Use the Home plan and What-if scenarios

Stay in the creator and review only intended changes

When creating from another What-if, choose Create linked from Home and confirm the starting-point switch. You remain in New what-if with your name, purpose, and planning idea preserved. Recheck source holdings, accounts, and property assumptions against Home before reviewing. Choose Independent to keep copying the current scenario without following Home.

Treasury transition review shows the source holding value falling and the destination holding value rising by the same transition amount. A zero destination starting value means a new holding, not money missing from the source. Review the matched coupon rate, semiannual payment frequency, yield to maturity, price per $100 face value, maturity, CUSIP, and quote date. The auction observation is not a live broker quote.

Saving spending leaves untouched cash symbols blank; a holding name is not a ticker. Existing comparisons pin their original versions and do not change retroactively. If an older What-if already contains an unintended Cash symbol, clear that symbol in Accounts & Holdings and save, or create a fresh copy, then run a new comparison. Review sync presents Home and What-if as separate choices for each conflict.

Home is the maintained plan; a What-if is a controlled experiment

Home represents the retirement plan you currently intend to maintain. It owns the continuing record of saved balances, check-ins, monitoring, and action decisions. A What-if is a separate scenario for asking a specific question—retiring earlier, delaying Social Security, moving, changing spending, or trying another policy—without overwriting Home.

A useful comparison changes only what the question requires. If a retirement-date experiment also contains an accidental spending change and an older balance, the resulting difference cannot be attributed to retirement timing. The What-if name and its list of changed inputs should make the experiment understandable before any outcome is read.

Choose Linked or Independent based on what should happen when Home changes

A Linked What-if is appropriate when the alternative should continue receiving later committed changes from Home except for the inputs it deliberately overrides. It is useful for an ongoing decision such as “retire at 64” while account balances and unrelated household facts continue to be maintained in Home.

An Independent What-if is a complete fixed copy. Use it when the alternative must preserve a historical set of assumptions or should no longer follow Home. Link it to current Home when matching values should begin inheriting, or choose Combine What-ifs to create a new Linked What-if from two compatible experiments. If both experiments change the same input differently, YARCalc lists the overlap and creates nothing until the source What-ifs agree.

Do not create a scenario for every minor edit. Create one when preserving the baseline and comparing the tradeoff will improve the decision. Home should not be changed to an uncertain alternative merely because creating a What-if feels inconvenient.

Keep synchronization and overrides visible

Manage Scenarios shows the maintained Home plan once above the Active What-ifs grid. Create What-if from Home or the new-What-if card starts a separate experiment; Home does not also appear as a scenario card. Give the What-if a decision-oriented name and make the smallest coherent set of changes. In a Linked What-if, an explicit override remains different while later unrelated Home updates can flow through. When its inherited inputs already match current Home, the card says Up to date with Home; internal version counters are not planning information.

A Linked What-if shows Updates available when later Home changes can be synchronized, or Needs attention when an overlap requires review. Open and synchronization stay visible on the card. Adopt into Home begins the reviewed adoption workflow; duplication, relationship changes, and deletion are under Scenario utilities.

When Home and the Linked What-if changed the same underlying item differently, YARCalc stops and asks you to review the conflict. Choose which value belongs in the experiment; do not treat the last writer as automatically correct. If Home removed a parent record such as an account that contains an overridden holding, resolve the structural conflict before continuing.

Scenario Editor opens saved values in a visibly read-only state. Choose Edit in a section before its fields and actions become available.

Detaching makes the What-if permanently independent. Link to current Home rebases an Independent What-if after review: matching inputs inherit from Home and remaining differences stay explicit overrides. The review summarizes complete records such as added or removed holdings by their visible name and security details. Adoption is a separate reviewed operation that creates a new Home version; editing or analyzing a What-if never silently changes Home.

Stochastic precision, effective path count, and seed are local execution defaults kept with each scenario for its next individual analysis; they do not create Linked What-if synchronization conflicts. Compare Scenarios uses the one set of precision, path count, seed, and other analysis controls selected for the job equally across Home and every selected What-if.

Selecting a Linked What-if for comparison synchronizes inherited Home changes and keeps it selected when synchronization succeeds. A real overlap remains unselected and opens a review path. Run comparison commits the queued job before calculation begins, then keeps stage and measured progress in the existing page without document reloads. Projection and random-path calculations remain background work so other planning pages stay responsive. Returning to Compare Scenarios restores an active comparison in the same progress area or opens the most recent completed result. Choose New comparison from a result when you intentionally want a fresh selection and run.

Know exactly what each built-in starting point changes

Blank copy changes no planning input. Use it when none of the narrower starters matches the question, then make the intended edits in Scenario Editor. Adjust retirement timing lets you choose a household member and enter a signed whole-year change: positive is later and negative is earlier. Review every income, contribution, award, and healthcare rule tied to that date before interpreting the result.

