Scenarios

Scenarios is where you put a move beside your own numbers and read what changes: an extra amount each month, a one-time payment, a different retirement age, a different school. The planners there include Retirement savings, College savings, Mortgage payoff, Debt payoff and Home purchase savings, and every one is built the same way. A neutral card states what is true today, read from your accounts, loans and plan. A teal Scenario card holds the moves. The results answer with a band of figures, each carrying a change line against the plan without the moves, then the charts and a schedule. Nothing a planner computes writes back to an account, a loan or your plan.

What is a scenario?

A scenario is a set of moves laid over the facts Taiga Finance already holds. A household with a car loan, a mortgage and a 529 for one child has three things to ask about, and the planners read each from its source: the debts from Debt, the loan from Real estate, the child’s savings from the linked 529. The question is always the same shape — what does this move change against what I am already doing — so the answer is always two figures side by side. A scenario can be saved, reopened and set against another saved one. The saved copy is yours to keep or delete; the accounts it was read from never notice it.

Which planners are there?

The Scenarios page is one grid of tiles, each titled with its planner’s name. A tile with a saved scenario behind it sits first; a tile you have never saved from is dimmed until you do. Every tile opens all the same.

Tile	Reads from	Answers with
Retirement savings	Your linked investment and retirement accounts, the household’s members	Money lasts, At retirement, Chance money lasts
College savings	The beneficiaries you add and their linked 529s	College cost covered, Extra monthly to hit target, Chance of hitting target
Mortgage payoff	A mortgage you track on Real estate, or a Blank calculator	Paid off, Interest left to pay
Debt payoff	Your debts from Debt, or a Blank calculator	Debt-free, Interest left to pay
Home purchase savings	The savings funds you tick, the Plan lines that fund them, your housing commitments on Recurring	Ready to buy, Cash needed, Monthly cost of owning

The Roth conversion ladder is not among them.

How is a planner laid out?

Every planner is three columns of the same parts.

• The cards rail. The first card is neutral and titled for its subject — Household on retirement, Beneficiaries on college, Loan on mortgage payoff, Plan on debt payoff, and two, Savings then Home, on home purchase savings. It holds the facts and the plan’s levers, and when the figures can be read per item — a child, a debt — it lists the items as one list you pick from, with an Everyone or All debts row at the top. Below it sits the teal Scenario card, and, where the planner runs on assumed rates, a warm Assumptions card shut to a one-line summary until you open it.
• The figures. A band of two or three figures leads the results. Each opens into its working on a click, so a number is never just a number. While a move is on, a change line under the figure reads the difference against the plan without the moves — a date’s reads in months or years sooner or later, a dollar figure’s less or more.
• The charts and the schedule. The charts follow, then a ledger that opens on its next five years, with a row that opens the rest in place.

A figure the planner cannot produce this solve prints a bare dash. Its reason is one hover away, on a tooltip labelled Why no figure.

What is a locked fact?

A fact read from a record — a loan’s Balance, Rate, Term and Principal & interest, the household’s Current assets, debt payoff’s Monthly budget — renders as a figure, not a field. Its receipt names the record it came from, such as From your loan’s terms. or Synced from your linked investment & retirement accounts., and when the value is set somewhere else the label carries a door to that page: the loan, the plan, the account. A wrong figure is corrected at its source and never typed over in the planner. A value with no source — a home’s Appreciation, a blank calculator’s every field — stays editable.

What is a move?

A move is a block on the Scenario card. The card ends in one button per kind of move you could add. Each planner has its own kinds: Extra monthly and One-time contribution on retirement, with Social Security beside them; Extra monthly, One-time payment and Aid on college; Extra monthly, Biweekly, One-time payment, Refinance and Recast on mortgage payoff; Extra monthly and One-time payment on debt payoff; Extra monthly, One-time payment, Lower down payment and Later purchase on home purchase savings. An open block states its values once; a block with nothing typed reads no value in its header and changes nothing. A move with a window — From and Until, or From age and To age — runs only inside it; a blank start is today.

What is the disclaimer under every calculator?

Every planner ends on the same line, under its own caveats: This is an estimate based on your data and what you entered. It’s not a prediction or financial advice. Each planner’s own limits are listed above it as What this plan doesn’t capture, and a caveat raised by your inputs — a lump larger than the balance it was aimed at, a payment that never covers the interest — joins that list for the solve it applies to.

How do I save and compare a scenario?

The toolbar above the results holds Save. Until the first save it holds nothing else: no saved-scenario picker and no Compare. Click Save, name the scenario, and it lands in the Saved scenarios picker, which from then on opens the planner on whichever save you touched last. A loaded scenario’s menu offers Rename and Delete this scenario. Editing a loaded scenario shows Unsaved, with Save changes to keep the edit in place, Save as new to keep both, and Revert to reload what was saved.

Compare sets the open plan against a reference and reads every figure vs that name: Baseline — the plan with no moves — or any saved scenario from the same picker. A fact you edit while comparing applies to both sides, so the two plans never disagree about today. Stop comparing turns it off.

What does the Retirement savings planner show?

The Household card lists each member as a row — Age, Retire at, Plan to, Contribution — captioned retires at N · $N/mo, with the household’s monthly contribution summed under them. Current assets is a locked fact synced from the linked investment and retirement accounts. Annual spend is the one lever. A member’s age is blank until entered, unless you have typed a Birth year under Settings › Account; that field is opt-in, year only, and nothing in Taiga Finance infers it.

