Reading a year of your plan

The two rows at the top of the page are two sums, and each one adds up.

• Income, less taxes and expenses, is what you save that year. Saving includes what you pay into your accounts as well as the cash left over.
• Your net worth at the start of the year, plus what you save and your gains, is your net worth at the end of it.

Gains are everything that grows your net worth besides what you save: investment returns after fees, a rise in your property’s value, your employer’s match, the part of each loan payment that pays down what you owe, and any change in what a business you own is worth. In a year with a one-off, such as buying or selling a house, that’s counted in gains too.

Future dollars are the amounts you’d see in that year, with inflation. Today’s dollars, labeled with your plan’s first year, take inflation out, so every figure buys what it would today.

Each total shows the figure both ways: the dollars you chose, with the other underneath. Your plan’s first year is the same either way.

The summary adds up each kind of account for each owner: what it opened the year at, how much it changed, and what it closed at. Choose Every account to see each account on its own row, with these columns:

• Deposits: what reached the account from outside it, such as what you paid in and your employer’s match.
• Growth: investment returns and interest.
• Fees: what the account charged.
• Withdrawals: what left the account to be spent or to leave your plan.
• Paid down: what the year’s payments took off a loan or card balance. It appears only in a year that pays one down.
• Sold: what a business stake sold for, in the year it sells.

Money you move between your own accounts counts once, against the account it came out of. Surplus cash swept into a brokerage, for example, isn’t also a deposit and a withdrawal. Each row adds across: opening, plus deposits, growth and anything paid down, less fees, withdrawals and sale proceeds, is closing.

Choose % to see each flow as a share of the account’s opening balance. Opening and closing stay in dollars. An account with nothing in it all year isn’t listed.

No column is tax, because LongSpan works out tax for your whole plan, not account by account. Tax withheld from your pay never reaches an account. Tax paid from savings is inside the withdrawal of the account it came from. The Taxes card shows the year’s full bill.

A stake in a private business has its own row, under Business equity. It grows each year, but you never pay into it or draw from it, so it has no deposits, fees or withdrawals.

In the year it sells, Sold shows the sale price and the stake closes at zero. The money arrives under Money in, and the gain on the sale is named under Taxes.

Money in lists each income for the year before tax, with what kind of income it is. If you’re planning with a partner, it’s grouped by who earns it, with income neither of you is named on under Joint.

Below the list, LongSpan steps from your gross income to what reaches your accounts: it takes off the income tax withheld from your pay and adds your employer’s match.

Money out lists the year’s costs, largest first. A loan payment shows how much paid down the balance and how much was interest.

Medical costs are paid from a health savings account first, and education costs from an education account, because that money is tax-free when spent that way. The rest comes from your income and other savings.

Tax withheld from your pay comes off Money in instead, so the only tax listed here is any your income didn’t cover, paid from savings. If you entered income tax as an expense, LongSpan leaves that figure out in the years it works out the tax itself, so it isn’t counted twice.

LongSpan shows your plan’s first year as a whole calendar year, even when your plan starts partway through it. Your balances already hold the months you’ve lived this year, so LongSpan estimates those months from them rather than counting them twice.