Transcript:
In this training, we’re going to walk through how to enter cash savings into a Voyant plan.
To do this, we’re going to go to the plus button in the bottom-right corner and select Savings and Investments.
We’re then going to select Savings and Investments again from this menu, and under Type, we’re going to choose Savings.
This is going to be a joint savings account, so I’m also going to select Philip as a co-owner of the account.
We’re going to name this account Emergency Fund and enter an initial balance of $20,000.
Under Entered Interest Rate, this determines how much the account grows annually. This figure is initially coming from the Cash Savings Rate in the Plan Settings section, which is the default amount.
However, in this example, this account is a high-yield savings account, so I’m going to manually adjust the interest rate and increase it to 3.5%.
I’m also going to keep the Growth is Fixed option toggled on.
You can always hover over the information icon here to learn more about what that setting means, and you can manually toggle it off if needed.
Next, under Contributions, our clients are going to contribute $250 per month to this account.
Whenever you enter a contribution amount, the software will automatically prompt you to update the timing of those contributions.
If we click on that option and move over to the Timing section, the software will ask us to specify when those contributions begin and end.
In this case, the contributions are going to start immediately and continue until Judy retires.
Next, under Fees, I want to confirm that all fees are set to zero, and they are, so we’re good there.
The Steps section doesn’t really apply in this example, but I did want to point out that Steps are available for this account type.
For example, you could:
- Step up contribution amounts
- Adjust growth rates
- Change dividend or interest assumptions
- Modify withdrawal limits
- Or change timing assumptions over time
You can also create transfers into this account from other accounts if needed.
Next, under Withdrawal Limit, I want to treat this as a true emergency fund.
Rather than leaving the withdrawal setting as “As Needed,” I’m going to set a Minimum Balance of $20,000.
This ensures that, regardless of the needs of the plan, the account will always maintain at least $20,000 for emergencies.
Under Planned Withdrawals, I’m not going to schedule any withdrawals right now. However, if you ever needed to model planned withdrawals from this account, that option is available here as well.
We’ll click Done to save the account.
Now, if we turn on Details within the plan, you’ll notice that once the clients reach retirement, the software does begin drawing from this account as needed, but the balance never falls below the $20,000 minimum we established.
We can verify that by going over to the Assets Chart.
You’ll see the Emergency Fund displayed there, and throughout the lifetime of the plan, the account never drops below $20,000.
If we then go into Year View and open the Investments tab, we can see the Emergency Fund listed there as well.
We can also see:
- Annual contributions of $3,000
- The end-of-year balance
- The total annual return
- And how the account grows over time
You can click through each year in the plan to review the account growth annually, and later in the plan you’ll begin to see withdrawals occurring, while still maintaining that minimum $20,000 balance.
I hope this has been 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.