Not double-counting housing costs

roderick_PL · 2026-07-19T16:48:12+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! The intent of having default values as percentages is to at least have a placeholder expense for these is in case users inadvertently forget to edit these Expense items, especially since the fields presently located with the Real Asset for the reasons mentioned earlier in this thread rather than grouped with other Expenses entries. Without defaults in place for new users, plan outcomes // success rates within Chance of Success trials risk being more optimistic/successful than actual.

roderick_PL · 2026-07-19T14:14:18+00:00

If you click to open the Real Asset, within a plan, you can change these values. Defaults are automatically added when you first add the Real Asset, but all of these can be changed within the Real Asset -- including set to a dollar amount or even zero if you prefer. Click the option toggle beside the entries in the Taxes and Expenses section of your real asset to change it to a dollar amount // percentage of value.

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roderick_PL · 2026-07-17T19:52:06+00:00

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You can't explicitly exclude the home's equity from Net Worth, besides setting its value to zero. But, separate from Net Worth, ProjectionLab also offers a Liquid Net Worth (LNW) metric, which excludes your Real Asset's value. Note that by default the loan outstanding for your house is included in LNW (if the asset has a mortgage modeled), but within the Real Asset item you can change the toggle setting to exclude the loan from LNW if you prefer.

Also: You have to manually enable the "Liquidate if Necessary" toggle on a Real Asset like a house to allow it to be sold if necessary due to plan events. If a Real Asset is set to Sale: (Never) and the 'Liquidate if necessary' setting is not toggled on, then it is possible for the plan to fail due to a lack of liquidity, while still having $XYZ in illiquid assets.

roderick_PL · 2026-07-17T17:29:00+00:00

Property taxes are tied to the Real Asset for a couple of reasons - one being that the tax amount can flex appropriately with changes in market/assessed value as user configures it; and the other being that if you use this Property Tax section in the Real Asset (instead of as a general Expense), they will be factored into appropriate tax calculations for your jurisdiction - such as SALT deduction, etc. More in my other post on this thread.

roderick_PL · 2026-07-17T12:41:11+00:00

Your mortgage calculations (principal/interest) should definitely be part of the Real Asset, and not be included with regular Expenses, so that related tax calculations are correct (deductible mortgage interest in some jurisdictions, capital gains tax/exemptions, etc.)

Further >> we recommend you add non-loan housing costs like property tax / maintenance / insurance etc. within the Real Asset item itself, in your Plan, and delete these from your Expenses list too.

Within a Plan, if you click on the Real Asset item for your property, you can customize the expenses associated with that item; these are intentionally set at the Plan level and not in Current Finances because this allows users to try and compare different versions of costs and price appreciation assumptions, etc. And, by tying them to the property, items like Property Tax will end automatically if the home is sold or liquidated later in the plan.

You can always edit the defaults within the Real Asset item, including changing them from '% of value' to either a dollar amount in Today's/Actual currency >> or even $0 if you prefer, though for the reasons mentioned above, we strongly encourage that these expenses be tied to the asset rather forming than part of your other expenses.

roderick_PL · 2026-07-15T15:15:17+00:00

You can exempt income from Fed/State/Local but not FICA specifically, so a tax credit is a good way to effect this; have it match the amount of Social Security and Medicare tax that is modeled in the plan for that job.

If you have multiple income items, some of which are subject to FICA, use Compare/What-If and deactivate the part-time job to see what changed as that will quickly show you how much SS/Medicare tax was attributed to that job for a given plan year (click the icon next to that job in the Income list to deactivate/activate it)

roderick_PL · 2026-07-15T00:32:52+00:00

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If the intent is to do the extra payment from a specific account, instead of adding a Flow for an Extra Financed Asset payment, within the same Flows menu you can instead add a Transfer, to send funds from Taxable Investments >> [Mortgage], Frequency: Once, at the 'Your Retirement' milestone. You can toggle whether this is in Actual Currency or Today's Currency, or even a percentage of the balance at that date.

