Use your real spending in the forecast

Base your plan on what you actually spend

Your retirement forecast starts with estimated expenses — reasonable guesses you typed in. But once you've imported real transactions, you can do better. The Use your real spending in the forecast panel (on the Budget tab) averages your actual spending and offers to drop it into your plan, so the projection rests on how you really live, not a guess.

This panel appears once you have imported transactions to summarize (a premium, account-required feature).

Choose the period to average

The Period selector controls how far back to look:

• Last 12 months
• Last 24 months
• Custom range — pick your own From and To months.

A longer window smooths out unusual months; a shorter one reflects how you're spending lately.

Why it averages whole months only

The panel averages over complete calendar months and skips the current, partly-elapsed month. Here's why that matters: partway through a month, your recurring bills may not have posted yet. If a $510 loan payment hasn't hit for July, including a half-finished July would drag its average down to something like $468 — undercounting a bill you pay in full every month. By using only whole months, a $510 bill shows up as $510.

What you get

The panel tells you the monthly total and lists each category on its own line, keeping its own name — Groceries stays Groceries, and any custom category you made keeps its label. 🚫 Excluded transactions (transfers and credit-card payments) are left out, so the total is real spending. If some excluded items still look like they're being counted, you'll want to clean those up first — see Transfers and exclusions.

It flags loan-like lines

Some expenses aren't forever. A car loan or mortgage ends on a payoff date, unlike groceries. The panel tags lines that look like debts with a small "loan?" marker so you don't accidentally project them running for your whole retirement. After applying, open My Numbers → Expenses & debts to set each one a payoff month (and 0% inflation). See Expenses and debts.

Warnings before you apply

The panel watches for two common problems and warns you:

• Transfers still counted — if some card payments or transfers slipped

through, it tells you to exclude them first so spending isn't double-counted.

• An outlier month — if a single month dominates the window (say a one-time

debt payoff), it flags that month, because averaging it in would inflate your monthly figure.

Sort those out before applying for the truest numbers.

Use these figures — and switch back anytime

When it looks right, tick Use these figures in my forecast. Your forecast now assumes these monthly averages (in today's dollars) instead of your planned expenses. It's a reversible toggle, not a one-way replace:

• Uncheck it and your original planned expenses come straight back — nothing

is lost. Your plan is stashed safely while the toggle is on and restored the moment you switch it off.

• Your income and accounts are untouched — only the expense assumption changes.
• Any start/end months and inflation overrides you'd already set on a category

are preserved, so a loan's payoff date isn't wiped. The dollar amounts come from your actuals.

If you later change the period (or import more months), the applied figures can go stale — a Refresh to the selected period link appears so you can pull in the newest average with one click.

The summary cards at the top of the tab update live as you toggle, and the Forecast tab shows the full impact. You can fine-tune anything afterward under My Numbers.

For more on reading the result, see Understanding your numbers. This is an educational estimate, not financial or tax advice.