Any clarification on below from manual? Are these 2 different inputs or the same point in time?
Prior to the latest full retirement year entered on the Retirement Date & Life Expectancy tab of the Build > Get Started > Scenario Assumptions page, all non-essential expenses from the Phased and Miscellaneous Expenses pages and the non-QCD expenses from the Charity page are also used verbatim; however, beginning in the latest specified retirement year, non-essential expenses from the Phased and Miscellaneous Expenses pages and the non-QCD expenses
My interpretation of that paragraph is that (1) prior to your retirement expenses marked non-essential under Miscellaneous or Phased expenses are utilized as you've entered them, (2) from your retirement date on, the spending result for the method you choose is utilized, making the non-essential Miscellaneous or Phased expenses superfluous. For instance, if you chose the fixed percentage method of withdrawal, using 5%, then starting at retirement 5% of your balance each year would become an ongoing expense, replacing, if you will, phased/miscellaneous non-essential monies. You can verify this by looking under Review > Expenses > Phases and Miscellaneous (where you will see what you entered until your date of retirement, and then nothing in those columns after that point); and looking under Review > Expenses > Variable and Consumption Smoothing where you'll see--starting at your retirement date--a changing figure representing 5% of your balance at the start of each year. A similar thing occurs with the other variable spending methods. The idea is that spending strategies are designed to provide discretionary spending to spend down your portfolio, so any phased and miscellaneous that aren't essential get worked into that mix. If for some reason you didn't want that to occur, you could of course mark those expenses as "essential" and they wouldn't be touched.
Granted, the wording is a bit odd. But it starts at the beginning of the latest full year of when you and your partner retire, ie. when as a couple you're fully retired.
.
@jkandell Thanks for your response/explanation, it is what I assumed as the same point in time. Maybe the Pralana team monitors these forums and will replace "specified" with "full" in the next manual revision.
@mgarbm May I suggest you offer feedback directly within the program? There is a category "manual". They are very responsive.