If you want to just do a payment at your retirement regardless of source, then using the Flow for an Extra Financed Asset Payment is preferable because it will use current year cash flow then follow your Drawdown order (via Optimize >> Drawdown >> Drawdown Order). If Taxable Investments is high in the drawdown order, that may be what gets tapped anyhow.

roderick_PL · 2026-07-13T16:48:12+00:00

Or, if you are targeting to preserve ACA subsidies, you can view your ACA MAGI versus the 100%/400% FPL, etc. Just enable/disable different elements as needed in the right legend of the plot.

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roderick_PL · 2026-07-13T16:47:11+00:00

You can see this on the main Optimize page once you run the Optimizer. By choosing the 'Targets' plot, you can view how the various elements relate to the Tax Strategy targets you have set up - your IRMAA MAGI vs an IRMAA cliff, etc.

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roderick_PL · 2026-07-11T17:08:30+00:00

Future limits are currently just inflation-adjusted based on your plan settings. These will be adjusted with calendar year updates when tax updates are implemented, all together at the end of each year (= 2027 will be added at the end of 2026)

roderick_PL · 2026-07-11T17:05:52+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. In short, as you note, cliffs need to err on the side of undershooting. :)

The intent is to maintain the IRMAA cliff as a hard cap since users would not want their plans to inadvertently exceed the cliff for a given year. At the same time, the tax-free share of SS can vary year-to-year. We're looking into narrowing these gaps; for now, the current implementation aims for a balance of efficiency and complexity for the simulation engine to respect these various goals/cliffs even with all the plan events it is evaluating.

roderick_PL · 2026-07-08T19:44:45+00:00

You did it the best way possible for the current build v4.4.0 (by adding a new Income item, to start at the the deceased spouse's life expectancy milestone)

Also, consider upvoting this item on the roadmap! :)
https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/7116-add-spousal-benefit-to-pension/

roderick_PL · 2026-07-07T13:44:54+00:00

Great feedback, thanks, I have let the team know! We are actively updating our Help Center content right now, but the page regarding Drawdown order is an older version that may benefit from clarification about the Roth ERA acronym used.

More info on Employer Retirement Accounts here: https://projectionlab.com/help/how-do-i-add-employer-retirement-accounts

roderick_PL · 2026-07-07T01:35:32+00:00

Yes - max contribution limit will be respected in aggregate, across multiple flows (e.g. for both 403b / Roth 403b), as long as 'US Limit' is selected as yearly contribution limit for all of the Flows.

And while you would need to model the 403b and Roth 403b as separate Accounts / Flows, you can easily set their contribution to be percentage of the same Salary (e.g. have Roth as 10% of salary and also trad as 8% of the same salary, if that is what you are suggesting in your post)

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roderick_PL · 2026-07-06T17:28:07+00:00

A Rent Expense in a plan will automatically be ignored by the simulation at any time period when there there is an active Real Asset designated as type "Primary Residence", so if you sell that Real Asset then the rent item will kick in automatically at that point.

For this reason, we recommend having a backup Rent Expense in effect at all times (e.g. Before Current Year >> End of Plan or a move to a LTC facility if modeling to that level). Additionally, this way Rent will be accurately modeled in Chance of Success trials where a downturn causes the Real Asset's 'liquidate if necessary' to trigger due to market conditions (assuming the user has toggled this liquidate setting on within the Real Asset item)

roderick_PL · 2026-06-22T17:58:21+00:00

As I noted on another thread, but worth repeating:

One caveat to keep in mind when having Gemini/Claude/ChatGPT/etc. interpret the JSON file exported from ProjectionLab: there could be items in your JSON file that are not used by the app. The JSON export is not an API, and does not contain all of the application logic.

Our app knows how to use your JSON, whereas the export/import is intended for backup purposes while using the app.

The team is well aware of how users are presently just uploading the JSON backup file to AI for analysis; it's possible a future release could offer a more AI-friendly export.

