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Spending and goals

Last updated November 3, 2026

Spending splits into essential costs, like housing, food, medical and insurance, and discretionary ones, like travel, dining and hobbies. The split matters because only discretionary spending gets trimmed in a bad market year.

That trim is the spending guardrail. After a year in which your investments lose money after inflation, your plan halves next year's discretionary spending. Essential spending is never cut, however the markets do.

A run can still count as a success even if the guardrail trimmed spending along the way. "What chance of success means" explains the separate figure for how often spending was never cut at all.

Retirement spending can follow one of three modes. Same as today keeps it unchanged. An override sets one different monthly amount for all of retirement. By phase follows a "smile curve." Spending starts higher early in retirement, dips in the middle, and rises again later with healthcare costs. Each phase has its own age cutoff and multiplier.

College costs assume $28,000 a year at a public school or $60,000 at a private one, for four years starting at 18. Your plan draws them only from that child's own 529. "Target funded %" sets how much of that cost your plan covers. It's 100% unless you change it. The rest is assumed to come from somewhere else, at no cost to the plan.

One-time expenses come straight out of your accounts in the year you choose. One-time income, a legacy target and an expected inheritance are on the Income section.