Managing the intersection between bills/income and the Lifetime Planner

Warhawk

I'm using Quicken Small Business, but I couldn't select that for some reason. Here is my question:

If I want to rely on the Lifetime Planner as a decent forecast, how to I know when the app is "phasing out" the repeating bills/income/transfers I have set up and "phasing in" the out-year income, living expenses, etc?

It seems like, without knowing this, there is some period of overlap where it may be double counting things, and I have no way of deducing when that occurs. Any help? Thank you!

Scooterlam

Lifetime planner prorates based on the month of the current year of the expenses you specify in the planner's living expense assumptions , et al. It does not factor in your bills and income reminders. So, there is no intersection between the two.

Warhawk

Thanks for the reply! When you say prorates based on the current month, do you mean that if I told it my living expenses in the out-years was "X" and I was looking at it on June 30th, that it would count .5X for the current year? I guess that this would only be of concern if you had a large/impactful income or bill item that was scheduled in the the second half of the year (July-December in my example), or perhaps the first half of the next year, etc. But I guess then it would be smarter to put that in the lifetime planner instead of the bills and income, right?

Thanks again!

Chris_QPW

In general, the Lifetime Planner works on years, the only exception is that it will prorate the current year. For instance, if you this was the 7th month (I'm not sure if it will sub divide a month, I don't think so, but I haven't checked. I checked it doesn't sub divide months) then Quicken will divide the yearly amounts by 1/2.

mshiggins

@Warhawk
On June 30th, you enter $40,000 for your living expenses, LTP will show the current year’s living expenses as $20,000. Later years will show living expenses as $40,000 adjusted by the inflation factor you specified.

It can be helpful to change your computer’s date temporarily to January 1 so you can view the current year amounts without the proration.

Warhawk

Thanks, everyone—great info!