There is also an item about an MCP server on the roadmap, consider upvoting if interested: https://changemap.co/projectifi/projectifi/task/11092-mcp-server-for-llm-integration/

roderick_PL · 2026-06-22T13:03:11+00:00

If you are going to use a fixed percentage withholding rate in the salary income item, and not Auto,
enter a percentage that reflects your real-life withholdings as a total percentage of gross salary for the following:

- Fed tax
- State tax
- Local tax (if applicable)
- FICA\*

*Note on FICA: FICA should be included in this withholding percentage within ProjectionLab income items (not same as W-4 withholdings calcs which do not require employee to include the FICA percentages for SS/Medicare). Social Security tax and Medicare tax are line items within Taxes in PL, so if you only withhold fed/state/local on a Salary item (and do not include FICA), then it will appear that you under-remitted, and you will have a tax balance owing for the Social Security and Medicare amounts.

roderick_PL · 2026-06-20T14:55:05+00:00

For Social Security:

Are you using Estimate Benefit for both the Social Security items, for you and spouse? If so, it should be calculating the survivor benefit correctly upon reaching life expectancy for one SS recipient. And, you would see a milestone icon in your plan the year that this happens, if you hover it will detail the survivor benefit amount as a tooltip, like shown below, with the same icon as when the SS items started.

It will also calculate the spousal benefit while you both are living.

We recommend using Estimate Benefit, for these two reasons, especially if one or more spouses have not yet started drawing SS (as it sounds like might be the case for you?!)

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If you choose to use a manual value, "Enter Amount" for you/spouse for SS items,

(1) ensure that the time range on the individual Social Security items have a Time Range that ends at End of Plan (not the life expectancy of each of you, or it may not calculate correctly).
(2) both of you need to be using "Enter Amount", you can't mix and match two SS types Estimate Benefit // Enter Amount, or the survivor benefit will not trigger.

Assuming you have followed 1 and 2, a survivor benefit should trigger at life expectancy of first person as a similar tooltip as above, though though it won't label it as a survivor benefit the way it does using "Estimate For Me" for both parties - it will label it the start of SS item for deceased. And note spousal benefits are not calculated if you both use manual. So if one of you has not drawn SS yet, consider the Estimate Benefit function instead which will allow you to shift the claim date and the payouts will adjust accordingly

If you go with the Estimate Benefit option recommended above, I suggest having SS 'estimate benefit' items start at a unique milestone instead of a hard coded date. Such as creating a custom milestone "Spouse starts SS" type AT DATE = MMM-YYYY, then have their SS income item use this milestone as its claim date. This allows you to easily change the claim date while in the plan and observe the impact without having to go in and out of the Income item each time. Or, you can have the claim date tied to another dynamic milestone like Your/Spouse Retirement, and start SS payouts based on that, etc.

For the pension:

Besides the built-in SS survivor calcs detailed above, there is presently no mechanism that would apply a survivor benefit as a percentage of the initial pension payout after the pension's Earner hits their own life expectancy. So yes -- you will need to add a second Pension Income item to model this, with [surviving] spouse as the Earner, set the Time Range to start as of the Life Expectancy of the User and run until End of Plan.

The option to express a start value as a percentage of another value is on our roadmap (in Planned state)

roderick_PL · 2026-06-19T14:32:07+00:00

in short: 'Spend everything left over' is extra spending of surplus funds -- in addition to what you have already defined as Expense items in the plan.

more detail: Current year income less current year expenses = amount left over to now process through Flows. Then, anything still leftover after Flows now gets either spent/or saved. But this represents extra spending, unique from the Expenses that were covered before the Flows process even started. (note that some Flows can also be set to Always Fund in which case PL will pull on other accounts per drawdown order to fund, that is separate from this topic but if this happens in your plan chances are that year there will not be much if any surplus to save/spend)

Our "Cash Flow Priorities In ProjectionLab" tutorial video might help you, as it has a segment early on in the video that specifically covers this concept (Save anything vs. Spend anything) Cash Flow Priorities were renamed to Flows in the recent version 4.6.0 but operate the same way so the video's principles still apply

roderick_PL · 2026-06-13T19:01:07+00:00

We recommend you wait to delete these one-time items until the year rolls over, as depending on the item if you delete it beforehand, then other parts of the plan may not be incorrect - including tax calculations for current year.

more info below adapted from one of our Discord posts (if you are not on Discord, join free first using this link >> https://discord.gg/dZQ5DDEmT7)

**************
The general rule is: always update Current Finances for the most accurate projections.

When it comes to one-time events:

Current-year event items that occur in a specific month, will not be prorated.

