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Does the Lifetime Planner have a start date

JNPoche

Quicken Deluxe Version R59.18 Build 27.1.59.18 on Win10

Just started using the Lifetime Planner and after completing all the assumptions and inputs, I noticed the Plan Summary (2024) includes only 2 months of data for all of 2024. I am assuming Nov and Dec only. The Plan Summary (2025) has all 12 months in the summary. Is there a method to adjust the planner time frame to include all of 2024?

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Accepted answers

Boatnmaniac

The Lifetime Planner only looks forward, not backward. So, for the remainder of 2024 it will show data for only Nov and Dec. Lifetime Planner assumes that whatever has occurred in the past is irrelevant because it has already occurred and is already accounted for in the financial accounts.

Lifetime Planner is a forward looking planning tool, not a historical reporting tool. There is no way to change that.

If there was a special 1X expense or income that was supposed to have occurred prior to the current date but did not but will occur at some point in future, instead, that special expense/income event will need to be entered again with that new future date. If you know in advance that the event will be rescheduled to a later date you can edit that event accordingly. But once that date has passed it can no longer be edited. So, it is important to fairly frequently review your plan to ensure that it is updated as needed to reflect current future plans/projections.

mshiggins

Once your computer is back at the current date, the Lifetime Planner will go back to prorating 2024.

Boatnmaniac

I do agree that the "little numbers" can make a huge difference if they are wrong, especially when talking about the rate of inflation, the returns on investments and changes to income. And, yes, it is very easy to be fooled by the output of the Lifetime Planner if it is treated as a once-and-done type of tool. But if the Lifetime Planner is used as a work-in-process and is well maintained and adjusted every year as mentioned earlier, those issues can largely be mitigated.

IMO, over or under estimating the rate of inflation or investment returns by 2%-3% can have a large impact on the accuracy and usefulness of the plan but that is why I stated "…it is imperative to periodically review your plan and assumptions or the plan can become rather worthless within just a few years. I generally give it a quick review about once every 2-3 months with a detailed review 1X/yr or anytime there is a significant change to our long-term plans." Doing these periodic reviews and adjustments to the plan make those small number issues a rather moot point in the long-run.

I think the a couple of the biggest risks compromising the validity of the Lifetime Planner is the failure to account for actual current living expenses (i.e., not establishing a Budget…whether formal or informal…and not abiding by it) and, perhaps more importantly, failing to account for future big "what if" expenses (i.e., medical and assisted living/nursing care) that become increasingly likely as we age.

I do agree that it is very easy to fall into a false sense of security. Anyone who views the Lifetime Planner as an easy-breezy type of tool that is once-and-done will likely be very disappointed with the long-term results.

Also, you raised a good point and I should have mentioned it: Do not rely on Lifetime Planner alone. Validate the results of the tool by using some of the free online tools that do the same thing. Fidelity and Vanguard come to mind but there are others. They involve far less detail in their tools but they can help to confirm the assumptions or poke holes in them.

And it would be a good idea to go through a lifetime sustainability review with a good financial advisor. They will often have ideas on things that maybe you did not even think of. I had annual meetings with my Fidelity financial advisor in the past and now I continue to have quarterly and annual meetings with my current advisors at Churchill Management. I had also previously approached 4 other financial advisors who I was considering possibly letting manage my portfolio and essentially said to them, "Here is my portfolio. Here are our objectives. You show me how you are going to help me accomplish them." Then they would walk me through their lifetime planner tools and thought processes, step-by-step.

I did not do these things all at once. It actually occurred over many years because like any investment portfolio and life plan the Lifetime Planner needs to be a living tool that is adjusted and tweaked regularly or it will become stale and eventually relatively worthless.

All comments

Boatnmaniac

Lifetime Planner is a forward looking planning tool, not a historical reporting tool. There is no way to change that.

Chris_QPW

One thing I always wished the Lifetime Planner would do is "track the past".

Frankly, I consider the Lifetime Planner pretty useless without this (not to mention the problems with the fact they haven't even kept basic things like the correct RMD date up to date.)

Why?

OK, say I put in that I believe the inflation rate is 3%, and that I think my investments will yield %5, and the Lifetime Planner says "your plan will work". But what if I got those values wrong. How will I know that I'm off track in say 6 months or a year? Currently one would have to do something like bring up an old backup with what was predicted and compare it to the current real values. How many people do you think really save/check this information?

