Your cash flow

Before tax shows everything you’re paid as income, with the year’s tax counted among your expenses. After tax, where the page opens, shows what there is to live on and what living costs: it takes the tax on your income off both your income and your expenses.

Not all of a year’s tax is on income. Tax on what you draw from savings, on brokerage dividends and gains, and on Roth conversions stays in your expenses after tax, shown in its own column as Tax on withdrawals and conversions. Taking it off your income could push a retired year’s income below zero.

The tax comes off both sides, so what’s left to invest each year and the crossover year are the same either way.

Gains are what your accounts earn each year in investment returns and interest. They’re drawn as a dashed line because they aren’t cash you’re paid or spend: they’re not part of income or expenses, and they don’t change what’s left to invest.

The year gains rise above your expenses is the year your savings start earning more than you spend.

The crossover is the first year your plan projects spending more than comes in, with tax counted. That year, your savings make up the difference. If income covers expenses in every year of your plan, it shows Never.

Saved is your income less your expenses, tax included. It’s what reaches your accounts: the contributions you make plus any cash left over. It goes below zero in a year you spend more than comes in.

The savings rate is what you save as a share of your income, in whichever of before or after tax the page is showing. It turns negative once you’re living off your savings.

The band counts the sources that pay in your plan’s first year and again in a later one. A one-off, such as a single bonus, isn’t a recurring source.

In the table, Salary, Soc Sec (Social Security), Rent and Equity (stock vesting) break down the income beside them. They don’t always add up to it, because you may have income of other kinds. After tax, each one carries its share of the tax on your income. A column appears only if some year on screen has income of that kind.

Where it goes lists your first year’s costs, largest first, with each bar drawn against the largest. The line under each says where the figure comes from:

• Entered by hand, or imported from a budgeting app you connected.
• Worked out by LongSpan from a loan’s terms, for a loan payment.
• Worked out by LongSpan from the year’s income, for tax.
• From the costs you entered on a property, such as its taxes and insurance.

Milestones shows your plan’s first year, every fifth year after it, your last year of work, your first year of retirement and your plan’s last year. Choose Every year to see them all. Select a year to open it in full.

Export downloads every year of your plan as a CSV file, whatever the page is set to. The file is always before tax and in future dollars, so it has the same columns, with the same meaning, every time you export it.