The Accounts page is where you tell the planner what's in your portfolio. Each row represents one account (or a group of similar accounts collapsed into one row) and carries the balance, type, owner, and a handful of per-type options that drive how the engine treats the money during the simulation.

The account types

Every account is one of five types. The type matters because each is taxed differently, which affects how the planner calculates withdrawals and taxes throughout your retirement.

• Cash - Liquid savings held outside of investment accounts. Cash earns interest at the APY you specify, and the interest is taxed as ordinary income each year. Examples: savings account, money market, CDs, high-yield savings.

US Treasury holdings in a cash account

Interest on US Treasury bills, notes and bonds is exempt from state income tax under federal law, though it is still fully taxable federally. If part of a cash account sits in Treasuries or a Treasury money market fund, set US Treasury to that share and the planner stops charging state tax on that slice. Your federal tax does not change.

It is worth setting. At current short-term yields, a retiree in a high-tax state holding a meaningful Treasury position can be paying several hundred to a few thousand dollars a year of state tax that is not actually owed. If you live in a state with no income tax, it makes no difference to your plan.

Two things to check before you enter a number. If you hold a fund rather than the securities themselves, the exemption depends on what the fund holds, and several states - California, New York and Connecticut among them - only allow it when the fund keeps at least half its assets in US obligations. Your fund's year-end tax statement gives the percentage. And this applies to genuine US government obligations: agency bonds such as GNMA, and corporate or bank products, generally do not qualify.

• Taxable investment - Standard brokerage with no special tax treatment. Contributions are after-tax. Growth and dividends may be taxed each year, and withdrawals of gains are subject to capital gains tax. Examples: individual or joint brokerage accounts, taxable mutual fund accounts.
• Tax-deferred - Pre-tax contributions, tax-sheltered growth, ordinary-income tax on withdrawal. Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) apply starting at age 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, or age 75 if you were born in 1960 or later (SECURE 2.0). Examples: traditional IRA, 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA, traditional TSP.
• Tax-free - After-tax contributions, qualified retirement withdrawals tax-free. No RMDs during the owner's lifetime. Examples: Roth IRA, Roth 401(k), Roth 403(b), Roth TSP.
• Health Savings Account (HSA) - Triple tax-advantaged for healthcare: pre-tax contributions, tax-free growth, tax-free qualified medical withdrawals. HSA is excluded from the normal withdrawal sequence; out-of-pocket healthcare expenses are automatically drawn from HSA first when available. Examples: HSA through an employer HDHP plan, Fidelity HSA, Lively HSA.
• Inherited IRA - A traditional IRA or 401(k) you inherited from someone who was not your spouse. Its own type rather than a Tax-deferred account, because it does not follow your RMD schedule: under the SECURE Act it must be emptied within ten years, and distributions are ordinary income to you. See Inherited IRAs.
• Inherited Roth IRA - The same ten-year deadline, but the distributions are tax-free. Keep it separate from a plain Tax-free account: a Tax-free balance can sit untouched for life, while this one is forced out on a clock. See Inherited IRAs.

If you're unsure which type an account belongs to, look at how contributions were made. If you got a tax deduction when you contributed, it's tax-deferred. If you didn't, it's likely Taxable or Tax-free (Roth). Check the account statements or plan documents when in doubt.

Subtypes

Each type has a subtype dropdown. Picking the right one usually doesn't change the projection - except for a few cases where it matters:

• Governmental 457(b) is exempt from the 10% early-withdrawal penalty regardless of age. Other Tax-deferred subtypes are not.
• Traditional IRA, 401(k), 403(b), and other tax-deferred are eligible for SEPP (72(t)) withdrawals. IRAs are not eligible for Rule of 55, but workplace 401(k) / 403(b) / other-tax-deferred plans are.
• Roth subtypes determine whether qualified-withdrawal rules apply uniformly; functionally they're treated the same in the projection.

