The Flow Map is a Sankey diagram that traces every dollar in your plan from where it comes from to where it goes. Income sources on the left pool into total inflows, taxes and pre-tax contributions branch off in the middle, and what remains funds your spending categories on the right. The width of every band is proportional to the dollars flowing through it, so you can read the relative weight of each path at a glance.

Two modes

A toggle at the top of the chart switches between two views:

• Lifetime - aggregates every year of the plan into one Sankey. The headline view for "across my whole retirement, where did the money come from and where did it go?".
• Selected Year - shows the Sankey for a single year, controlled by a slider that scrubs across the plan horizon. Useful for spotting how the flow shape changes from the early bridge years (heavy portfolio withdrawals) to mid-retirement (SS and pensions dominate) to late retirement (RMDs take over).

What flows through the map

• Inflows - wages, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, annuities, rental income, windfalls, and portfolio withdrawals (each account type flows in as its own band).
• Dividends / distributions - when a taxable account models distributions that are paid out as cash, the portion that funds spending appears as its own inflow band, carved out of portfolio withdrawals. Reinvested distributions are not shown - they stay invested in the account and are never a cash flow.
• Income groups - before reaching Total Inflows, each source is gathered into one of three bands so you can read your funding mix at a glance: Guaranteed income (Social Security, pensions, annuities), Portfolio (taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-free withdrawals plus cash distributions), and Other income (wages, employer match, passive / rental income, windfalls, TIPS ladder proceeds). A wide Portfolio band relative to Guaranteed income means the plan leans heavily on the portfolio.
• The tax stage - once every source has pooled into Total Inflows, the map splits off your taxes as separate bands - federal, state, FICA, capital gains, and the tax on Roth conversions and RMDs - plus, in working years, pre-tax retirement contributions. What is left is After-tax income, the pool that funds everything else. A tax-free plan skips this stage and flows straight from inflows to spending. Watching which tax band is widest often surprises people - RMD tax, not ordinary income tax, is frequently the biggest.
• Outflows - recurring expenses (housing, transportation, healthcare, lifestyle), debt payments, one-time expenses, LTC costs, Medicare and ACA premiums, and any income saved or reinvested.

Reading the Sankey

Hover any band or bucket to see its dollar amount and what share of the total it represents. Click a band or bucket to pin it in the details panel below the chart, which shows the same amount-and-share information along with a short explanation of what that flow means.

Unfunded spending. If the money runs out on the path being shown, the years after that still carry the spending your plan calls for, with nothing to pay for it. The map shows that amount as its own dark red source at the foot of the left column, flowing into the pool your spending is paid from. It is not income: it is the gap between what the plan spends and what funds it. A plan with this bar does not last, and its width is how much spending went unpaid.

Common things the Flow Map makes obvious that other charts hide:

• The tax share - the width of the Taxes band (federal, state, FICA, and IRMAA combined) vs everything else. Plans that look comfortable on the dashboard sometimes route 20-25% of lifetime inflows through taxes; the Flow Map shows it as a single band you can't miss.
• Which accounts do the heavy lifting - the widths of the taxable / tax-deferred / Roth withdrawal bands relative to one another. A plan that draws almost exclusively from tax-deferred dollars is materially different from a balanced-withdrawal plan.
• Guaranteed-income coverage - the combined Social Security + pension width vs spending. Big share = the portfolio is a supplement; small share = the portfolio is the engine.