Plan View is the first tab on the Projections page. It is one chart you can switch between the things a plan is made of, with the figures for a single year in a panel beside it. Use it when you want to see how something changes across the whole plan and then read off exactly what one year looks like.

Picking what to chart

The buttons above the chart choose what it shows:

• Net Worth - your investment portfolio, real estate and other assets stacked on top of each other, with debts drawn below the zero line. When the plan has debts, a line across the top shows net worth itself.
• Portfolio - the year-end balance of each account type.
• Income - everything that is not a draw on the portfolio: wages, employer match, Social Security, pensions, annuities, passive income, TIPS ladder income and windfalls.
• Withdrawals - what left each kind of account: taxable, tax-deferred, tax-free, dividends paid out as cash, RMDs and QCDs.
• Expenses - spending before taxes. See below for its four views.
• Taxes - federal and state income tax, FICA, capital gains, and the tax on Roth conversions and RMDs. The tax a conversion or an RMD causes is shown in two parts, federal and state, so you can see its full cost; the State income tax band is what is left after those state parts are taken out.
• Cash Flow - two bars per year, money in beside money out. Money in is income plus what the portfolio contributed. Money out is spending, taxes and anything saved or reinvested. In a year the plan has run out of money, the spending it could not pay for is shown on the money in side as Unfunded spending, so the two bars still match. It is not money coming in.

A band only appears if the plan has it, so a plan with no pension shows no pension band.

Allocation is the last button, and works differently: a donut and a table of what you actually hold by asset class, for one year at a time. See Overall allocation below.

Net Worth is free. The other charts, and the row of yearly totals at the top of the panel, are part of Plus. Without Plus you can still select any chart to see what it is; it appears blurred, with a button to unlock it.

The year panel

Point at any year on the chart and the panel on the right shows that year: the calendar year, your age (and your spouse's), the headline totals, and a breakdown of whatever the chart is showing, in the chart's own colors. Move the pointer off the chart and the panel stays on the last year you pointed at, marked by a dashed line. To keep one year in place while you look around, click it: the year is held, pointing at other years still previews them, and the panel returns to the held year when the pointer leaves. Click it again, or choose release under the year, to let go. The arrows beside the year step one year at a time.

The totals at the top of the panel - net worth, ending portfolio, income, withdrawals, expenses and taxes - are also shortcuts. Click one to switch the chart to it.

Chart and Table

Every chart can also be read as a table. The Chart | Table switch beside the dollar toggle replaces the chart with one row per year and one column for each band, plus the total. Click a row to mark that year. The table follows the same selections as the chart, including the Expenses views and the dollar mode.

Today's $ and Future $

The toggle at the right of the chart buttons switches every figure, on the chart and in the panel, between future dollars (what the engine projects) and today's dollars (each year deflated at your plan's inflation rate). Today's $ is the easier way to judge whether a balance thirty years out is large or small.

Overall allocation

Your stock and bond settings say how each account is invested. Allocation adds everything up: every account, any TIPS ladder and any MYGA, split into stocks, nominal bonds, TIPS, cash and fixed annuities, with the dollar amount and share of each and the total. Pick Today for your entered balances, or the end of any later year. A later year uses the median simulation path, the same one the Summary table shows: one representative path, not a range. The dollar toggle applies to it like the rest of Plan View.

• An account that follows the plan holds the plan's before-retirement mix, then its after-retirement mix from the end of the year you retire. An account with its own allocation holds that, and the cash part of it counts as cash.
• A Cash account is all cash. An HSA follows the plan's mix.
• An account set to a custom return shows as Other, because the plan has no stock or bond split for it.
• A MYGA counts as a fixed annuity while its term runs (or while it renews), whether it is inside an IRA or Roth or bought with taxable money. A MYGA that moves back into the portfolio at the end of its term follows the plan from then on.
• A TIPS ladder is valued as its remaining cash flows discounted at a real yield, 2% unless you enter another. The plan does not store a market value, so this is an estimate, and it falls as rungs mature. If the ladder is still inside an account's balance and you named that account, its value is moved out of that account's bonds (then cash, then stocks) so nothing is counted twice. If you are unsure or named no account, it stays inside the account's mix.

Left out: Social Security, pensions and income annuities, which are income with no balance to invest, plus real estate, life insurance cash value and other personal assets.

Expenses: four views

With Expenses selected, a second switch appears:

• By category - all spending, grouped the same way as the Flow Map: Housing, Daily Living, Healthcare, Medicare & Insurance, Transportation, Lifestyle & Leisure, Family & Obligations and General spending, plus debt payments, one-time spending and any annuity purchase.
• Essential - the essential part of each category.
• Discretionary - the discretionary part of each category.
• Totals - three bands per year: essential, discretionary and one-time.

The split comes from the Essential % you set on each recurring expense. An expense with none set counts as fully essential, so nothing looks more cuttable than you have said it is. Mortgage and other debt payments, an annuity purchase, and the healthcare costs the planner computes for you (Medicare, ACA premiums, long-term care) are always essential. One-time expenses have no Essential % - they appear under By category and as their own band under Totals, and are left out of the Essential and Discretionary views.

How net worth is put together

The portfolio and the debt balance are the planner's own year-end figures, so debts follow their real payoff schedule. Real estate and other assets are not simulated year by year. Each one is valued at the growth rate you set on it, counted from the year it is bought, and dropped in the year it is sold - from then on its sale proceeds are part of the portfolio. As on the Net Worth card, property is shown at its full value with its mortgage under debts, your ownership share is applied, and anything you have marked as not counting toward net worth is left out.

How RMDs and QCDs appear

Under Withdrawals, RMDs have their own band and are shown in full, before the tax on them. When an RMD is larger than the year needs, the part left over is reinvested in your taxable account, so in those years the Withdrawals total is more than spending required. Cash Flow uses only the amount the portfolio actually put toward the year, which is why its two bars still match.

QCDs are a separate band. They go from the IRA straight to the charity, count toward the RMD, and are not income or spending money, so they appear under Withdrawals only.

Which path the figures follow

Plan View reads the same year-by-year results as the Year-by-Year Details table and the Flow Map, so the three agree with one another. If a breakdown is empty after an update, press Refresh once to recalculate the plan.