Progress

A baseline is a copy of your plan as it stood on the day you saved it: what you’d entered, your balances that day and the forecast LongSpan worked out from them. It never changes afterwards, so Progress can show how far you’ve moved from it.

LongSpan saves your first baseline, “From setup”, when you first finish setup. You can save another at any time on the Progress page. It’s named after the day you save it unless you give it a name of your own, and you can rename it later.

Progress compares against your newest baseline unless you pick another. You always keep at least one, so the last can’t be deleted. Deleting a baseline never changes your plan or your other baselines.

When you change your plan, LongSpan offers to save it as a new baseline, so you can measure from the plan you’re following now. A balance changing never asks: that’s what Progress is there to track.

You and your partner both see the same baselines. Anyone who can change the plan can save, rename and delete them.

From the baseline’s date to today, Progress compares the balances you’ve recorded with what the baseline expected for each day.

• What the baseline expected for an account runs in a straight line from its balance on the baseline’s date to the balance it projected at the end of each year.
• What it actually holds is the last balance recorded on or before each day.
• An account you’ve added since the baseline is compared with $0, so whatever it holds puts you ahead.
• An account you’ve closed or removed since counts as $0 from the day it closed, while the baseline still expects what it held.
• Property and a business keep no history of their own, so their value today is used for every day since the baseline.

Net worth today is everything you hold less what you owe, as on your dashboard.

From this year on, Progress compares what your plan projects now with what the baseline projected for the same year, both in the same dollars. Every change since, to your balances, your income, your spending or your assumptions, shows up here.

The year-by-year table lists the years worth stopping at: next year, ten years from now, your retirement and the end of your plan. Switch to every year to see them all. It covers the years your plan and the baseline both reach.

These are projections from what you’ve entered, not promises. They move as your balances and your plan do.

Why it moved takes apart the difference at your retirement, or at the end of your plan if it has no retirement. LongSpan reruns the baseline’s forecast, adding your current plan one kind of change at a time, and each step’s effect is that change’s share:

• Balances: what your accounts hold now. The count beside it is the number of days you’ve recorded balances since the baseline.
• New and closed accounts: accounts you’ve added or removed.
• Income, Spending and Assumptions: your changes to each.
• Other plan changes: everything else, such as property, stock grants, cars or a plan that runs longer or shorter.
• Model update: a change to how LongSpan works out forecasts since the baseline was saved, not a change to your plan.

Because each step keeps the ones before it, the amounts add up exactly to the whole difference. A change that moved nothing isn’t listed.

LongSpan notes your projected net worth at retirement, or at the end of your plan, whenever your balances or your plan have changed, once a day at most. The line runs from the baseline’s figure to today’s, so you can see when it moved as well as how far.

Right after you save a baseline, your plan still matches it, so every difference is zero. Progress says so instead of showing a page of zeros, until you record a balance or change your plan.