Cash flow forecast and retirement planner - retirement year?

Having trouble understanding these two sheets. When I indicate retirement as a life event (so end of income stream), it seems to double count that income (income and life event). Then in the retirement planner, my income does not stop after my intended retirement year even those I specified it as a life event.

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Hi @srcrockett ,
I suggest you review the How to Use the Cash Flow Forecast Sheet article:

and also the Retirement Planner Template article:

for a better understand on how these sheets work and how they work together.

Indicating retirement as a life event doesn’t end an income stream. You would need to give the income stream an end year.

Let us know if that helps.
Jon

Thank you Jon. I have reviewed the two articles a few times as I’m sure I’m just doing something wrong. However I still can’t figure it out. In the cash flow spreadsheet I set up overrides for my paycheck and my wife’s paycheck (they appear in bold now). I set an end year as 2041. My expectation was that after 2041, our paychecks would no longer increase cash flow. However what appears to be happening is that while my “Life Events” goes to zero (and as a result the duplicated column as well), my “Unadjusted Income” remains (increasing at the % I indicated), so the cash flow calc picks up that income. I guess I could set up another override starting in 2041 with an “expense” but that seems like not the intended solution so just looking for some guidance.

Actually I believe I’ve figured it out. Just needed to add another life event and put it at $0.
Separate question - do you agree that if I’m using the cash flow forecast as an input into the retirement planner the “withdrawal” rate may be double counting expenses? Assuming that I would be using withdrawals to cover expenses and nothing else.

@srcrockett ,
I’m glad you were able to figure it out and get it to work.

The net cash flow numbers transfer over to one of the retirement sheet columns.

If you have a negative cash flow, you are going to need to cover that gap with a reduction of your investments. (well, you could cover it with credit cards or a loan, but these sheets don’t make that assumption.) That gap would reduce your investment value.

Likewise, if you had a positive cash flow in one year, that amount would be added to your investment totals in the retirement sheet.

These are the assumptions the sheets make. They might not apply to everyone’s situation.

But I don’t follow how you are counting it twice. But perhaps you are making some assumptions that the spreadsheet doesn’t.

If you sell assets in your investment account, that turns into cash, or “income” that can offset cash flow. It’s not a cash outflow. Unless you set up a life event in your cash flow spreadsheet to reflect asset sales you’re not getting any credit from the proceeds.
Say you start with $1,000, you make $50 in investment gain, and you have $50 in expenses to cover. You sell $50 of assets to cover. $1,000 + $50 (inv gain) - $50 (withdrawal) = $1,000. Of course the $50 withdrawal is used to cover the $50 in expenses. Instead it seems the spreadsheet says $1,000 +$50 (inv gain) - $50 (withdrawal) - $50 (expenses) = $950.
What am I missing?

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Yes, if you sell assets in your investment account and transfer them to a non-investment account, that would add to your cash.

While you might consider that income, you might also consider it a transfer transaction (not income) from your investment account to your cash/checking/non-investment account.

Moving the asset (from selling the investment) from one account to another doesn’t change your net worth.

For the retirement sheet to work, I wouldn’t include selling assets in your investment account part of the Cash Flow sheet, even though I realize it could affect Cash Flow.

The Retirement sheet, on its own, will calculate whether any investments need to be sold or not based on the yearly Cash Flow.

Your method of entering the withdrawal is likely forcing the double counting.

If these sheets don’t work for you, of course, you don’t need to use them.
Or feel free to modify them for your own needs.

Jon

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Understood, thank you for the clarification and insight!

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Hi, I’m stuck in the same place you were and hoping you could help with post retirement income and expenses. I understand the following:

-post retire income: Added life event of retirement and set it to “0”. That removed the duplicate income but still keeps the unadjusted income and hence an inaccurate cash flow. How did you handle this? I was hoping to use the withdrawal rate in retirement as income to compute cash flow.

-post retire expenses: I’d like to add some way to reduce expenses post retire, do you understand any way to do this?

I have 2 categories for my paycheck. One through retirement where income increases as a % annually. And another that starts at retirement and goes through the rest of estimate life. The latter I set at $0 for the amount/year column. Does that answer your question?

On the expenses side, I think you’d have to take each category and override for the post retirement period. You can use negative %s in the change/year column.

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It’s been a second since this has been updated.

In the cashfow forecast, my income seems to be calculated based on my current yearly income with no opportunity to end that income stream.

Then when I “retire” that income continues to be considered as income as part of the “cash flow forecast”

Sorted this by changing O2 to

=IFNA(ARRAYFORMULA(IF(ISNUMBER(L2:L), ( IF(L2:L >= 'Retirement Planner'!C$22, 0, C11*POW(1+E5,L2:L-AF10)) ) ,IFERROR(1/0))),IFERROR(1/0))

To accommodate for if I’m past retirement age to no longer account for income.

Then on ‘Retirement Planner’ rather than worrying about the 4% withdrawal, I just added the cashflow, which was negative.

Does this make sense?

That can work, @jackson.joel. but an easier way is to create a “Life Event” that overrides your salary category (e.g. “Paycheck”) with a zero value. Just fill in a new row in the Life Events table, use the proper salary category, set the start date to your retirement age and set the amount to zero.