Divide a single stage into multiple stages
Most plans have one to two default stages – Pre-Retirement and Retirement. Advisers often like to subdivide these large, often monolithic swaths of time into multiple, smaller stages that better reflect future changes in their clients’ lifestyles and needs.
For example, the Pre-Retirement stage could be split into “Early Career” and “Late Career” stages or perhaps “Children at Home” and “Empty Nest”. The Retirement stage is even more commonly subdivided into stages such as “Active Retirement”, “Late Retirement”, and possibly “Long Term Care”.
Whether you choose to customize the stages on the planning timeline or not is strictly up to you, but if you do subdivide stages, the language and timing is all your own.
For example, let’s divide the default Retirement stage into two stages called “Active Retirement” and “Slowing Down”.
1. Go to either the Timeline or the Dashboard screen and click the plus (+) button, bottom right.
2. Select Stage.
3. Stage Name: Enter a unique name for the new stage, in this case “Active Retirement”.
4. Stage Colour: Select a unique colour for the stage.
Under Timing in the lower half of the screen:
5. Stage Starts: In the timeline below, either drag and drop and drop the Retirement event into the Stage Starts box above or simply click this event icon and select Set as Start Event.
Stage Ends: In this example, there isn’t already an event in the timeline appropriate for use to end Active Retirement and to start their next stage. Slowing Down.
6. Double-click any bar above the timeline to add a new event to the timeline on the fly.
7. Give the new event a name, “Slowing Down” and select an icon for it.
8. Select Set as End Event option to specify that this new event is to be used as the end of the Active Retirement stage.
9. Click Done (top right) now that you are finished adding the Active Retirement stage.
Next, let’s edit the name of the adjacent stage to the right. This stage will still show the name of the former “Retirement” stage.
10. Click this stage.
11. Enter a new name for the stage, “Slowing Down”, and if desired, select a new colour for the stage.
12. Click Done (top-right) once you have finished making your changes to the stage.
What was formerly the “Retirement” stage should now be divided into two distinct stages, “Active Retirement” and “Slowing Down”, as pictured below.