The moves are Extra monthly — one block, with Limit to certain ages to bound it — any number of One-time contribution blocks, each At age, and a Social Security block per member: For, Amount per month, and From age between 62 and 70.

Three figures lead. Money lasts is a verdict, past N with a check when the money outlasts the plan’s horizon or the age it runs out. At retirement is the projected balance at the retirement age, metered against the balance the plan needs. Chance money lasts is the share of simulated runs in which it does. The Balance projection chart carries a Simulated ranges chip in its header that toggles the band of those runs on the plot. How much more with more each month is a row of flat extras and where each lands. Year by year is the schedule, by age.

What does the College savings planner show?

The Beneficiaries card is one list to pick from, under Everyone. Picking a child re-scopes the figures and charts to that child; Everyone reads the household. Each child carries Enrolls at age, a School type — In-state public, Out-of-state public or Private nonprofit — a Cost per year, today filled in from the College Board’s sticker averages for that type and editable, Savings today, a Monthly contribution and a Savings target as a percentage of cost. Manage beneficiaries in the card header adds or edits a child. The Assumptions card holds Nominal annual return and College-cost inflation.

The moves are Extra monthly and One-time payment, each For one child, and Aid, an Amount per year for one child. A contribution’s window runs from Today to Enrollment unless you set it.

College cost covered is a metered share of the cost; Extra monthly to hit target is the flat extra that would reach the Savings target; Chance of hitting target reads Chance all hit target under Everyone. Balance vs cost stacks the projected balance as a filled band under a cost rule across the college years, with Current plan as a dashed ghost while a move is on and the same Simulated ranges chip. Coverage by beneficiary draws one lane per child and shows only under Everyone. Year by year is the schedule.

What does the Mortgage payoff planner show?

The same planner sits on a property page under its loan. Under Scenarios it opens with a Mortgage picker: every loan you track, then Blank calculator. The Loan card’s Balance, Rate, Term, Start date and Principal & interest are locked facts with a door to the loan; Home value and Appreciation are yours to edit. The reference is Current loan, the loan as it stands with no moves. The moves, the two dated figures, the stacked Monthly P&I payments, the Mortgage payoff date by extra monthly payment lanes and the five-year Month by month ledger are on Mortgage payoff.

What does the Debt payoff planner show?

The Debts picker at the top offers Your debts — the ones in your payoff plan on Debt — or a Blank calculator, where each debt is a row you type: Name, Balance, APR, Minimum. The Plan card holds Monthly budget, a locked fact read from your plan’s budget lines, the Debts list with an All debts row, and the one lever, Strategy: As planned, Avalanche or Snowball, the same three views the Payoff readout on Debt reads — see Debts. The blank calculator offers the last two. Opening the planner from Debt’s Model a what-if → carries the view you had picked.

The moves are one Extra monthly block, with From and Until, and any number of One-time payment blocks, each On a date and Toward one debt or the Payoff order. Debt-free and Interest left to pay lead, each with its change against the plan. Balance over time, Payoff order and Debt-free date by extra monthly payment follow; Month by month opens on the next five years, and This month’s payments lists what the plan pays this month.

What does the Home purchase savings planner show?

Saved on the Savings card is the locked total of the funds you tick. Saving reads the Plan lines that fund them, and Rent your housing commitments on Recurring. The Home card is the home you type: Price, Down payment, Rate, Term and its carrying costs. Ready to buy is the first month the savings reach the cash needed at a rising price. Cash needed and Monthly cost of owning are read at the price then. Savings and cash needed, Ready date by extra monthly saving and Net cost over time follow, then a Year by year ledger that sets owning against renting for 15 years from the closing. The cards, the moves, the ledger’s arithmetic and the caveats are on Home purchase savings.

Troubleshooting

A figure shows a dash instead of a number.

The planner withheld it this solve. Hover or tap the dash — the tooltip reads Why no figure and names the reason: an age not entered, a plan that never clears, a debt outside this run. Fill the fact it names, or read the caveat under What this plan doesn’t capture.

A move I added changes nothing.

Its block has no amount, or its date falls after the plan is already done. A blank block reads no value in its header. Type the amount, or move the date earlier.

I can’t find Compare or my saved scenarios.

Nothing is saved yet. The picker and Compare appear with the first Save.

The planner opened on a scenario I didn’t pick.

A planner opens on the save you touched most recently. Pick another from Saved scenarios, or Revert to reload the one that is open.

FAQ

Does a saved scenario change my accounts, loans or plan?

No. A planner reads its facts from their records and writes nothing back. To change a balance, a rate or a budget line, follow the door on the locked figure to the page that owns it.

Can I delete a saved scenario?

Yes. Open it from Saved scenarios and choose Delete this scenario from its menu. The planner stays on its current values; only the saved copy goes.

Does my partner see my scenarios?

A planner reads only what you can see. A partner’s loan whose terms are not shared with you is not offered in the Mortgage picker, and debts you cannot see sit outside a debt run — see Couples and household visibility.

Can I plan a loan or a debt I don’t have yet?

Yes. Both the mortgage and the debt planners offer a Blank calculator, where every fact is a field. A blank scenario saves like any other.

Do the planners give me a target or a recommendation?

No. A planner states what a move changes against your current plan, and every calculator ends on the same disclaimer. Which move to make is yours.