. Roth accounts have no RMD for the original owner.

Retirement spending smile

The well-documented pattern that retirees spend less as they age — active "go-go" years, then slower ones — before healthcare pushes costs back up late in life. The Spending slows down as you age toggle applies a simple version.

Roth account

A retirement account funded with money you've already paid tax on, so qualified withdrawals in retirement are tax-free and it has no Required Minimum Distribution. Compare tax-deferred and taxable.

Roth conversion

Deliberately moving money from a tax-deferred account (401k/IRA) into a Roth, paying income tax on it now so it grows and comes out tax-free later. Usually done in low-income years before RMDs begin, "filling" a chosen tax bracket each year. See the Roth conversions page under Stress-testing.

Run-out / depletion date

The first month your plan can't cover its expenses from income plus savings — the month the money runs out. Pushing this date later (or off the chart entirely) is the goal of most planning changes.

Save status

The small line in the header saying whether your work is stored: Saved, Saving…, or — when something needs you — that a plan needs a correction before it can save, or that a saved plan couldn't be read. In every problem state your edits stay on screen and nothing is written over your saved plan. See How your work is saved.

Sequence-of-returns risk

The danger that a stretch of bad market years early in retirement — while you're withdrawing — does lasting damage, even if your average return over the years is fine. Selling investments at low prices to cover expenses locks in the loss. It's the main risk Monte Carlo reveals.

Social Security

The federal retirement benefit paid monthly, based on your earnings record and the age you claim (62 to 70). Claiming later means fewer but larger checks. See Social Security timing.

Standard deduction

A flat amount you can subtract from your income before figuring tax, instead of itemizing. It depends on your filing status, and people 65 and older get more. Current law adds a further $6,000 per person aged 65+ for tax years 2025 through 2028, phased out at higher incomes; the app applies it and expires it on schedule. Used only when tax modeling is on.

Survivor benefit

What continues to a surviving spouse after the first death: for Social Security, the survivor keeps the larger of the two checks (never both); a pension continues at whatever survivor percentage was chosen at retirement (often 0%, 50%, or 75%).

Target

The old name for what the app now calls an override — a figure you type over a category's budget for one month. Your budget otherwise comes from your plan, not from a separate goal. See Override above and The Spending tab at a glance.

Tax-deferred account

A retirement account (traditional 401k or IRA) funded with money you haven't paid tax on yet; you pay tax when you withdraw, and Required Minimum Distributions eventually apply. Compare Roth (already taxed) and taxable.

Taxable account

A regular (non-retirement) investment or savings account, like a brokerage account. No special tax shelter — you may owe tax on interest, dividends, and gains as they occur.

Today's dollars vs future dollars

Today's dollars state an amount in what money is worth now, so you can reason about it. Future dollars state the same amount at a future date, inflated, so it looks bigger. The app shows headline numbers in today's dollars and switches to future dollars inside a future month's detail. See Understanding your numbers.

Trailing average

Your real spending over the last 12 complete calendar months, divided by 12. The current, still-running month is left out on purpose so a bill that hasn't posted yet doesn't drag the number down. It's the figure that can be dropped into your Plan.

What-if lever

A one-click preview of a single change to your plan — spend less, work longer, lower returns — shown next to your current plan without saving anything. See What-if levers.

Withdrawal order

The sequence the app draws from your savings to cover a shortfall. By default: cash first, then brokerage, 401k, IRA, Roth, and other. The order can affect how long your money lasts and how it's taxed. Money left over in a surplus month travels the other way — into cash, then brokerage, then a tax-deferred account, and never into a Roth. See Savings & investment accounts.

Still stuck on a term? The FAQ answers the most common real-world questions.