Transcript:
In this video, we’ll be reviewing Voyant’s Timeline screen.
You can access the Timeline screen by clicking Timeline here in the top-left corner.
The Timeline screen is where your clients’ values and time intersect with their money.
The first thing we’re going to do is look at how to adjust our stages. There’s no hard-and-fast rule for how you should set up your Timeline screen, so I’m just going to show you a few examples of how you might structure this.
The first thing I’m going to do is break our timeline into three separate stages. We’re going to have a Pre-Retirement stage, an Early Retirement stage, and a Later Retirement stage.
Here at age 75, I’m going to double-click in the gray area to create an event. Let’s call this one Slowing Down. We’re going to give it an icon, and then click Done to save it.
Now that I have that event created, I can break up this retirement stage into two parts.
I’m going to click on the existing stage and rename it Early Retirement. We’ll keep the stage starting at Judy’s retirement at age 65, but now we’ll have it end at our Slowing Down event. We’ll set that as the end event, keep the stage color blue, and click Done to save.
Now we just need to rename the later stage. I’m going to click on it and give it a new name. We’ll call this one Later Retirement. You can assign any color you’d like, I’ll make this one purple, and then click Done to save it.
Next, I’d like to add a few goals to this plan.
Goals are trackable expenses within the plan. To add one, go to the plus button in the bottom-right corner and click the Goals icon.
The first thing I want to add is a Milestone Goal.
A milestone goal is a one-time expense, such as a wedding or a holiday. Let’s click on that.
We’re going to create a Family Vacation goal. Since this is going to be a larger vacation for the family, we’ll classify it as a major goal.
I’m also going to use the slider bar to move this into the Leisure category. This simply prioritizes the goal as something that is not considered a basic living expense. In other words, the plan would prioritize core living expenses first, and then fulfill this type of goal afterward if funds are available.
I’m also going to use the Present Value option so that this expense inflates to a future value later in the plan.
Next, we’ll go to the Timing screen and create an event a couple of years into the future when they are ages 54 and 56.
We’ll double-click on the Timeline, choose a celebration icon, name the event Family Vacation, set it as the start event, and click Done.
Now we can see the Family Vacation event on the Timeline.
Since we haven’t added any money into the plan yet, the goal is currently showing as 0% met, which is exactly what we would expect at this stage.
If we go over to the Dashboard, you can now see a large spike in expenses where that goal occurs. That expense has inflated up to a future value of $21,538.
If we then go into Year View, scroll over to that year, and click on the Expenses tab, you’ll see the Family Vacation listed as a leisure expense. Since the plan currently has no assets, it’s also showing as an unfulfilled expense.
The last thing I want to show you is how to enter a Retirement Goal.
We’ll go back to Goals and select Retirement Goal.
We’re going to say that this couple has a goal of spending $100,000 per year in retirement.
We’ll keep the inflation rate at the Plan Settings default of 2.5%.
For the timing, we’ll have this start at Philip’s retirement and end at Judy’s mortality.
I also want to use the Steps feature to reduce spending slightly during their later retirement years.
We’ll add a step and reduce the retirement spending goal down to $90,000 at age 75, assuming that their living expenses decrease slightly during the “Slowing Down” phase of retirement.
Now we have the ability to step down those expenses over time.
Again, because we haven’t entered any assets into the plan yet, the goal is currently showing as unmet. You can also see those retirement expenses reflected on the chart.
Thank you for listening, and remember that if you have any questions while working in a plan, you can always click Request Support, enter your question into the text box, and share client access with our team.