The Dashboard

The Dashboard is titled Your month at a glance. It answers one question first: how much can you spend this month? Everything else on the screen supports that answer.

Safe to spend

The main card shows Safe to spend for the current month. It's split into Essentials and Everything else.

• If you're retired, it's the monthly spending that matches your comfort level, based on your actual balances, guaranteed income, planned costs and taxes.
• If you're still working, it's the spending that keeps your whole plan on track, including your planned savings. It isn't a withdrawal amount. The card says so.

Select the number to open How this number is calculated. It lists every input, so you can check where the figure comes from. The safe-to-spend methodology explains the calculation.

Comfort level

The Comfort level control has three settings. Each sets how likely you're willing to be to need a spending cut later:

A more flexible setting gives a higher number now, with a greater chance of a cut later. Changing it also resets your guardrails.

Update balances

Choose Update balances to enter your current account balances. Safe-to-spend and your guardrails recalculate from the new figures. Monthly or quarterly updates keep the plan current.

The tiles

• Chance of success. How often your plan's money lasts across simulated markets. See the outlook opens the full results.
• Spending this year. What your plan spends in the current calendar year.
• Guardrails. Where your investments stand against the balances that would change your spending.
• Key dates. Upcoming milestones such as retirement, claiming Social Security, Medicare at 65, a planned move, a home purchase or sale, and your goals.
• Net worth. Today's figure and a projected path.
• Ways to improve your chances. The changes that help your plan most, tested on your own simulated markets.
• Next steps. Suggestions for filling in the plan. Choose Take a look or Not now.
• What changed. Once you've updated balances twice, how much your savings changed between updates, split between markets and your own deposits and withdrawals.
• Monthly spending ahead. A range chart of future spending, in today's or future dollars.

If Social Security isn't in your plan yet, the Dashboard says so, because the numbers leave it out.

Sample data

If you chose to explore the sample plan, the Dashboard shows a Sample data badge. Choose Set up your own plan to start yours.

What the Dashboard assumes

The Dashboard's figures assume your return and inflation assumptions hold on average, with ups and downs. Tax laws are assumed to continue as currently written, adjusted for inflation. These are estimates for planning, not advice.