r/projectionlab

I added a Real Asset worth $20k that I purchased in June 2022, that has been growing at a consistent 5% interest rate. When adding this to my PL plan, it shows as being worth only $20,146 today, while in reality it has grown to just over $24k in the past four years. Am I doing something wrong when entering this asset? I entered the purchase date, purchase price, and set simple appreciation to 5%. Can anyone recreate this issue?

39M, married (38), with 2 kids (2 and 4). Have started playing around with retirement software and seeing if it would be feasible for my wife and I to retire early around 50-55. I know the Monte Carlo calculators and software are only as good as the inputs that you feed in, but I am currently getting fairly different results in the calculators when trying to set up a similar plan between Boldin and ProjectionLab. Boldin gives my current plan a 75% success rate whereas ProjectionLab gives it a 93% success rate.

Is this difference common? Is it because I'm still about 10-15 years out and the numbers will line up better as I approach my goal retirement? I know the default rates can be adjusted, but I currently have the rate of inflation at 3% on each, with the rate of investment returns kept at the software defaults (Boldin actually has a higher default rate of return than PL, so odd that the Monte Carlo is lower in Boldin).

69yo retired at 56. My wife is 59, still loving work, and will likely stay until 65.

I've loaded all our accounts into PL. I'm a bit overwhelmed about how to employ the tools PL has, and feel a bit like a deer in the headlights. I can really use some feeding about best next steps

We're ridiculously overloaded on pre tax accounts, like 6.5m. No debt, the house is paid off 13 months from now. I'm starting SS next month, at 70. My wife's income is about 240k, depending on the yearly bonus.

Of our pre-tax holdings, about 33% Amazon, 20% GOOG, the rest are Nvidia, Microsoft, Walmart, Costco, and VTI. We hold enough cash for about 8 months.

I've never used a financial advisor. I'm inclined to use a tax advisor to help us navigate the next 5 years, but have no idea how to choose a good one. I've wondered about using someone listed in PL resources. Does anybody have experience there?

I'm looking for feedback about how to proceed. Thanks in advance

Huge frustration based on over four decades of entering financial data into programs such as Managing your Money, Quicken, Quickbooks, etc.

When I'm going through and updating account balance or entering dollar amounts in other parts of the program, I will enter the value of an account by simply keying in the actual value.... e.g., 6625.54

The entry fields in ProjectionLab should be smart enough to render my entry as $6,626.

But "Pretty Toy" ProjectionLab will beautifully disregard the decimal point and treat it as though I have $662,554.00 in my account.

(Of course, the user profile should be set to accept "," instead of "." for those customers from such parts of the world.)

I cannot for the life of me figure out where or how to input these parameters - is it possible to do?

Here is what I would like to model for yearly withdrawals:

- Have interest, dividends, and 401k/pre-tax go up to the top of the 10%

- Fill up the remaining needed spend by using taxable brokerage

- If needed to stay under ACA threshold, back down the 401k withdrawal and fill with brokerage

Thanks in advance!

New user here, so maybe I'm missing something obvious or just don't understand how taxes work in reality, but PL is doing something I didn't expect when I tried enabling Roth conversions with a target tax bracket (24%) as a constraint. Looking at the Tax Analytics page afterwards, it seems that PL is converting to Roth an amount equal to the top of the 24% tax bracket, ignoring the fact that dividends, interest, and more importantly the capital gains from taxable assets sold to pay the taxes on the conversion all also count as income in determining the top tax bracket. There is no indication on that page that any income at all will be taxed higher than 24%, which seems obviously wrong to me.

Summarizing, there seem to be two issues:

1. PL is not doing Roth conversions up to a tax bracket limit as is normally practiced, which is to convert all you can given other income is also accounted for when determining your top tax bracket. E.g., for a married couple filing jointly in 2026, the top of the 24% tax bracket is $403,550. If I sell $100K in taxable investments and get $10K in interest and dividends in that year, that would leave just 403,550 - 100,000 - 10,000 = $290,550 available for a Roth conversion to ensure I do not pay any income tax in the next higher bracket. But PL does a Roth conversion for exactly $403,550, forcing me deep into the 32% tax bracket.
2. I am not sure, but it seems like PL is undercounting the taxes on the Roth conversions, assuming I actually stay in the 24% bracket. That's what the Tax Analytics page shows, anyway, but I suppose it's possible that it's actually correct behind the scenes and that the calculated taxes are correct.

