Experiment with the Lifetime Plan
By experimenting with different scenarios, you can add events you're dreaming about (such as taking time off work) or nervous about (a few years of private college) and see how they look, without compromising your existing plan.

You can experiment with your plan in two ways. Here, you'll learn how to add an event to your actual plan and then review the results. If you don't like what you see, you can leave the event in your plan for later, but exclude it from being calculated in your plan's results.

You can also use the Financial Event Modeler to simulate the effects of certain events on your plan and see a graph that details the event's impact on your bottom line. To learn more, see the related topics below.

  1. Click Planning.
  2. Click Planning Tools, and then click Lifetime Planner.
  3. In the left pane, click the page for the event you want to experiment with, such as Income or Loans & debt.
  4. Enter the information for the event.
  5. In the left pane, click Results.
  6. In the left pane, click the page where you made your changes in step 3.
  7. Select the event you added in step 3, and then select the Exclude this event from my Lifetime Plan check box at the bottom of the page.
  8. In the left pane, click Results again.
  9. Use the difference between the two results to help you gauge whether this event is a good idea. If the event seems inevitable but you don't like the new results, adjust other parts of your plan.

Note

For ideas on how to improve your Lifetime Plan, click Results in the left pane, and then click Improving your plan.