The Dashboard is the planner's landing page - a single-screen summary of where your plan stands today. It pulls the most-asked questions ("am I on track?", "how much am I spending vs taking in?", "what's coming up?") to the top so you don't have to dig through the year-by-year tables to read the headline.

Everything on the Dashboard reflects your saved plan after the most recent Monte Carlo run. If you've changed inputs without rerunning the simulation, the page shows a "results are stale" indicator at the top of the planner; rerun from the Monte Carlo page to refresh.

Summary metrics

The strip of tiles across the top is the headline. There are six in total:

• Success rate - the percentage of Monte Carlo paths in which your portfolio doesn't run out before the end of the plan. Color-coded: green at or above 85%, amber 70-85%, red below 70%.
• Median ending balance - the 50th-percentile portfolio balance at the end of the plan, in today's dollars. Half of simulations end with more, half with less. A reasonable proxy for "how much cushion did the typical path leave?".
• Current annual income - total income (wages, Social Security, pensions, rental income, etc.) for the current plan year or the next one if you're already retired.
• Current annual spending - total spending (recurring expenses, debts, taxes, one-time items) for the current or next plan year.
• Current withdrawal rate - this year's portfolio withdrawal as a percentage of starting portfolio balance. A common benchmark to compare against the classic 4% rule.
• Peak withdrawal rate - the highest single-year withdrawal rate anywhere in your plan, with the age it occurs. Useful for spotting years where the portfolio is doing heavy lifting (often pre-Social-Security bridge years or large one-time expenses).

Net worth today

Below the tiles is a snapshot of what you own minus what you owe, right now: your investment accounts plus real estate and other assets, less your debts. Unlike the projection charts, this is not a forecast - it uses the current values you've entered, so it always reflects your plan as it stands today. Future purchases and planned sales are excluded.

The bar shows how your assets break down across investments, real estate, and other assets, with a separate red track beneath it sizing your debt against those assets. Hover the Investments figure to see it split by account type (tax-deferred, tax-free, taxable, cash, and HSA).

Funded ratio

Directly below net worth is the actuarial companion to it: everything funding your retirement, valued in today's dollars, measured against everything the plan owes. Net worth is a balance sheet for today; the funded ratio is a balance sheet for the whole plan, so it counts future Social Security and pension income but leaves out a house you never sell.

Where you have marked some spending as discretionary, it shows two figures - whether your essentials are covered, and whether your full lifestyle is. It is deliberately not a simulation, which is why it can disagree with your success rate: one asks whether there is enough, the other asks whether bad timing could break a plan that has enough. See Funded Ratio for how it is built and why the discount rate matters.

Upcoming events

Below the metrics is a strip of chips highlighting plan events landing in the next three years - retirement start, Social Security start, pension start, Medicare enrollment, RMD start, large one-time expenses, and similar milestones. Each chip is color-coded by event type. If nothing happens in the next three years, the row is hidden.

Income sources vs spending

A stacked bar chart showing where each year's money comes from - wages, Social Security, pensions, annuities, TIPS ladder proceeds, rental and other passive income, windfalls, and portfolio withdrawals - against a line for everything going out that year (spending, debts, taxes). Reading it left to right tells the story of how your income mix evolves across retirement: typically wages or part-time income early, then a transition to portfolio withdrawals, then Social Security and pensions taking over more of the load.

The bars should reach the outflow line: whatever your other income does not cover, the portfolio makes up, so the two meet by construction. Bars rising above the line mean more came in than went out that year - most often a windfall, or a year where guaranteed income exceeds spending - and the surplus goes back into the portfolio.

This view uses the same representative sample lifetime that drives the year-by-year table - one coherent path from the Monte Carlo run. See Median outcome vs. representative sample for how this relates to the Median Outcome tile on the Monte Carlo Simulator tab.

Withdrawal pressure

The companion chart to income sources. It plots each year's portfolio withdrawal as a percentage of starting balance - a year-by-year view of how hard the portfolio is working. Bars that stay below the 4-5% range indicate comfortable withdrawals; bars that spike past 6-7% flag years where the portfolio is under stress. The classic stress pattern is a few high bars early on (bridge years before Social Security and pensions kick in), then lower bars once guaranteed income takes over.

Range selector

A toggle above the charts lets you switch the time window:

• 5Y - the next five years.
• 10Y - the next ten years.
• All - the full plan horizon, end to end.

The range applies to both charts and to the Insights section below.

Insights

Below the charts, Insights surfaces specific observations about your plan in the selected time window - things like "withdrawal rate exceeds 6% in 3 years", "Roth conversion opportunity in the pre-RMD window", "RMD begins next year", or "ACA cliff risk at age 64". Each card links to the page where you can act on the observation (Roth Strategy, Accounts, Social Security, etc.).

Most insights are warnings, but not all. One names an opportunity: when a plan holds taxable investments and the year leaves meaningful room below the 0% long-term capital gains bracket, the Dashboard says how much gain could be realized federally tax-free. That room is usually largest between retiring and claiming Social Security, and it shrinks as other income rises. Selling and rebuying within it resets your cost basis at no federal cost, though your state may still tax the gain. Nothing in the simulation acts on this - the engine never realizes gains on its own - so the plan will not show the benefit until you make the move and record it. See Federal taxes.

Insights you've already considered and want out of your way can be hidden with the X. A counter at the top right shows how many are hidden; click Show to bring them back into view.