Adjust discretionary spending accepts a signed percentage: enter −10 to reduce it by ten percent or +10 to increase it. Non-discretionary recurring spending stays unchanged, as do one-time goals, property costs, debt payments, and spending classified as non-discretionary. Set Social Security claiming age accepts a whole age from 62 through 70 for each configured household member; it does not estimate a new statement benefit, so confirm the saved Full Retirement Age benefit and the modeled claiming adjustment.

Set a fixed-income glide path turns on that planning policy with the start year, end year, starting safe percentage, target safe percentage, and maximum annual move you enter. It changes planning-policy targets rather than trading the current holdings.

Active scenario names must be unique for your account without regard to capitalization or surrounding spaces. New what-if suggests a numbered name when its normal default is already in use. The profile menu keeps Home plus at most five recently updated What-ifs, always including the open What-if; use Manage all scenarios for the complete list.

Translate FIRE labels into plan inputs you can test

FIRE means Financial Independence, Retire Early. Lean FIRE, Chubby FIRE, and Fat FIRE are informal descriptions of different spending levels, but there are no stable universal dollar thresholds. YARCalc therefore does not classify a household with one of those labels. Compare lower, current, and higher spending What-ifs or run an Annual spending sweep against the planning target you saved.

Barista FIRE commonly describes continuing some part-time earned income before full retirement. Slow FI and Flamingo FI describe other gradual routes toward financial independence, and their definitions vary. Model the actual work income, contributions, employer benefits, healthcare, spending, and retirement dates instead of relying on the nickname. A Blank What-if keeps those coordinated changes separate from Home.

An earlier retirement also creates more years before Medicare, Social Security, and required distributions. Review accessible taxable and cash resources alongside retirement accounts. YARCalc does not calculate every early-distribution penalty, Rule of 55, 72(t)/SEPP rule, Roth ordering rule, or five-year access rule, so confirm any access strategy independently.

Review the asset and housing starters before creation

Move and downsize sells one current property at the plan start, pays linked debts, and adds a replacement property using the sale value, destination state, purchase price, moving costs, and annual ownership costs you enter. It is not a generic “housing costs fall” shortcut. Review the sale and replacement assumptions, linked loans, timing, and any rent or spending that could otherwise be counted twice.

Explore an annuity moves the chosen purchase amount from one eligible source account into a fixed-annuity balance. It does not invent an insurer payment. After creation, add the actual quoted annuity payment under Income & Benefits, including its owner, start, survivor terms, growth, and tax treatment, before comparing the What-if with Home.

These starters prepare visible input changes for review; none recommends the choice or performs a transaction. A starter is offered only when the current plan has the required spending, benefit, account, holding, or property input. If a starter is absent, correct the prerequisite in Home or use Blank copy for a different supported experiment.

Test moving part of one holding into a Treasury

Choose Transition a holding to Treasuries when the question is how the plan changes after moving a dollar amount from one current holding into fixed income. Select the source holding, enter the amount, and choose a 2-, 5-, 10-, 20-, or 30-year term. The destination must be a Treasury holding in the same account, or YARCalc can add a new Treasury holding there.

The transition amount must be greater than zero and cannot exceed the displayed market value of the selected source holding. If it does, review stops with that amount error and leaves the source holding unchanged.

When review finds an invalid amount or Treasury term, the page keeps the values you entered, shows a prominent error summary, and marks the field that needs correction. Correct that field and choose Review what-if again; you do not need to re-enter the rest of the experiment.

YARCalc looks through the latest official Treasury auction data for the fixed-rate nominal note or bond whose remaining maturity most closely matches the selected term. The selected term is therefore a target remaining maturity, not a promise that the security was originally issued with that exact term. The review identifies the matched CUSIP, coupon, maturity, price, yield, auction date, and source before the What-if is created. If no usable official security and price are available for that term, creation stops instead of inventing one.

In Scenario Editor, a Treasury without a ticker shows its CUSIP. The source position is reduced by the entered market value and the matched Treasury face value is calculated from its price, leaving the account total unchanged at the transition date. This is a planning allocation change, not a brokerage order, recommendation, or live executable quote. It does not select TIPS, bills, floating-rate notes, or STRIPS. Confirm availability, permitted investments, current trading price, accrued interest, fees, and settlement with the account provider before acting.

Compare inputs before outcomes

Before comparing charts or success percentages, review the source-input differences, last-updated times, balance dates, strategies, horizons, and analysis settings. Resolve stale or synchronization warnings first. A valid calculation for mismatched inputs is still a poor comparison. Current prices, price dates, and quote provenance are valuation facts rather than planning choices. Linked What-ifs carry them forward from Home, and scenario comparisons omit them from What-if differences. Quantity and security-selection changes remain visible; a What-if-only Treasury is summarized by its name, CUSIP, face value, and total value.

