New users (today). The model wants me to enter balances as of 12/31/24 and it would be easier to enter balances as of today. I assume it will model balances and growth I give it.
And is there a different way I should be requesting help than this forum?
@kingmota The Forum is a great place to ask this kind of question. The tool does indeed want your balances to be as of the beginning of the starting year and will assume that's what you have entered. From there, yes, it will model the growth of your accounts and the changing account balances throughout the modeling period. The tool needs the starting balances to be start-of-year amounts because there's no way to know what amount of growth, what deposits and what withdrawals might have been made to each account if we were to use some other date. I understand that it would be easier for you if you could just enter current balances, and we investigated that as an option, but there's just way too much complexity in trying to make the tool work with start dates other than January 1.
Stuart
@kingmota Welcome!
With respect to the location to request help, any way will work.
Perhaps this should be located in the https://pralanaretirementcalculator.com/community/questions-and-discussion-relative-to-pralana-onlines-build-features/ section of the Forum since your question pertains to the Build features (Inputs) to the tool.
To your question: Don't you have the ability to look at your account statements from 12/31/24? Ideally, you would retrieve those statements and enter the values found there. This would be the best route to take.
The tool will calculate your portfolio returns based on the values you enter. The tool assumes those values are from 12/31/24 and will calculate the 12-month returns using the growth rates you specify. So it will report a 12-month growth value over the next 11-months. But unless your account values or composition changed significantly since January 1st, it probably won't make too much of a difference in the big picture.
If it were me, the difference in value of my accounts hasn't significantly changed enough in the last month to have a big effect on the model.
I don't know if this helps or not but good luck!
To extend the scope of this question a bit, is it reasonable to start Pralana Online this late in the year (Aug 7, 2025) and expect it to produce a good Roth conversion estimate for this year? Or should I just wait until Jan 2026 to begin? It seems a shame to ignore the 7 months of information I already know about my investments, but I don't see how to enter that.
I'm already retired, living off of SS and investments, and I start RMDs next year, so this is a last chance at a low tax bracket.
Since I joined mid-year, I calculated what my balances were (would have been) at the beginning of the year and entered that as my initial balances. More precisely, I take the current balances and back out the partial year gains I would have had based on my ROI assumptions so that Pralana's forecast will match the current reality.
Since I joined mid-year, I calculated what my balances were (would have been) at the beginning of the year and entered that as my initial balances. More precisely, I take the current balances and back out the partial year gains I would have had based on my ROI assumptions so that Pralana's forecast will match the current reality.
I think Pralana Gold did things this way. One rub is you'd have to enter a separate Expected Returns for the current year or the taxation on Taxable account will be inaccurate.
