Trying a change (What-if)

The What-if tab compares your plan with one combined scenario, so you can see what a few changes are worth together before deciding whether to make any of them.

Nothing you do on this tab changes your plan. There is no Save, the numbers on every other tab stay where they were, and reloading the page clears whatever you were trying. That is also why it works on the demo scenarios and on a plan someone shared with you: it has nothing to write.

Social Security and Spending & work edit the same scenario. The outlook always shows that combined result. Opening one category does not hide the other’s changes. Roth conversions are labeled as a planned feature and do not affect the result.

The two measures

Chance money lasts is the same figure the Outcomes tab shows: out of 1,000 simulated futures, the share that never ran out of money. The difference is quoted in percentage points, not as a percentage of a percentage. Six points higher means 78% became 84%.

Median ending savings is what is left at the end of the plan, in today’s dollars, in the middle of the same 1,000 futures. Futures that ran out are included, at zero. The middle half of those ending balances is described under How to read these results.

Both sides face the same 1,000 market histories. That is deliberate: if each side drew its own, part of the difference between them would be luck rather than your change. When nothing has been changed, the outlook uses the current plan’s result directly, so the two cannot disagree by chance.

Review changes lists each edit. Reset all changes, Reset this category, and Revert on one row each undo. Undo stays until you edit again or dismiss it.

What you can change

Social Security claim age

When one person starts taking their benefit, from 62 to 70. The benefit is repriced the way the Social Security Administration does it: the amount you entered is worked back to that person’s Primary Insurance Amount at their full retirement age, then forward again to the age you picked, using the statutory reduction for claiming early and delayed retirement credits for waiting.

That arithmetic is for a worker’s own benefit. A spousal benefit cannot be larger than half the other person’s Primary Insurance Amount, so a benefit above that half is treated as the person’s own record. A smaller one might be spousal. The start age can still be changed. If you move it past full retirement age, the tab warns you: a spousal benefit does not keep growing after that age, so the higher figure would be inaccurate if the benefit is based on a spouse’s earnings.

Some rows cannot be adjusted at all, and the tab says which and why: a benefit that has already started, two Social Security rows for the same person, a missing birth month or year, a row that records no start age, or an amount outside the range a work record can produce.

Salary

Each monthly or yearly salary already on Inputs can end in a different year. The row is labeled with the person who earns it, as in Salary (Annabel). A second salary for the same person adds that row’s own name, so the two stay distinct. The last year is inclusive: ending in 2041 means 2041 is still a working year.

Extra salary adds one more salary, for one person. You set the yearly amount, who earns it, and when it starts and ends, each as a year or as that person’s age. It is paid on top of any salary already in the plan, which is how part-time work alongside a job, or a few more working years after one ends, is tried. It does not change the Social Security earnings record behind a benefit.

A salary that already ended before this year stays as entered.

Living expenses

A percentage from 20% less to 20% more, applied to monthly and yearly living-expense rows. From and Through choose the years it covers. They start on this year and the end of the plan, so leaving them alone changes living expenses for the whole forecast.

A living-expense row that runs longer than that window keeps its original amount in the other years. Housing, healthcare, travel, education, one-time costs, and repeating purchases are not included.

What is not modeled

• The month you claim. Timing is annual, so a claim age means the calendar year that person reaches it. Claiming in January and in December are the same thing here.
• The earnings test. Claiming before full retirement age while still working can have part of the benefit withheld. The tab warns you when your proposal would do that, and does not subtract anything for it.
• The earnings record. Extra years of salary do not recalculate the earnings record behind a Social Security benefit, which in reality would move slightly.
• Taxes on the difference, separately. The tax estimate runs on the proposed plan like any other, but there is no breakdown of what the change cost or saved in tax.
• Anything else about the plan. Housing, healthcare, and every other input stay as they are on Inputs. Change those there.

Median savings over time

At the side of the outlook, a chart draws liquid savings year by year. Each line is the median of the same 1,000 futures, in today’s dollars, and a future that ran out counts as zero. The solid line is the plan as it stands. The dashed line is the combined scenario, and it is drawn once the two differ. On a narrow screen the chart stays closed until you open it.

The lines start together, because a scenario does not change the accounts you hold today. They separate in the years where the change starts to matter, and they can meet again later.

Hover or tap a year to read that year’s median for each line, along with the year and each person’s age.

Keeping a proposal

You cannot, yet. If a comparison tells you something you want to keep, make the change on the Inputs tab of a copy of the plan: Settings › Your plans has a download, and the plan list has a copy action on any plan.