If changed inputs produce identical displayed outcomes, read Modeling notices before treating the plans as equivalent. A cash-reserve target needs a Cash or interest-bearing cash account, and a fixed-income glide path needs a compatible bond- or cash-oriented target in each affected tax-treatment bucket. YARCalc reports a blocked or partial policy instead of inventing an account, security, or cross-tax transfer.

Then compare the measures relevant to the question: transition-year cash flow, taxes, withdrawals, downside outcomes, spending flexibility, inheritance, and practical constraints. A larger ending balance does not automatically make the life choice better.

Marking a scenario Promising is only a bookmark that makes it easier to find in Scenario Tradeoffs and Manage Scenarios. It does not change Home, adopt the scenario, edit any input, rerun a calculation, or alter a recommendation.

If you decide to adopt a What-if, read the exact three-way diff against the current Home version. Adoption should preserve Home’s balance history, check-ins, reminders, and monitoring while adding only the reviewed planning changes.

A scenario comparison cannot choose the life decision

YARCalc can compare modeled financial consequences. It cannot decide whether a move, retirement date, family commitment, tax election, or investment policy is personally acceptable, legally available, or operationally feasible.

The application does not automatically combine several What-ifs into an optimal plan. Adopt one coherent alternative at a time only after understanding its assumptions, conflicts, and tradeoffs.

Test lifespan, economic conditions, and healthcare spending

Choose New what-if to find six parameterized assumption starters: planning age, fixed-return change, inflation change, early-return stress, additional annual healthcare spending, and discretionary-spending change. Enter the value that matches the question, review the exact changes, create the scenario, then use Compare Scenarios to compare it with Home. These are assumptions and lifestyle alternatives, not ranked strategies.

Planning age extends each person’s lifespan without shortening a longer saved lifespan. Fixed-return and inflation changes accept signed percentage points. Early-return stress accepts both the number of early years and their annual default return, then resumes the saved model. Contractual holdings retain their own return rules. Explicit spending growth rates retain their own rules. Additional healthcare spending is an expense, not a funded reserve.

The discretionary-spending starter accepts a signed percentage such as −10% or +10% and leaves non-discretionary spending unchanged. Edit Household, Assumptions, or Medical spending in the What-If for more involved customization. Use Variable Sweeps for a range of longevity values. Stochastic Analysis has its own return, inflation, and lifespan settings; these deterministic starters do not change those settings.

What if I work longer?

Open New what-if and review Adjust retirement timing. Choose the person and enter a signed whole-year change, such as +1 for later or −2 for earlier. Confirm every input connected to the changed retirement date: work income, contributions, employer benefits, pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and retirement-relative expenses. Correct related dates when the real decision changes them.

Compare the What-if with Home and separate the sources of improvement. Another year can add earnings and contributions, postpone portfolio withdrawals, shorten retirement, and change benefit amounts or taxes. Projection shows the transition years; probability results show whether downside resilience materially improves.

The financial difference is only one part of the decision. Job availability, health, caregiving, and the value of retirement time remain personal constraints that the calculation cannot rank.

Can I ease into retirement part time?

Start a Blank What-if so the phased transition remains separate from Home. Enter the lower earned income with its real start and end dates, move the full-retirement date if appropriate, and review contributions, employer benefits, healthcare, taxes, and any spending that changes with the work schedule. This kind of part-time bridge is sometimes called Barista FIRE; YARCalc models the cash flows and dates, not the lifestyle label.

Use Projection to inspect the bridge years and confirm that part-time earnings and portfolio withdrawals do not overlap incorrectly. Then compare the What-if with Home for success measures, taxes, later balances, and the number of years the portfolio must support full spending.

Part-time work is modeled as annual cash flow. YARCalc does not decide whether a position will be available or reproduce paycheck timing, benefit eligibility, or an employer’s exact retirement-plan rules.

Can I spend more on travel early in retirement?

Create a Blank What-if and add travel as its own dated or age-banded discretionary expense. Use the expected annual amount, start and end boundaries, and a realistic inflation choice. Do not increase lifetime baseline spending when the plan is specifically for a limited active-retirement period.

Compare the What-if with Home. Review the early withdrawals and taxes, success probability, later spending flexibility, downside balances, and what remains for healthcare or legacy goals. A lower ending balance is not automatically a bad result when the purpose is intentional lifetime enjoyment.

The comparison is credible only if ordinary living costs remain complete and the later reduction is actually modeled. Test a range of travel budgets when the amount is flexible.