FAQ: How to Monitor Net Worth During Retirement?

We would recommend both using the Tracking section but also updating your plan each year.

For the Tracking section, you can import up to three versions of your plan. Most often we import one version of the plan each year, so the tracking section can hold current year's plan, plus two prior years. This is nice to see how the plan evolves over time and how you're tracking against it. You'll enter your actual account balances monthly. This video will help with understanding how the Tracking Section works.

For updating the plan each year, we would recommend updating the Discovery phase with new income, expenses, assets and debt balances. The platform will still aim for spending, even if your account balances are higher/lower. Then when you run the Projections again the platform will take into account the new spending goal, new income amounts, and new account balances.

In a "down" year where asset balances are lower the updated projection might highlight a lower success rate, depending on the drop in success rate this could be a great indication that you might want to cut back on discretionary spending for a year until account balances recover or perhaps tap into an emergency fund/cash wedge. In an "up" year where asset balances are higher the updated projection might highlight an opportunity to increase spending. So each year as you "lock in" a year of actual investment returns in retirement you can update the plan to decide if you can spend more when investment returns are good, or perhaps if you need to spend less to get through a downturn.