Update balances and understand Balance History

A projection begins with a dated picture of what you own and owe

Update Balances creates today’s main plan snapshot of accounts, property, and debt. That snapshot establishes the starting values for later projections and gives Balance History a series of comparable observations. Property valuation dates and debt statement dates remain visible as separate source dates, so an older source does not silently backdate the household record.

Balance History can answer two different questions. Retirement funding focuses on investable accounts that may support spending. Restricted education savings, including a 529 account, remain in account history and household net worth but are excluded from retirement funding. Net worth adds property and other assets and subtracts liabilities. A home the household intends to keep may strengthen net worth without supplying retirement cash, so the two views should not be treated as interchangeable.

Total account value on Update Balances includes restricted college savings so every holding can be reconciled with its statement. Do not use that inclusive total as the amount available for retirement spending.

Update when the starting point has become meaningfully stale

Update after a substantial contribution, withdrawal, purchase, sale, rollover, debt change, or ordinary review interval. You do not need to create a new planning version for every market day. The useful frequency is the one that keeps decisions grounded in reasonably current values without encouraging reactions to ordinary noise.

Distinguish quoted holdings from assets that require a manual valuation. A missing or unavailable quote is not evidence that a holding is worth zero. Property, private investments, debt, and unusual securities deserve an explicit review and an honest source date instead of inheriting a false sense of freshness from market-priced holdings.

The main plan owns the continuing balance history. Updating prices inside a What-if should remain part of that experiment and should not rewrite the historical record of the plan you maintain.

Review the snapshot before preserving it

The Annual dividend/share column in Update Balances records the regular annual amount per share. Projected dividend income appears in Projection and related results, not in the balance update table. Sorting this column compares annual amounts per share, including unsaved manual entries; it does not compare total income from each holding. Fetch prices and dividends stages available estimates for review before saving. Looked-up amounts are read-only; manual amounts are editable. To replace a looked-up estimate, choose Manual amount in Plan Editor holding details first. If an estimate is unavailable, enter the annual amount manually. An unavailable lookup keeps the saved amount; missing history does not establish that a holding pays no dividend.

Enter one annual dividend per share for each ticker; it applies to every account holding that ticker. Edit it to protect a manual override, or enter 0 to confirm no dividend. To resume automatic updates, choose Automatic lookup in the holding details in Plan Editor, then fetch again in Update Balances. Irregular payments, special distributions, and unconfirmed dividend cuts need manual review; a past payment does not guarantee a future payment.

Cash dividend per share remains constant until refreshed, and proportional modeled sales reduce future payments. Dividends remain part of total return. During a quarterly review, update actual quantities and taxable cost basis in Plan Editor, including shares bought through reinvestment, then reconcile cash with the statement. Updated balances already contain past distributions; do not add them again. Retirement-account dividends remain inside their wrapper.

Fetching prices only stages values for review; it does not save a snapshot. If main plan changes before you save, reload Update Balances and fetch prices again before re-entering your pending changes. This prevents a balance update from overwriting newer planning inputs.

Keep the balance review open until you save. Leaving without saving discards manual edits and staged quotes. If a lookup or save fails, your pending values remain available to correct or review before another attempt.

If Dashboard says Refine estimated account balances, use Accounts & Holdings to replace broad Plan Setup estimates with information from your statements. Confirm the account owner, tax type, and actual holdings. Renaming an estimate alone does not make its value or investment mix reliable.

The main plan snapshot date is fixed to today. Review the separate source date for each property value and debt statement, then confirm quantities, prices, account assignments, property values, and outstanding debt. Correct the underlying holding or account when the structure is wrong; do not use a manual total merely to conceal a quantity or classification problem.

After fetching prices, compare each account total with a current statement. Correct missing quotes or manually valued holdings before saving; a successful price lookup does not detect purchases, sales, or changed quantities.

While the market is open, fetching prices again after a lookup finishes requests fresh quotes. If price lookup reports that it is busy, wait briefly and try again, or enter a verified price manually. Review any missing prices before saving.

