Question/issue on Adjustments on Expenses in the Lifetime PLANNER

MakingMacBetter

Hi, I've set a number of Adjustments (every few years) on my Expenses and they are not reflected when I look at those future years on barh graph & details. I don't understand why need to change gear icon to "Show Amounts in Future Value" to have the graph reflect this.

IF I do chg to "Show Amounts in Future Value" by made end of plan/death year … it show I have 3-4 times the amount of $$. And my inflation & return #'s are very reasonable. I don't know what numbers & forecast to believe!!

Why don't my Expense adjustments (which are for me & Plan member) get reflected??

Thanks,

Brian

Boatnmaniac

The Future Values are simply today's dollars adjusted for inflation. So, yes, the numbers will be much larger, especially if you have a long time before the end of life of the plan. In my plan, the future value is 3.5X what it is in today's dollars. What this says is that $10,000 today, after accounting for inflation, will be worth about $35,000 at the end of the plan. That has been checked against inflation calculators and several other lifetime planner calculators and they all correlate quite well. So, I feel comfortable that Quicken is calculating the impact of inflation reasonably well.

But I find that it can be very confusing and unclear if one is not used to thinking in terms of inflation impacts on costs, income and expenses. My suggestion would be to disregard the Future Value and stay focused on today's dollars, costs, income, etc. Most people can relate to that much more easily.

In case you are not aware, you can click on the annual bars in the Lifetime Planner graph to see the breakdowns for those years.

You can also export the Lifetime Planner yearly summaries (one year at a time) by clicking on the year bar you want and then clicking on Print. I then usually select the CSV file Export option so I can then open it in Excel. But you can also Export it as a TXT file or tab-delimited file or simply print it to paper or PDF file. I have found doing this really has made it easier for me to see the annual summaries (there can be a lot of detail in there) and then compare it to the prior and the following years.

Regarding Adjustments: There is no separate group in the yearly summaries for listing Adjustments. They are just rolled into the annual living expense numbers. This is unlike Special Expenses which are detailed in the annual summary data under Special Expenses.

Another thing to keep in mind: If the Adjustment is scheduled for the 1st of the year, then the entire Adjustment will be reflected in that year's living expenses. But if the Adjustment occurs later in the year then only part of that Adjustment will show up in that year. So, if you have an Adjustment of $1000 for 2030 but it is scheduled to start in July, then only $500 of that $1000 would show up in 2030.

Also, if some adjustments are increases while others are decreases they will offset each other. So if you have an increase of $1000 for something that starts in July (so only a $500 increase for the year) and have a decrease for $500 for something else for January of the year, then the net impact for that year will be $0 because they cancel each other out.

If this does not help you understand what is happening in your lifetime planner, please provide more details about what these Adjustments are ($ amount, when they take effect), what you are expecting to see and what you are seeing in the yearly summaries.