Discrepancy in Planning retirement amounts vs amounts in Reports on same accounts

Gstu

In the Planning tab for retirement, it significantly misrepresents the market value of investments. The reports tab accurately reports each account market value, but the Planning retirement calculator either under or over reports the amount in each account. Is there anything to change in settings to correct that?

Scooterlam

You'll have to illustrate what you are seeing, if my guess below is not correct.

The value of retirement accounts in Lifetime Planner (LTP) are projected amounts based upon today's account balances. 

To illustrate, the image shows the Income and Expense Summary table for (end of) 2021.  The highlighted line items show end of year, 2021,  based upon your current investment balance plus settings for inflation, RoR, tax rate, deposits, withdrawals... and for 2021, the current year,  it is prorated based on the current month of the calendar year.

So,  what is shown here, in LTP,  is not expected to match up with your account bar balances nor your account balance reports.

Note that in LTP, Quicken aggregates all taxable accounts to a single line item and all tax-deferred accounts to a single line item (one for you and one for a spouse).    Quicken LTP also allows you to select which investment accounts you include in the LTP plan as well.  You can have a look under the  Change Assumption button to see what you have included or excluded in terms of accounts.

Does that help?

Gstu

Thanks. That does help if indeed the Lifetime Planner shows investments pro-rated until the end of the year. But my Lifetime Planner retirement legend says investments are reported in "today's values," which would be the same as the amounts in the Reports I assume. But the amounts in each account under the Lifetime Planner are significantly different from the amounts in the Reports. So, if the Lifetime Planner does extrapolate until year's end, the only way to see if the amounts match is to check both on December 31st. Right?

NotACPA

"Today's Values" means Today's account balance plus anticipated investment returns ... not adjusted for inflation.

Chris_QPW

If you want to see the balances the Lifetime Planner is using select Savings & Investments  And look at the balances in the Savings and Investment tabs.  This is what Quicken is starting with.

If you start looking at the balances on the graph you have to understand that the numbers there are affected by return, inflation, and expenses.

And as NotACPA points out the difference between "Today's value" and "Future value" is the inflation number.
If you set the inflation number to 0% then today's values and future values will be the same.

Gstu

Chris and NotACPA--thanks for your responses. I did reset inflation to zero and still none of the investment account totals agree in the Reports vs the Lifetime Planner. Each is off by several thousands of dollars. I have used the Lifetime Planner as just a "ballpark estimate," and with the current "today's value" numbers disagreeing that is just what I will have to keep doing. Thanks for trying to help me make sense of it though.

Chris_QPW

Where exactly are you looking in the Lifetime Planner?
Did you look where I indicated?
Example:


And note I didn't say that setting the inflation rate to zero would make the balances match your current account balances.  I said that setting the inflation rate to zero makes the current/today's values the same as the future values.  All the numbers used in the graphs a projected numbers, the only day that the projected balances for the first year and the current balances will be the same would be December 31.