I will bet almost no one. So, they keep on using the same wrong prediction until it gets really out of whack or something.

JNPoche

I understand the looking forward. Being a first time Lifetime Planner, I was hoping to verify my first year with actuals for validity. Test the model they say, and tweak.

Also in agreement with Chris_QPW. If you can't see what you did wrong in the past, who do you adjust to make it match the real world.

mshiggins

@JNPoche a little virtual time travel trick can get you the full year view for 2024 - just set the date on your computer to 1/1/2024 and restart Quicken.

JNPoche

@mshiggins I thought about that. Will the Planner keep the 1/1/24 date after starting quicken and resetting the PC date?

mshiggins

Once your computer is back at the current date, the Lifetime Planner will go back to prorating 2024.

JNPoche

Gotcha. Thanks.

Boatnmaniac

I can understand the want to see the historical plan and the benefit of that….at least for the full current year or last 12 months. I see little value retaining more historical records than that.

At best it's a macro planning tool for which the real benefit is long term (years….for the rest of our lives) planning. In such a scenario, the misses of any one particular year really have not much impact on the long-term…unless those misses in the current year are really big misses. The intent of this type of tool is to see how well our finances will cover our spending needs through the end of our lives, identify where the gaps are and to be able to explore options that might be able resolve any gaps that are identified.

In my case, I set up Lifetime Planner to assume that both me and my wife live to be 100. I've used it to plan out long range for the big changes in life, such as, impacts of retiring at different ages, working after retirement, different retirement distribution plans, different retirement plan contribution levels, selling the primary home (and when to do that) and then buying or renting future housing, how much can I plan on new car purchases and how frequently can I do that, expensive vacations, what would be the impact of if I and/or my wife ever need long-term assisted living or nursing care. I also use it to determine what the minimum investment return I will need to ensure I never run out of funds and what might I be able to leave to my beneficiaries. All rather big stuff.

The small stuff that does get missed I've found generally will have very little impact over the long term sustainability of the plan. But it is imperative to periodically review your plan and assumptions or the plan can become rather worthless within just a few years. I generally give it a quick review about once every 2-3 months with a detailed review 1X/yr or anytime there is a significant change to our long-term plans.

As a side note: Compare Lifetime Planner to the tools used by most of the financial planning sites and and investment companies. I think you would be amazed at how much more detailed, robust and, IMO, accurate the Lifetime Planner is than they are. Overall, even with it's shortcomings, I have been very pleased with Lifetime Planner and found it to be incredibly helpful in allowing us to retire comfortably by the time I was 60.

Chris_QPW

@Boatnmaniac It is extremely easy to fool yourself that you have a good plan if you have nothing to verify it with.

And here is thing, what do you consider "the little things"? I too don't think the "little things" matter, but there are some "little numbers" that can make a huge difference.

And a mistake of just a percent or two can change the long-term outcome dramatically if you have then wrong for inflation and investment returns. Now mind you I don't think "looking back" is a guarantee that you will predict the future correctly. I'm just saying that that without checking that your assumptions have played out reasonably correctly can be even worse. As far as "how far back" that cross check should be, I definitely see the point that going too far back can have the same kind of problem, but I don't really know that there would be a hard fast number, and as such you might as well make it flexible.

To illustrate my point let's look at the budget. Some people indicate on here that they want to "tweak the past" so that their budget "looks good". Now they have a good-looking budget that taught them nothing about how to improve their predicting of the future budget. To me the value of a budget would be to make a prediction, then see what you got right, and what you got wrong and try to figure out how to make it better. If you are "self-correcting" you will never do this.

The Lifetime Planner is "self-correcting" if the user doesn't do something outside of it to check it. I feel that the Lifetime Planner should have this built into it. You are allowed to state, "this is where I want you to start, "recording"", and then from there on it would show what is predicted and what actually happened it the period for the time that it has real data for.

With all that being said, I have never really pushed for this much because you will quickly realize that Quicken would have to save the assumptions made in the past to be able to do this kind thing. It isn't just pulling up the past data, it is also pulling up the past assumptions. Given the lack of any good support for this function I really doubt they will put in that kind of effort.

BTW if you are going to do such a check you have to do it before you make any new changes to the Lifetime Planner assumptions.

Boatnmaniac