Use the Annual Action Plan and monitoring baseline

The Action Plan turns analysis into decisions you can track

The Annual Action Plan gathers time-sensitive guidance, tax reminders, monitoring dates, and follow-up work derived from the saved main plan. It is a planning record: it helps you decide what deserves attention and remember what you intended to do. It does not carry out any action outside YARCalc.

Each item should explain why it appears, which year or account it concerns, and what evidence or next step would resolve it. The plan is useful when it helps distinguish a real obligation or decision from a generic suggestion.

Read the reason before choosing a status

Review open items that apply to the current year and confirm that the underlying plan information is current. A recommendation based on an old balance, outdated tax assumption, or superseded plan may deserve a plan update rather than acceptance.

After retirement, the ordinary projection can show two separate spending opportunities when remaining years have no funding shortfall. Growth exceeds this year’s spending needs compares investment growth with portfolio funding needed for spending and taxes after other income. Your retirement assets are projected to grow compares starting and ending financial accounts in the projection’s starting-year dollars, excluding property and 529 savings. Either or both can appear. These are projected conditions, not recorded gains or a guaranteed spending allowance. Review one-time expenses opens the ordinary editor; saving an expense includes it in the next projection without another analysis job.

A funded legacy or spend-down goal can also surface Consider more lifetime spending when no asset-growth prompt is already shown. That margin uses the after-tax financial-account estimate only; property, liabilities, and estate costs are outside it. It is not a safe withdrawal amount. Consider your estate goal, cash needs, and uncertainty when deciding how much to spend.

Accept an item when you intend to address it. Defer it when a later decision date is appropriate. Decline or mark it not applicable when the guidance does not fit the household, and preserve enough explanation to understand that choice later. Mark complete only after the real-world work—not just the YARCalc status change—has occurred.

After main plan changes, pay attention to items marked new or updated. A prior decision does not automatically remain appropriate when the facts or recommendation changed.

Use dates and statuses to preserve intent

Daily balance and price updates preserve your decisions, dates, and monitoring baseline. Current projected amounts can move without asking you to accept the same work again. You can continue editing decisions for items already in the baseline; saving a new baseline is optional after routine valuation updates.

Accepted and deferred actions stay quiet on Dashboard until a reminder or target date is due. Completed, declined, and not-applicable actions do not resurface just because their projected amounts changed with daily valuations. New actions and warnings can still appear.

Changes to spending, income, retirement dates, accounts or holdings, strategy, or the planning year can require a fresh review. Updated guidance keeps the earlier decision visible so you can check whether it still fits. Accepted reminders and updated guidance use amber; overdue work still needs attention.

Save current guidance plan stores guidance and projected balances for the selected year as a reference snapshot for monitoring and decisions. Monitoring compares updated balances against the saved projection. Saving guidance does not accept recommendations or change planning inputs.

Saved guidance needs review means planning inputs changed after you saved the monitoring baseline. The page calculates current guidance and identifies changed areas when available, such as Accounts & Holdings or Stock Compensation. Changing share quantities or grant details can require this review; routine balance and price updates do not. Use View baseline changes to compare the available amounts, including differences from routine valuations. An out-of-date baseline has not been deleted: review updated guidance and choose Save current guidance plan before recording decisions. Refreshing carries forward matching statuses, notes, target dates, and reminder dates.

Open an item and read its rationale, affected year, accounts, assumptions, and limitations. Add a target or reminder date when timing matters. Choose a status that describes the decision rather than the attractiveness of the idea.

Accepted and deferred items may leave the ordinary Dashboard action list while remaining open in the Action Plan’s recommendations and follow-up workspace. They stay there until the work is completed or ruled out. On the saved reminder date, the Dashboard brings the item back as Reminder; after the target date it appears as Overdue. Completed, declined, and not-applicable decisions remain in the checklist for later review and can be reopened for editing.

Use current authoritative dates for tax, benefit, enrollment, or account deadlines. A reminder can help organize the work, but it does not extend a deadline or determine which rule applies.

An empty urgent list is not an all-clear

“No urgent action items” means no current required or warning item is being surfaced under the Dashboard rules. It does not mean every assumption is complete, every opportunity was evaluated, or the retirement plan is ready without further review.

Periodically inspect open, deferred, overdue, and completed items. Confirm that completion corresponds to external evidence such as a filed form, executed transfer, updated beneficiary record, enrollment confirmation, or professional decision—not merely a clicked button.

When an item no longer makes sense, inspect the plan input or guidance that created it. Correcting the source is better than repeatedly dismissing a symptom.

Read annual surplus separately from lifetime asset growth

The annual growth remainder is investment growth minus the portfolio funding requirement: spending plus cash taxes after other income. Deposits, transfers, and Roth conversions are not investment growth. Annual amounts are nominal dollars for the selected year.

The lifetime signal compares the selected year’s beginning financial accounts with the final ending accounts, both in the projection’s starting-year dollars. It excludes property and 529 education savings. A positive endpoint difference does not mean balances grow every year, and account values are before tax on future withdrawals.

These opportunities do not launch additional market simulations or change saved spending automatically. They describe projected conditions, not recorded market performance. Review one-time expenses opens the ordinary editor, where a saved expense is included in the next projection. Consider your cash needs, estate goal, and uncertainty when deciding whether to spend more.

The Action Plan cannot perform or certify the work

YARCalc does not file, pay, trade, convert, retitle, enroll, claim, contact an institution, or verify that an outside action succeeded. Tax and regulatory dates can change through legislation, agency guidance, state rules, disaster relief, or individual circumstances.

Treat each item as organized planning guidance. Confirm deadlines and consequential actions with authoritative sources and the appropriate professional or institution.