My wife and I are giving our daughter the max IRS gift amount every year (on the theory that it's better for her to have her inheritance now instead of waiting until we are gone.) So every year I transfer $18k from my taxable brokerage account into our checking account, and she transfers $18k from her taxable account, and we write a check. We have both taxable brokerage accounts and the checking account set up in Pralana. But how do we set up the transfers from brokerage to checking?
This kind of applies to our general cash flow. We fund our checking account via transfers from brokerage accounts. But in Pralana, when the checking account is empty it takes money from the next account in the withdrawal order. Can we tell it to take money in equal amounts from both brokerage accounts?
Pralana is a "big picture" program that deals with the sum of all the taxable accounts as that's all that matters for modeling big picture issues like retirement success, Roth Conversions, allowable spending, taxes, etc. Every program has to stop somewhere, I think it would add a lot of complexity to try to also make it a budgeting program to handle day to day cash flow decisions.
@jerrywhite518gmail-com You cannot tell Pralana to take money in equal amounts from each brokerage account because it actually only models one virtual account. And, as you say, in cases of negative cash flow, withdrawals from your accounts are made in accordance with the withdrawal priorities you've specified; however, a coming enhancement will allow you to specify scheduled withdrawals from your taxable account and that will enable withdrawals from that account which are independent of withdrawal priorty.
Stuart