Are these known issues? I can sort of work around #1 by doing the math myself (not my preference!), but if #2 really is a problem, then the Plan ends up being rather unrealistic, so I cannot trust the results.

I spent a good while setting up lots of spending with flexible categories. I made the settings for increased and decreased spending based on market returns and my actual Chance of Success went up. However in the trials where I failed I did not see any noticeable changes in spending. Even though I had a 40% decrease set.

Is it not included or what am I missing?

I am finding it very frustrating trying to update my figures. For instance, I can't see at a glance which accounts are taxable and the only way I can tell is to rename each account with taxable. Another example, why do some account have 3 dots under current finances and others don't?

Also, it looks like a lot of the instructions listed under help on the website haven't been updated with new releases. I'm thinking I must create a new plan each time I want to update anything. I've asked multiple AI's and they can't figure it out either.

Am I missing something?

Hoping someone can help here. I’m trying to figure out where PL models where the money comes from for taxes for Roth conversions.

For example, on the “Conversion Plan” chart, it says I should convert $82k in 2027. And when I look at the detail breakdown, it says that my balance will indeed be $82k starting in 2028. And when I look at the withdrawals I see in 2027 for expenses (from cash and taxable accounts), I’m basically withdrawing just enough money to cover those. So I’m not seeing where the money comes from to pay for the roughly $18k in federal taxes due for the 2027 tax year.

I’m sure it’s something obvious, but I’m not seeing anything that clearly points this out. Thoughts?

Thanks.

Looking to use PL to create a Roth conversion strategy. Gemini drove me to PL over Boldin and after talking to professionals this will provide the same value. What we want to consider is:

• What is the optimal RMD number (trusting its not 0) I'm hearing from $2.5m to $4m in an IRA by the time you need to take RMDs
• How much should be converted from IRA to ROTH per year? Is it only the tax rate to consider - trusting we are investing the same in either
• How much from a cash account can or should be put into a ROTH

If anyone has done this with PL or has any thoughts would be happy to hear them.

Why does switching the End Date of an Income item from "End of Plan" to "Your Life Expectancy" change the chance of success? I have a measly income item ($30/mo investement to a specific brokerage) that I tested this on and switching its end date from from EoP to YLE increases the chance of success by over 2%. I would assume they represent the same thing since you plan ends when you ceases to exist. And there is no realistic way that such a small account could affect my overall plan that much. Any ideas as to what is going on here? First I thought there might be some noise between the Monte Carlo simulation runs but I was able to reproduce this result.

Is there a way to make them taxable? Some non-US jurisdictions do not recognize Roth accounts and still tax them.

How do I model planned monthly withdrawals of a fixed amount from a specific IRA account? I am retired and have already set up $5,000 monthly withdrawals, with $1,000 withheld for federal taxes. I would like to see those withdrawals in my cash flow.

Hi All,

I've just started using projectionlab as a UK user, and I am really enjoying using it. However one of the big encroaching things for me is the £100,000 cliff edge with respect to Funded Hours and the Tax Free Childcare. I got excited when I saw the tax optimisation tab, however I can't find an obvious way to model this.

It would seem to me that the "Tax Deduction" income item, or the "Tax Deductible" option in expenses would need to have a condition option in order to properly model this.

Has anyone found a work-around?

What is a Tax-Free RMD? I have a deferred compensation account, that has a flow that is a % of income that flows into it. In PL, I have to model it as a 457b, because that's the only type of account that allows a flow that is a % of income.

It has a custom distribution 5 year payout that starts at early retirement, that I modeled as an RMD that goes for 5 years.

I defined a custom RMD distribution in the account section of the plan (20%/year). When I look in the Income report, it shows the "income" from that distribution as "Tax-Free". Why would it do that?

RMDs aren't tax free. I've indicated that the contributions are "0", effectively meaning that all of this is taxable (pre-tax).

Did I model this correctly and how do I get this not to show up as a "tax-free RMD". Since a 457b is pre-tax, I wouldn't expect that there would ever be "tax-free RMDs".

How can I model a cash buffer to protect against market downturns?
Ideally I'd set it to a multiplier of expected annual expenses.