Plan Start Date

The plan start date is the day the projection begins. Pick January 1 and the first projection year is a full year. Pick any later date and the first year is a partial one. Returns, income, expenses, and debt interest all count from that date forward.

The date is shared by all scenarios.

What the date anchors

Enter an account balance and FinZot reads it as the balance on the plan start date. It is not an average and not a year-end figure. The same holds for:

• account holdings and their tax lots
• each company stock’s price per share (stock compensation)
• debt balances and monthly payments
• property values and assessed values
• tax carryforwards, meaning capital loss, AMT credit, and disallowed investment interest, and the HSA reimbursement pool
• total contributions and the Roth 5-year clocks (contributions, Roth basis, and the 5-year rule)
• pension service credits earned so far

Choosing the date

January 1 of the current year is the default. It is the right date when the balances come from year-end statements. The first projection year is a full year, and no year-to-date figures are needed.

Any other date makes the first year a partial one, running from the start date through December 31. It can be today, or any date from January 1 of the plan’s existing start year through December 31 of the current year. The year only moves forward. A plan cannot be re-dated into a past year, but within a year the date can move either direction.

A mid-year start does not shorten the projection. The first year is still a calendar year. Nothing happens in it before the start date.

The first year’s investment return

The first year’s return applies only to the part of the year that remains. FinZot compounds it for that fraction rather than straight-lining it, and counts the fraction in days. An August 1 start in a 365-day year leaves 153 days, or 0.419 of the year, so a 5.5% assumed return produces 2.27% of growth in the first year rather than 5.5%. A plan-start balance earns a partial year’s return in the first year and a full year’s return in every year after. This is true whether the money was there in January or arrived the week before the start date.

Each fund’s return, and how it splits into price growth and distributions, is covered in returns and distributions.

Income, expenses, and debt before the start date

The first year’s income and expenses are cut at the start date. The part before it counts for tax but not for cash. That money already moved and is baked into the entered balances, so spending it again would double-count it. The part after it moves cash normally. Like the return, the cut is by day.

In a plan starting August 1:

• January through July salary is in the year’s taxable income, but is not cash the plan can spend.
• Mortgage interest paid January through July is still deductible. The payments themselves do not come out of the projection’s cash.
• Dividends and interest paid by taxable holdings before the date are taxed this year and are not spendable.
• Only August through December living expenses are funded.
• Taxes already withheld or paid before the date are credited against the year-end bill, so the year settles on what is still owed or refunded.

A stream that starts or ends mid-year prorates separately, by whole months. A job ending in June pays six twelfths of its annual amount. That figure is then cut at the plan start date by day.

Property sales and purchases do not split at all. They are dated to a month rather than a day, so one falling in the same month as the plan start counts as happening after it, and one in an earlier month of the start year counts as happening before it. After the start, sale proceeds are cash the plan can spend and a purchase is paid for out of the plan. Before the start, the same rule as every other pre-start flow applies: the property leaves the plan (or joins it), the gain on a sale is taxed in the first year with the primary residence exclusion and any depreciation recapture, and no cash moves. Enter the proceeds, net of any mortgage the sale paid off, as part of the plan start balance of the account they landed in. Do not also enter the gain as Pre-Start Investment Income; it is already counted.

A property sold in an earlier year has no place in the plan. Leave it out and enter what remains of the proceeds as balances.

Year-to-Date Inputs

FinZot has no record of what happened in the months before a mid-year start. These fields fill that gap. They appear only for a mid-year start, and are cleared if the plan moves back to January 1.

