Taxable Investments - US

In this training, we’re going to walk through how to enter an investment account into the Voyant software.

To do that, we’re going to go to the plus button in the bottom-right corner and select Savings and Investments.

I do want to point out that this is where you would enter taxable investment accounts, such as a brokerage account.

Qualified accounts, such as retirement accounts like a 401(k),  are entered in a different section of the software. This is not where you would enter those account types.

So, we’re going to select Savings and Investments.

Under Type, you’ll notice several different account options available.

We have:

• Investment, which would be used for something like a brokerage account or a donor-advised fund (DAF)
• And we also have an option called Other Taxable

I’m not going to demonstrate the Other Taxable account type today, but I did want to point it out because it’s a very flexible option for unique account situations.

For example, you could use it for:

• Offshore accounts
• Accounts subject to unique taxation rules
• Or situations where you want to manually customize the tax treatment being applied

So, just be aware that this account type exists within Voyant as a flexible modeling option.

For today’s example, I’m going to switch the type back to Investment.

We’re going to add Philip as a co-owner of the account and name this account Brokerage.

Next, we’ll enter the current account balance and the cost basis.

Entering the cost basis is important because otherwise the software will assume that capital gains tax applies to the entirety of every withdrawal from the account.

So, we’ll go ahead and enter the cost basis information.

Next, we’ll enter a monthly contribution amount.

Let’s say our clients contribute $350 per month into this brokerage account.

As soon as we enter that contribution amount, the software prompts us to update the timing for those contributions.

We’re going to have those contributions occur from now until Judy retires.

Again, notice that the timing section here is specifically referring to the timing of contributions.

Next, I’m going to move back up to the Growth section.

You have two options for modeling growth on this account:

• You can use a fixed growth rate
• Or you can use portfolios

If your firm already uses custom portfolios within Voyant, you’ll have the option to use those existing portfolio models. You can also create your own custom portfolio allocation if needed.

I’m going to select Use Portfolio.

From here, you can use the slider bar to select a portfolio. I’m going to choose the Moderate Portfolio – Long-Term, which has already been preloaded into my subscription.

You can see that the expected average return for this portfolio is 7.94%.

Next, under Fees, you’ll see that this account has a product fee of 1.5%.

That means this account will grow at 7.94% gross growth, net of the 1.5% product fee.

You can also edit and apply additional fee types if needed.

These fees represent actual expenses being applied to the account.

Moving down to Steps, I want to point out that you can apply steps to investment accounts as well.

For example, you could:

• Change contribution amounts over time
• Adjust the growth assumptions
• Or modify other account settings at different stages within the plan

In this example, I’m going to apply a step to the growth strategy.

We’re going to use the Moderate Portfolio during the earlier years of the plan, and then transition to a more conservative portfolio later in retirement.

So, when Judy retires, we’ll step this account down to the Conservative Portfolio.

I’ll click Done to save that step.

You also have the option to transfer money into this account from other accounts within the plan if needed.

Under Withdrawal Limit, the default setting is As Needed.

However, you can also change this to:

• Do Not Allow
• Scheduled Only
• Minimum Balance
• Percentage Amount
• Fixed Amount
• Or an inflation-adjusted amount

You can also configure Planned Withdrawals if you know you want a specific amount withdrawn from the account at a certain point within the plan.

I’m going to click Done to save the account.

Now, what we should notice is that there is more blue cash flow showing within the retirement years of the plan.

That’s because we’ve now added an additional asset that can be drawn upon during retirement.

If we turn on Details, you’ll also see more taxable assets flowing into the plan during those retirement years.

If we then go into Year View, we can scroll through the plan using the slider bar.

You’ll notice:

• First, the plan is using Philip’s cash account, where we had been saving surplus income
• Then, once that is depleted, the software begins drawing from the Emergency Fund
• And finally, withdrawals begin coming from the Brokerage Account

If we go to the Investments tab, we can also review how the Brokerage Account is growing net of fees.

You can click into the account to review:

• Asset allocation
• Actual returns
• Scheduled withdrawals
• Product fees
• Net growth
• And other account details

Finally, if we go back to the Let’s See screen and switch to the Dual Chart view, we can review taxes within the plan.

We can also switch to the Assets Chart, turn on the legend, and look at the Brokerage Account balance at any point in the plan.

For example, at retirement, the Brokerage Account has a value of approximately $726,000.

You can then see how the account is gradually drawn down over time until it is depleted around ages 79 to 81.

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 support team.

Thanks for listening.