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Retirement Planning: how do I obtain a cash flow by the month or year for all acounts

acferrad

Now that I've entered all my data into the Planning section, how do I get a full month-by-month or year-by-year cash flow breakdown for each of my retirement and savings accounts? All I see at the moment is a total of the 3 types of account balances (Taxable, my and spouse tax-deferred) vs year.

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Accepted answers

Sherlock

If you left-click on a year in the bar chart, you should see a Income and Expenses Summary for a year. We're not provided with a month-by-month or a breakdown by account.

Sherlock

acferrad said:

Aah I see it 1 year at a time, if I click on the year in the summary graph. What I need are all years, in one table. Is this possible?

No. You should be able to export each year and import the years into a spreadsheet: select Print..., choose Export to:, and select tab-delimited (Excel compatible) disk file

All comments

acferrad

Aah I see it 1 year at a time, if I click on the year in the summary graph. What I need are all years, in one table. Is this possible?

Sherlock

If you left-click on a year in the bar chart, you should see a Income and Expenses Summary for a year. We're not provided with a month-by-month or a breakdown by account.

Chris_QPW

You can only do this for a given month. Click on the bar in the graph for a given month and it will popup a dialog with the details.

acferrad

Yes I see that for each year. But I want all years in one table. And preferably downloadable via CSV or TXT file. Is that possible?

Sherlock

acferrad said:

Aah I see it 1 year at a time, if I click on the year in the summary graph. What I need are all years, in one table. Is this possible?

No. You should be able to export each year and import the years into a spreadsheet: select Print..., choose Export to:, and select tab-delimited (Excel compatible) disk file

acferrad

> @Sherlock said:
> (Quote)
> No.

Oh dear. So I need to click each year and Print to TXT file and then join them all together manually. [removed - sarcasm]

Jim_Harman

Remember this is a *PLANNING* tool. Its numbers are only as good as the assumptions it uses.

There are many unknowns in retirement planning and many things might change between now and when you eventually start spending the money.

acferrad

Yes I understand. But the main problem is whether I have entered my information correctly. No product is ever one size fits all, so I have to make sure I have entered my data in the way Quicken expects. Best way to check that is to see the annual summaries vs year so I can make sure it is doing what I expect.

Chris_QPW

Yeah well "transparency" isn't Quicken's strong point.

And what's more Quicken makes some pretty big assumption like if you have a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA, which one should it start drawing the money from first?

You have no choice in this, if Quicken's method clashes with what you believe, tough luck.

The biggest thing Quicken's planner has going for it is that it already has your data, so you don't have to enter it again. And this does shape how "deep" it goes. Like a lot of the planners I see on line don't have nearly as much data input. I think that is because they figure they can't get the average person to stick with entering data for more than 30 minutes.

If a person is willing to put in the time to enter the data a much more flexible planner (for free) is this one that one of the SuperUsers pointed out to me years ago.

http://forecaster4website.azurewebsites.net/default.html

Note even though have used this one in the past I don't use it any more and I also see that the developer is getting quite old and so the support might fall off in the future if it hasn't already yet. I have no need for these planners any more since I have been basically retired since 2009 and my finances are arranged so that know what to do is pretty simple or doing this or that won't really make much difference in the long run.

Scooterlam

acferrad said:

> @Sherlock said:
> (Quote)
> No.

Oh dear. So I need to click each year and Print to TXT file and then join them all together manually. [removed - sarcasm]

I would recommend to print to a tab-delimited file as @Sherlock recommends - much better structure than TXT. From there, you can right click on the saved file, do an "open with" excel, copy and paste the figures for the given year. Check your work, rinse and repeat....Tedious for sure.

I just did this for a 26 year plan back in December.

Sounds like a candidate for an Idea post....

Most, if not all retirement planning software provide a number of different, tabular reports like what you are asking for and what I did in December.

Chris_QPW

@Scooterlam even better is to use the .PRN format and change the .PRN to .CSV. A .PRN file is just a .CSV file, which Quicken has never changed that old never used entry to say CSV and use a type or .CSV or add another is beyond me.

With a .CSV file you can just open it in a spreadsheet program like Excel. But with a tab-delimited file you have to answer a few questions in Excel so that it knows what it is.

acferrad

Yes I can see the age of this feature when it lists for Lotus 123 format as an option.

Scooterlam

Edit ooops....I see the .prn format now!

@Chris_QPW For me, there are no extra questions from Excel when using the tab-delimited option that @Sherlock references. No "text to column" dialog or anything like that. Opens straightaway in Excel in a nicely formatted way with proper columns for labels and figures. I am using Quicken latest rev and Excel 2013. Nonetheless, seems to work fine, albeit tedious!

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/3f/i7a0nsuegqi3.png

acferrad

@Scooterlam either of the 2nd or 3rd options will work. However this will just give you one year. So there was no point for me in just opening the one file in Excel. I had to manually save files for all years, then open the files in a text editor and copy/paste the data from each year into a new column in Excel. As the row headers are repeated in every file, I had to delete them in Excel afterwards. Would be great if this was all automatic.

Chris_QPW

Scooterlam said:

Edit ooops....I see the .prn format now!

@Chris_QPW For me, there are no extra questions from Excel when using the tab-delimited option that @Sherlock references. No "text to column" dialog or anything like that. Opens straightaway in Excel in a nicely formatted way with proper columns for labels and figures. I am using Quicken latest rev and Excel 2013. Nonetheless, seems to work fine, albeit tedious!

Sorry I was thinking about "column data" like the reports and register. With those you want them in CSV format so that they will go into columns in Excel. With the Lifetime Planner monthly data there isn't really a whole lot of advantage of bring it up in Excel over just any text editor. But yes the tab-delimited format is nicer. In fact the "Text file" cuts off fields.

Scooterlam

@acferrad et al...

Rather than stepping on your original post, I created a new Idea post for Quicken product team to consider. The idea gives the user the ability to "quickly" export Lifetime Planner data to Excel - as we discussed in this thread.

There have been a number of these kinds of discussion posts over the years but no "idea" posts that are similar (that I could find). Have a look and vote (or suggest improvements, then vote)! https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7874404/lifetime-planner-idea-export-plan-results-graph-data-to-excel#latest

Alternatively, I did find a idea post that requested a more formal LTP report. I added some color to that one as well. Have a look and vote or suggest improvements, here: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7493442/printing-out-the-results-of-the-lifetime-planner#latest

acferrad

Great! Like the suggestions and looking forward to seeing it implemented.