Reading the projection

The Forecast tab

Once you've entered your income, expenses, and accounts, open the Forecast tab in the app. This is where the plan comes together: the app runs your numbers month by month, from plan start to the end of the plan, and shows whether your money lasts.

At the top are four summary cards.

Run-out date and outlook

The Outlook card is the headline. It reads one of two ways:

• On track — your savings outlast the whole plan. The card also shows the balance you'd end with.
• Runs out — your savings can't cover spending at some point, and it shows the month that happens.

That month is your run-out date: the first month your accounts can't fully cover that month's spending. It's the single most important number in the app. When shown in the month detail, you can see it as both a date and your age at the time.

Years of runway

The Years of runway card turns the run-out date into something you can act on: roughly how many years from now until the money runs out. If the plan lasts the whole way, it reads Full plan. Runway is easier to reason about than a big lifetime-dollars total, which can look reassuring while quietly overstating things in future dollars.

The other two cards show your Starting balance (total savings at plan start) and Peak balance (the highest your combined savings ever reach across the plan).

The Projected balance chart

Below the cards, the Projected balance chart draws your total savings over time. You'll usually see it climb for a while, crest, and then decline as withdrawals outpace growth. Where the line reaches zero is your run-out date. A line that never touches zero means you're on track.

How savings are drawn down

The How savings are drawn down chart is a stacked view showing which buckets are being spent over time — cash, brokerage, 401(k), IRA, and so on, each its own band. It makes the withdrawal order visible: you can watch cash empty first, then the next account, and see which pot is carrying you at any age. If one tax-advantaged account drains far too early, that's a cue to reconsider the spending order.

Use the Yearly / Monthly toggle in the top-right of the chart to change the resolution: Yearly plots one point per year (easiest to read across a multi-decade plan), while Monthly shows every month for near-term detail. Click any point to open that month's detail below.

The month detail

Pick any month — with the slider or the ‹ Prev / Next › buttons — to open its detail. It's the same month the Spending tab is looking at, so moving here moves there too. For that single month you'll see:

• Plan income — the total coming in, plus a line-by-line breakdown of each stream.
• Plan expenses — the total going out, broken down by line. When the tax model is on, this includes an Income taxes (est.) line.
• Surplus or Drawn from savings — whichever applies. A surplus month adds to your savings; a shortfall month draws them down to make up the difference.
• Accounts — each account's balance at the end of that month, and the total.

If savings are exhausted that month, you'll see a red note telling you how much you were short.

Plan, Actual, or Compare

Once you've imported spending, a Plan / Actual / Compare switch appears beside the month title — the same one as on the Spending tab, and one setting shared between them. It changes what the expense column shows:

• Plan — the expense lines the forecast ran on for that month, in that month's dollars. Plan figures are blue.
• Actual — Spent this month: what your statements show for that calendar month, largest first, with a total. Actual figures are teal. A month with no transactions says so; a month that hasn't happened yet tells you to switch back to Plan to see what's projected.
• Compare — plan and actual side by side, with a Difference column (actual minus plan: amber when you spent more, green when less). Spending that doesn't line up with exactly one plan line is listed underneath rather than hidden or guessed at, and a dash means nothing imported was tied to that line. The total's difference is left uncoloured on purpose, because lines with nothing imported would make it look like under-spending.

None of this changes the projection. The forecast always runs on the expense lines in My Plan; the switch changes only what's shown. See Your plan vs. your real spending for how a missing cost gets into your plan.

Walking through the months around your run-out date is the best way to understand why it lands where it does — you can see exactly which expenses climbed and which accounts emptied.

What to do next

To dig into what the numbers mean and which levers help most, read Understanding your numbers. To see how your plan holds up against bad luck — a market drop, higher inflation, a longer life — try the stress test.