Owner

In couple plans, each account is owned by you, your spouse, or held jointly. Ownership matters for RMD timing (each owner's RMDs follow their own birth year), survivor handling, and a few tax-related details. Set the owner correctly even if you collapse multiple accounts of the same type into one row.

Balance

Use beginning-of-calendar-year balances rather than today's balances. The engine works on a year-by-year accounting model, so the value you enter is taken as the balance on January 1 of the current plan year. If you enter today's mid-year balance instead, the projection runs slightly hotter than reality for the first year.

Cash-only fields: APY and Reserve target

• APY - the annual yield on the Cash account. Defaults to the plan-level cash return (2.5%) but you can override per account if you have a specific high-yield savings rate. The engine inflates interest on the average balance during each year.
• Reserve target - the minimum cash balance to protect. When set, the withdrawal order changes: cash above the target is drawn before investment accounts (replacing the default "cash last" rule), and cash below the target is only tapped as a last resort. Surplus income refills cash up to the target before going to Taxable. See Portfolio withdrawals.

Taxable-only field: Cost basis

Enter the cost basis on Taxable accounts so the engine can compute the realized-gain portion of every withdrawal accurately. If you leave it blank, the engine falls back to assuming 50% of the current value is cost basis - fine for a young account, but wildly wrong for one held 20+ years. Entering an accurate basis is worth the effort on accounts you expect to draw down.

Taxable-only field: Dividends & Distributions

Taxable accounts can model the dividends and fund distributions they throw off each year. This is off by default; leaving it off produces exactly the same projection as before. When you enable it you set:

• Yield - the annual distribution rate, as a percent of the account's beginning-of-year balance (for example, 2%). Crucially, this yield is treated as a slice of the account's total return, not an extra amount layered on top. Enabling distributions with the default tax character does not make the account grow any faster; it just changes how that return is taxed and whether part of it is paid out.
• Treatment - Reinvest keeps the distribution invested in the account (no balance change versus leaving it off). Pay out as cash flow takes the distribution as cash, which reduces how much the plan needs to withdraw from the portfolio that year.
• Tax character - split the distribution across Qualified (taxed at long-term capital-gains rates), Ordinary (taxed at your income-tax rate), and Tax-exempt (excluded, e.g. municipal-bond interest). The three must total 100%. Taxable distributions (qualified + ordinary) also count toward ACA and IRMAA income.

This models account-level yield only. It does not handle K-1 / MLP income, return of capital, foreign tax credits, or position-level holdings. If you're unsure of the split, the default of 100% qualified is a reasonable starting point for a broad stock fund.

Allocation & returns (investment types only)

By default every investment account follows the plan-level asset allocation and glide path from Assumptions. The Allocation tab lets you model an account differently with one of three modes:

• Plan allocation (default) - the account follows the plan's allocation and glide path. Existing accounts behave exactly as before.
• Custom allocation - give the account its own stock / bond / cash mix (must total 100%), for example a conservative bond-heavy IRA alongside an aggressive all-stock Roth. The account blends the plan's stock, bond, and cash expected returns by your mix; the editor shows the derived expected return. The cash sleeve earns the plan's cash return and is separate from holding a dedicated Cash account. You can optionally override the volatility here too - keep the allocation's expected return but widen or narrow the year-to-year swings.
• Custom return - set the account's expected return and volatility directly, when you think in those terms or want to model something an allocation can't express (a target-date fund, an annuity-like sleeve, alternatives). Volatility is the year-to-year standard deviation; set 0 for a fixed return. Volatility applies in Monte Carlo runs; the linear projection uses the expected return directly.

None of these introduce new randomness: every account is driven by the same yearly market returns (custom-return accounts are scaled off the same shock), so accounts stay correlated and fixed-seed and optimizer comparisons stay consistent. Applies to Taxable, Tax-deferred, and Tax-free accounts; HSA and Cash always use the plan allocation.