For a single manually valued holding without a per-share price, enter its full current value in Manual value. You can use dollars and commas, such as $96,000.25. Confirm that value against a statement; do not invent shares or a ticker merely to make a whole-value holding editable.

Ticker not found means no current price matched that ticker; it is not a system error. Keep the saved manual price or enter a verified price yourself. Save the update to skip the unchanged ticker during automatic updates, edit the ticker in Plan Editor to clear the status, or use Fetch prices and dividends to try again explicitly.

Save the completed main plan snapshot only after the account totals reconcile. Enable weekly updates in Account Settings if you want supported quoted holdings refreshed on Saturday morning using the final weekday prices. Property, debt, changed quantities, and manually priced values still need review; automatic pricing does not make the entire household balance sheet current.

An automatic snapshot carries forward the recorded property and debt source dates. An unknown statement value stays unknown rather than becoming zero; the snapshot date does not establish a new valuation.

Review every value named in the weekly update reminder before saving the household snapshot. A successful manual snapshot save clears that review list. Fetching prices or editing fields without saving does not clear it. The next automatic update creates a new list for values it cannot refresh.

If a weekly update is missing or a price could not be found, open Update Balances, fetch current prices, and review the amounts before saving. A missing update does not mean the holding has no value. Contact Feedback & support if the problem continues.

Use Balance History filters deliberately. Begin with investable retirement funding when judging the resources available to support spending. Add property and liabilities when the question is household net worth or estate context.

Explain a change before treating it as progress or decline

In the balance summary, Starting balance and Ending balance use available recorded snapshots of investable retirement funding. Net balance change is the dollar difference; Change expresses that difference as a percentage of the starting balance. Both include deposits and withdrawals as well as market movement.

Compare adjacent snapshots and ask what produced a large movement. Contributions, withdrawals, transfers, purchases, sales, reclassification, newly added accounts, debt payoff, and market movement can all change the line. Balance History records the result; it does not automatically attribute the cause.

Ask YARCalc from Balance History and include the recorded date when a jump or drop needs explanation. The answer can identify the named accounts, property, or debts contributing to the change. First appearing in the saved history does not prove an asset was purchased that day; a missing balance does not prove it was sold. Check statements or transaction records for the underlying cause.

Retirement funding history shows the investable portfolio by default. Property is not retirement funding unless the plan includes a sale or equity-access strategy, and debt is shown below zero when selected. Those display choices explain why the history total may differ from the net-worth figure on the Dashboard.

Look for duplicate dates, missing accounts, stale manual values, and a shift caused solely by switching between retirement-funding and net-worth views. Reopen the saved snapshot and reconcile it with the same dated source before relying on a trend.

After a material balance update, rerun analyses that depend on the starting portfolio. An old stochastic result does not become current merely because the Dashboard can show the new balance.

A What-If price update creates a new version of that What-if without changing the main plan balances or Balance History. Confirm which plan is open before saving a price experiment.

Balance History is not an investment-performance report

The history shows nominal saved values. It does not calculate time-weighted or money-weighted return, separate deposits from market gains, measure fees, or prove that an investment strategy outperformed. A rising line can be caused by contributions; a falling line can be caused by planned retirement spending.

Use brokerage and lender records for transaction-level reconciliation and performance reporting. Use YARCalc’s history to keep the retirement starting point and broad funding trend understandable.

Keep recorded balance history with its dates and meaning

Open Keep It Current > Balance History, choose the period you want to review, and use Export CSV beside Retirement funding history. The download contains recorded balances for the selected period; it is not a file that restores a plan or imports older observations.

Keep the dates and account labels with the amounts. Recorded balance changes include deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and market movement, so the export is not an investment-return calculation. Confirm the selected period before treating the download as a complete history.

Handle an older statement or an incorrect historical observation

Balance History has no spreadsheet-upload workflow for adding older observations. A current Update Balances save records today’s main plan snapshot. An older property valuation or debt statement date describes that source; it does not backdate the household snapshot.

Keep older statements separately when reconciling a trend. If a recorded historical observation is wrong, use Feedback & support to identify its date, the affected account or asset, and the correction needed. Do not change today’s balance merely to make an earlier chart point look right.