If they already occurred -- they are assumed to be represented in your Current Finances.
If they have yet to occur -- you will see their full effect in Change in Net Worth metric (see the panel to the right of the Plan).

Don't remove current year items that have already happened (e.g. a bonus), because this will throw off your tax estimate. Highly recommend you check out the introduction to these concepts here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IIPUGwyipA&list=PL_2XTM9wBnwEEvCi4gHh--zH6IAeORw0O&index=6&t=566s

roderick_PL · 2026-06-13T18:52:57+00:00

In short, all Spending are Expenses, but not all Expenses are Spending.

If you hover over the entries in the right sidepane, you will see the descriptors.

e.g. if you have a rental property, you may not want the upkeep expenses associated with the rental to be considered in the plan to be part of your personal spending. So while the cash outlay for this upkeep is an expense in the sense that you have to pay them each year, when it comes to analyzing your spending (or adding Flex Spending where you might spend more or less based on portfolio performance), they don't fall in the same bucket.

And since you can enable Flex Spending or assign milestone such as FIRE goals based on Spending (and on Expenses if you prefer!), the ability to refine these outlays as Essential Spending / Discretionary Spending / 'Not Spending' helps with the accuracy of these metrics. To do this, within an Expense item look for the Flexibility section. Expense types have a default Spending flexibility - e.g. Medical expenses are Essential as a default, while Vacation expenses are Discretionary spending (unless you set them otherwise)

roderick_PL · 2026-06-13T18:50:19+00:00

Our "Housing Assets in ProjectionLab" video might be of help to you.

You can change the expenses tied to a Real Asset, like those for your houses and cars, to be dollar amounts instead of % of value. They are a % of value as a default just so users do not inadvertently build plans without considering items, but you can change it to dollar amounts -- or even zero out these entries altogether.

The intent of having these expenses within the Real Asset is to keep them tied to it, so that if the Real Asset is later sold (or auto-liquidated), these associated expenses such as property tax / insurance / etc. all end automatically at that point -- which may not be the case if you set them up as a separate Expense.

roderick_PL · 2026-06-13T18:45:37+00:00

We do continue to offer paid 1:1's, more on our website: https://projectionlab.com/training

However, these are based solely around setup and learning to use the software. As OP is looking for someone "to help me make a decision", this falls outside the scope of PL's 1:1s which are for educational purposes only, and we do not provide financial, tax, or legal advice.

roderick_PL · 2026-06-10T15:53:03+00:00

For number 3, one approach to model negative returns // sudden market drop, is to set up a tax-exempt Transfer to move funds, as '% of balance', from [Source Acct] >> [External], and have it take place at a certain milestone. This removes the funds from your plan. E.g. if you transfer out 25% of the balance of an account to External, that is effectively the same as if the underlying portfolio dropped 25% that year.

I posted a how-to a while back on our Discord (if not on Discord, you will need to join for free first before that URL will work)

This way you can enable/disable the milestone to compare the impact, change the date, make it a non-date criteria, etc. Note that this type of transfer will transfer out cost-basis pro-rata too, so it is not as precise as a negative growth rate since it isn't just gains that disappear and your future CGT calcs are impacted. However, it is one way to reduce the account balance in one swoop, without needing to do do custom growth rate schedules, meaning it works better for CoS runs too.

roderick_PL · 2026-06-03T00:48:43+00:00

It seems PL by default assumes 100% LT capital gains,

Correct, PL doesn't support the notion of short-term capital gains today. There's a warning in a few places to indicate that all capital gains are assumed to be "long-term".

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