Draw priority (investment types only)

Within each bucket (Taxable, Tax-deferred, Tax-free), Draw priority fine-tunes the order. Choose one per account:

• Normal - default. Drawn first within its bucket.
• Deferred - held back until all Normal accounts in the same bucket are exhausted.
• Last resort - only used after Deferred accounts are gone.
• Legacy / Do not spend - excluded from discretionary withdrawals entirely. Preserved for inheritance even if the plan would otherwise fail. RMDs still apply to Legacy Tax-deferred accounts (legally required), and the balance keeps growing with market returns; the engine just won't tap it to cover spending.

Withdrawal strategy (below the account list)

Stop tax-deferred withdrawals at caps how much comes out of tax-deferred accounts each year, so your taxable income stops at the top of the bracket you choose and the rest of the year's need is taken from tax-free instead. Unlike Draw priority, which is per-account, this one is plan-wide. It applies from age 60 on, only when there is a tax-free balance to cover the remainder, and RMDs still count toward the ceiling because they are legally required. Off by default. See Portfolio withdrawals for the full explanation.

Early access: SEPP and Rule of 55 (eligible Tax-deferred subtypes)

For SEPP-eligible Tax-deferred subtypes (Traditional IRA, 401(k), 403(b), other Tax-deferred), the account row exposes optional Early access settings:

• SEPP (72(t) Substantially Equal Periodic Payments) - models a user-entered annual withdrawal as exempt from the 10% early-withdrawal penalty. You set the start age, the annual amount, and whether to inflate it. This is not the IRS-formal SEPP calculation - it lets you model a SEPP arrangement you've structured elsewhere.
• Rule of 55 - available on workplace 401(k) / 403(b) / other-tax-deferred subtypes (not IRAs, and not gov 457(b) since that's already exempt). When enabled, withdrawals from this account between age 55 and 59½ are penalty-free; the engine drains the Rule-of-55-eligible balance first within your Tax-deferred bucket, so if you also hold a Traditional IRA the IRA portion is left alone until the eligible balance is exhausted. Withdrawals beyond that point still pay the 10% penalty. The flag is ignored on ineligible subtypes - a defensive guard so a UI mistake on an IRA doesn't actually waive the penalty.

HSA strategy (HSA accounts only)

Two modes:

• Use for expenses (default) - the HSA pays for Healthcare (out-of-pocket) expenses each year automatically.
• Delay (grow) - the HSA keeps growing tax-free; healthcare costs come out of your other accounts instead. The engine tracks unreimbursed-balance accumulation so you can later draw the HSA tax-free against documented past expenses. Important - how the HSA participates in spendable funding:
  • Before age 65: the HSA is held aside and excluded from your spendable portfolio for success-rate purposes. It won't paper over a shortfall in your other accounts - if those run out pre-65, the plan reports a shortfall and the success rate drops accordingly. (Non-qualified HSA withdrawals before 65 carry a 20% federal penalty plus income tax, so the engine treats them as off-limits for general spending.)
  • From age 65 onward: the HSA becomes available as a last resort, drawn only after every other account (including cash below its floor) is exhausted. Non-qualified withdrawals after 65 are penalty-free but taxed as ordinary income (IRC §223), so the engine grosses up the draw at your marginal rate and books it like a Traditional IRA distribution. The HSA is no longer excluded from spendable beyond 65.
  Tax-free draws against the tracked unreimbursed-medical balance run first at any age, regardless of the rules above. Switch to Use for expenses if you want the HSA to be tapped for healthcare costs as they occur instead.

Collapsing multiple accounts

You don't need a separate row for every brokerage statement. Combining accounts of the same type, subtype, and owner into one row is usually fine for long-term planning. Use separate rows when something distinguishes them - different draw priorities, different cost bases, a specific Rule-of-55 eligibility, an HSA you want to manage separately, or one account you want to mark Legacy.

Excluding an account

Each account's editor has an Exclude toggle. When on, the balance and the account are pulled out of every simulation calculation - the planner behaves as if the account didn't exist. Useful for hiding an account temporarily without deleting it, or for modeling a "what if I gave this away" scenario.