Once the Planner computes your expenses, the Planner funds your expenses. The Planner first attempts to fund your expenses (including plan dependent taxes) using your income. If the income coming into the plan is not enough to cover the expenses going out, the Planner will draw down from savings.

We refer to this as a shortfall, drawdown or funded gap. Once all of your savings are depleted, the Planner will resort to modeling debt. We refer to this as a deficit.

You can view any shortfall or deficit in your plan in the Insights > Surplus Gap Chart

Saved Surplus

A saved surplus indicates you had “Excess Income” – income that was not spent on specified expenses. And, you have told the system where to save that money.

Unsaved Surplus

An unsaved surplus (also called “Excess Income”) indicates you have excess income that is not being saved and is assumed to be spent.

We recommend that you intentionally set the percent of excess income to be saved \ in My Plan > Money Flows > Excess Income.

Funded Gap

A funded gap indicates that your total expenses for the year exceed your income and the system withdrew funds from available savings to cover the difference.

You can view any withdrawals from savings in the Insights > Savings > Withdrawals Chart

Unfunded Gap

If you have an unfunded gap, it indicates that your total expenses for the year exceed your income and you have exhausted all available savings – there is nothing left to withdraw to cover the difference.

In this case, the system accrues “Lifetime Debt” within your plan. Lifetime debt indicates the amount of debt you would theoretically accrue. In other words, lifetime debt is exactly how much you are living beyond your means.

When Might you Have a Surplus and Gap in the Same Year?

There are a couple of common examples we can share.

This is seen in the odd year that there's a tax reconciliation payment or other expense in January and a subsequent gap between income and expenses as the year progresses.

This is often seen the year that you retire or in a year in which an income stream begins in the middle of the year.

The year that you retire, you may have excess income prior to retirement date. However, after you retire you may begin to drawdown on accounts to fund your expenses.

In a year that you are receiving a pension or other income stream beginning in the middle of the year there may be savings drawdowns the months before you receive the pension. However, after you receive the pension there may a surplus, which will be saved according to your Excess Income settings.