Input	When left blank
Pre-Start Tax Withholding: federal, state, FICA, state payroll	Estimated from the plan’s income and tax brackets. RSU vests are estimated the way brokers withhold them: federal at 22% of the year’s vests up to $1 million and 37% above, and state tax on top of the job’s salary. Social Security on a job’s vests stops at the same wage base as its salary. Filling in any one of the four turns the estimate off for all four, and the ones left blank count as $0.
Pre-Start Estimated Tax Payments: federal and state	Counted as $0. There is no estimate, because FinZot will not assume vouchers were sent. The two are independent.
Pre-Start Contributions: retirement and HSA, per person	Prorated from the entered contribution settings. Supplying a figure keeps the year inside the annual limit rather than stacking on top of what was already contributed. For a retirement plan, FinZot sizes the year’s deferral and employer match from the settings as usual. After the start it contributes the rest of that deferral, and the match is prorated.
Pre-Start Investment Income: the gains, dividends, and interest actually realized before the start date. Six fields: long- and short-term gains, qualified and ordinary dividends, taxable and tax-exempt interest.	Dividends and interest are estimated from the portfolio. Realized capital gains count as $0. Covered below.
Historical MAGI for IRMAA: two years before and one year before the start year	The projection year’s own MAGI stands in. IRMAA reads income from two years earlier (expenses and healthcare), and the first two years have no history to read, so a blank uses the current year instead of an estimate.
RMD Prior Year-End Balances: per account	The account’s plan-start balance stands in. RMDs are sized off the prior December 31 balance (how a year works), and the first projection year has no prior year to read from. So on an August start, an account that has grown since December is sized off the August figure and its RMD comes out too high.

All of these describe the months before the plan starts. The difference shows when sizing a Roth conversion to a bracket edge, or checking an IRMAA or ACA threshold.

Gains realized before the start date

FinZot knows what the portfolio holds today. It has no record of anything sold out of it earlier in the year. On an August 1 start, a sale made in March is invisible. The gain it realized is left out of the first year’s taxable income unless you enter it as Pre-Start Investment Income. A property sale is the exception. FinZot has the purchase price, the basis, and the sale month, so the gain on a property sold earlier in the start year is taxed without any entry here.

That makes the first year’s income too low, and anything sized against the room left in that income goes too far. A conversion aimed at the top of a bracket ends up above it. A fill aimed at an IRMAA tier or an ACA cliff ends up past it. How a fill is sized against the year’s real tax bill is covered in how a year works.

Dividends and interest do get a figure. The projection generates a full year of them from the current portfolio and taxes the January-to-July share. That is the projection’s own estimate, not what the accounts actually paid.

Entering any one of the six fields switches the estimate off for all six. If you enter only the capital gains, the dividend and interest estimates drop to $0. That leaves the first year’s income lower than leaving the whole group blank would.

Loans that start later

A loan scheduled for a future date carries its own start date, independent of the plan’s. Its first year is prorated to the months it exists. A mortgage originating in September accrues four months of interest and four months of payments that year, not twelve.

Refreshing balances

Changing the date is also how you refresh balances. Set the date to today, or to the date the plan already has, and the steps below walk through every balance. You can skip any that have not changed. The refresh covers every scenario at once.

Changing the date later

Changing the date walks through the values the new date restates.

1. Confirm. Pick the new date.
2. Year-to-Date Inputs. The table above. Shown only for a mid-year date.
3. Company Stock. Each company stock’s price on the new date, and the RSU grants the new date moves into the past. Shown only when the plan has a company stock (stock compensation).
4. Update Balances. Account holdings and debt balances as of the new date. When the year also changes, this covers property values, tax carryforwards, and pension service credits too.
5. Other Scenarios. The same values for the non-baseline scenarios. They default from the baseline wherever the two share an account, debt, or property, and you can adjust them per scenario.

Year-to-date figures belong to the date they were entered against. Moving the plan into a different year clears them.

Moving the date forward can also push a property scheduled as a future purchase into the past. The purchase no longer draws cash from the plan, but the property stays flagged as a future purchase until you convert it to a currently owned one. A sale the date moves past becomes a pre-start sale: the property leaves the plan without paying cash, and the proceeds belong in the balances you update in step 3.