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Compare months projects your plan as if one month’s spending, or the average of several months, were your normal spending from now on. Each choice runs the full projection beside your plan as it stands, so you can see what June’s spending versus July’s does to your financial independence age, your plan’s funding and your final net worth.
Nothing changes until you apply a result. Applying saves the chosen spending to the plan; income stays as entered.
A month is available only when every account behind it covers every day of it. A partial month would look cheaper than it was, so it stays greyed out, and hovering or focusing it says why:
| Shown as | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Month in progress | The month hasn’t ended yet. |
| Still settling | A synced account was last read within six days of the month’s end, so late card postings may be missing. |
| Not fully covered | An account’s history or imported statements don’t span the whole month. |
| Waiting for history | An account has no transaction history yet. |
The accounts are the ones your plan’s spending from transactions reads, or, when that is off, every account that counts toward spending. Only transactions in the plan’s currency count.
A month’s essential and discretionary spending each become an annual amount: twelve times the month, or twelve times the average of the chosen months. Refunds reduce a category, but a month with more refunds than purchases counts as zero, never negative.
| June essential spending | $3,400 | |
|---|---|---|
| + | July essential spending | $4,200 |
| = | Average month | $3,800 |
| = | Annual essential spending, 12 × the average | $45,600 |
Transfers between your accounts, debt payments, saving and investing, and taxes never count as spending, because the plan already models them. Transactions you mark one-time show in the month but are left out of the projection.
The month replaces your living expenses. Each one is scaled so that this year’s essential and discretionary totals equal the month’s; a mixed expense is split by its discretionary share. Names, end dates, inflation and flexible spending settings stay as they are.
| Expense | In the comparison |
|---|---|
| Ordinary living expenses | Scaled to the month |
| Payroll deductions | Kept as entered |
| Qualified education | Kept as entered |
| Expenses that repeat every few years | Kept as entered |
| Expenses paid from a specific account or tied to an income | Kept as entered |
| Spending from transactions (when on) | Only these two expenses change |
Expenses that start later, such as retirement spending, scale by the same ratio unless you set Later phases to As planned. If the plan has no discretionary spending today, the month’s discretionary amount is added as a new inflation-linked expense.
With Take-home set to Scale to month, the comparison scales your wages and self-employment income so this year’s projected take-home pay matches the month’s deposits, refining the scale a few times because tax is progressive. Pay that would need less than a tenth or more than ten times today’s income isn’t scaled, and the result says so.
Deposits are after tax and payroll deductions, and a month can include a bonus or miss a paycheck, so treat this as a what-if. Applying a month never changes your income.
When the plan’s spending comes from transactions, applying switches it from recent months to the chosen months. The two connected expenses then stay at those months’ amounts until you switch back with Use recent months. If a chosen month later stops being complete, for example because you revert an import, the expenses keep their last amounts and the plan shows an error.
Otherwise, applying saves the scaled amounts to your living expenses, exactly as previewed. If the plan changed after the preview, nothing is saved: the preview refreshes so you can review it and apply again.
Read the net-worth lines in today’s dollars to compare months without inflation. See Today’s dollars and future dollars and Recurring and one-time expenses.