← Help Center

Property and debts

Last updated November 3, 2026

You can enter as many properties as you like here, all free, with their value, appreciation, mortgage, housing cost and rental income. You can also enter any debts you're carrying.

A property's value grows at one steady rate every year. It doesn't rise and fall with simulated markets the way stocks and bonds do. We don't ask you for that rate, because nobody outside the real estate business could say what it is for their own street. A guess there would only look like an answer.

Enter the ZIP code instead, and the rate comes from the FHFA house price index. That's the federal series that tracks the same houses as they resell, not whatever happened to sell. It's measured over thirty years and adjusted for inflation. The property shows the figure and the years it was measured over.

Once you enter a primary property with a running cost, that cost replaces the flat "Housing" line in the Spending section. The two never count twice.

We use thirty years because a short window gives the most flattering number and predicts nothing. Across every ZIP in the index, the typical area gained 3.53% a year above inflation from 2015 to 2025, but only 0.67% from 2005 to 2025. Single places swing harder. One San Francisco ZIP reads −1.47% over ten years and +3.53% over thirty.

On a $700,000 home across a thirty-year retirement, that gap is worth about a million dollars of equity. So the window spans full housing cycles, the 2008 crash included. It's shown next to the rate, so you always know what period the number describes.

You enter running costs one at a time: the mortgage payment, property tax, insurance and upkeep. We add them up for you. They're separate because the three that aren't the mortgage keep costing after it's paid off. That's what lets your plan drop the payment at payoff and keep the rest.

Leave the mortgage payment blank, and it's worked out from the balance, rate and years remaining. Enter it if yours includes escrow or PMI. The wizard asks for one combined monthly total instead. That's a fine first guess, and these fields take over once you fill them in.

If your payment is escrowed, tick the boxes for what it collects. Your tax and insurance then count once, not twice. They also stay in your plan after payoff, because paying off a loan ends the loan, not the tax bill. That's also why we still ask for the amounts. Your plan shows you the split, so you can see which part of the payment stops.

Most escrowed payments collect both the property tax and the homeowners insurance, so it's usually both boxes. If you also pay PMI, leave it out of the payment figure.

PMI and homeowners insurance are often confused, but they're unrelated. PMI protects your lender if you default. It's required only while you owe more than 80% of the home's value. Homeowners insurance covers the house itself against fire, storms and theft, for the whole life of the loan. Anyone who put down less than 20% pays both.

The difference matters because PMI ends on its own. A servicer must drop it at about 78% loan-to-value, usually years before the loan is paid off. Your plan holds the payment flat until payoff. So a payment with PMI folded in would keep charging you for it long after it stopped.

Net rental income offsets only that property's own costs. It's never pooled with other properties or with your general income. A planned sale or downsize age can send the proceeds to cash or to a taxable brokerage account.

Debts, such as student loans, car loans, credit cards and HELOCs, track a balance, an interest rate and a monthly payment. The payment counts as spending until that debt is paid off.