Transcript:
In this video, we’re going to review your Plan Settings. Before you get started building your plan, it’s important to review these settings. You can find them from the Dashboard by scrolling all the way down and clicking Plan Settings.
Let’s start with Default Ages.
You’ll notice here that we have the Default Mortality Age. This is typically set at the subscription level, but it can be adjusted in a What-If plan if you’d like to model an extended or early mortality scenario.
You’ll also notice the setting for Child-Owned Accounts Available in Plan Until Age 25. This will be the default unless it has been changed at the subscription level. If you’d like to model generational planning, you can adjust this to a later age and keep child-owned accounts in the plan for longer.
Next, let’s move down to Inflation and Growth.
The Inflation Rate is going to affect how expenses inflate over time within the plan. The Investment Growth Rate is going to affect how fixed-growth-rate accounts grow over time.
As you continue further down this screen, you’ll see a variety of additional settings available. We do have inline help throughout the system, so if you have questions about how any of these settings work, you can click on the different sections to get more information about how they affect outcomes within your plan.
Moving over to Account Fees and Taxation.
These settings affect the net growth of various account types within your plan. You’ll see your Federal Tax Brackets and State Tax Brackets here as well.
Whenever you create a plan and designate where your clients live, the software uses that information to determine the tax rates being applied. If your clients live in a state with no state income tax, you’ll see zero taxes reflected here.
Under Asset Allocation, you’ll see any custom portfolios that have been created within your plan. You can also designate a default custom portfolio here.
Next, under Market Assumptions, you’ll see the default market assumptions being used in your plan. You can also change and apply different default market assumptions from this section.
Moving down to Major Loss.
This section allows you to set up a default major loss scenario within your plan. If you’d like to schedule a market crash or major loss scenario using the Insights section or within a What-If plan, there is a Major Loss event available in the Timeline section that uses these settings.
You can model anything from a one-year to a five-year major loss event and customize the assumptions here. There is also additional inline help available in this section.
Under Liquidation Order, this determines how your client’s assets are liquidated during retirement years.
The software will first use any available cash sources, such as cash savings or state pensions. Then it will use the remaining assets in the order shown here. You can also bring specific assets over from the left-hand side to customize the liquidation order further.
Next is Savings Order.
This determines how savings are prioritized when funds are limited. For example, during the accumulation or working years, if your clients do not have enough funds to fully contribute to every planned savings goal, the software will prioritize contributions based on this order.
You can move these items up or down to customize the priority.
Lastly, under Calculation Settings, we again have inline help available for all of these options. However, there are a couple of settings I’d specifically like to point out.
The first is Transfer All Excess Income and Credit to Savings.
By default, excess or surplus income in Voyant is assumed to be spent. However, if you would like the software to assume that surplus income is saved instead, you can toggle this option on. You also have the ability to apply this only during retirement years if preferred.
Another important setting is Allow Qualified Withdrawals Before Age 60.
If you’d like to model qualified withdrawals or 72(t) withdrawals in your plan, you can enable this option here to allow those withdrawals before age 60.
I hope that was helpful. If you have any questions, remember that you can always click the name of your client in the top-right corner, select Request Support, enter your question into the text box, and share client access with our team.
Thanks for listening.