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A future event changes your Financial Plan from a date you choose: a home or car you buy, a raise, a child, a loan you take out or the pension you start getting. You add events to a scenario, and finerd works their income, spending, assets and loans into your net worth from that date. Events are part of Financial Plan, a finerd Pro feature for personal spaces on the web and in the iOS app; the Android app doesn’t have it. If you haven’t built a plan yet, start with Build a financial plan.

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How events work

An event has a name, a date and one or more items. Each item is an asset, a loan, an income category or an expense category, with an amount and the years it applies, from Effective from to Effective until.
  • An income or expense item replaces that category’s amount in the plan for those years. For example, a Salary & Wages item of 60,000 USD from 2028 means your salary is 60,000 USD a year from then on.
  • An asset or loan item adds its amount to the balance the account has reached in the plan by then.
Enter amounts in today’s money. finerd adjusts them for inflation up to the year they start. Amounts follow the scenario’s breakdown, which you chose when you created it: per year in a Year scenario, per month or per quarter in a Month or Quarter one. The field names show which, such as Annual income or Monthly income. Effective from and Effective until are always years. Scenarios created in the iOS app are yearly, and the examples in this article use a yearly scenario. An event only counts once you save the scenario it belongs to.

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Add an event

  1. Open Reports > Financial plan and select the pencil next to Scenario:.
  2. Under Future events, select Add event.
  3. Enter a name in Event name, such as New car.
  4. Select Event type and choose the kind of event. The type sets the event’s icon and color; every type has the same fields.
  5. Select Event date.
  6. Under Assets, Liabilities, Income or Expenses, select Add and choose an account or category. Enter its amount, rate and years, then select Save. Repeat for each item.
  7. Select Save in the event, then Save in the scenario.
Save in the event appears once it has at least one item.
A scenario with a Mortgage or Car purchase event can’t be saved at the moment: Save does nothing. Choose another type, such as Property, Loan or Custom.
Event panel Help test new car with the Event type menu open, listing Mortgage, Property, Car purchase, Child and Job change.

Event types on the web.

Event panel Help test new car with Event type Custom, Event date Oct 1, 2030, Active on, the asset Blue hatchback from 2030 to 2090 at $25,000.00, empty Liabilities and Income sections, and the expense Car Ownership Costs of $25,000.00 for 2030 only.

A car bought in October 2030.

Assets and Liabilities list the accounts you already have. To plan something you don’t track yet, such as a home you’re going to buy, first add an account for it, for example a Real estate account with a balance of 0. See Track property.

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Plan a big purchase

A purchase usually has two sides: what you’ll own and how you’ll pay for it.
  1. Add an event dated when you plan to buy, such as New car in October 2030.
  2. Under Assets, add the account for what you’re buying and enter its value, such as 25,000 USD for a car. Set how it gains or loses value each year; a car usually loses value.
  3. Pay for it in one of two ways:
    • With savings: under Expenses, add a category such as Car Ownership Costs, enter the price and set Effective until to the same year, so it counts once. In a Month or Quarter scenario the amount repeats in every month or quarter of that year, so enter a twelfth or a quarter of the price.
    • With a loan: under Liabilities, add the loan and enter the amount you’ll borrow, with its Interest rate and Payoff. See Take out a loan.
Car Ownership Costs item with Effective from 2030, Effective until 2030, Annual expenses $25,000.00 and Expense growth rate 0%.

Paid with savings: the car's price counts as an expense in 2030 only.

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Change your income or spending

Use an event when an amount changes from a given year:
  • A new job or a raise: under Income, add Salary & Wages with the new yearly amount from the year it starts.
  • A child: under Expenses, add a category such as Kids with what you expect to spend a year, from the birth year until the year support ends.
  • A move, travel or a sabbatical: add the expenses that change, and the income you won’t have, for the years it lasts.
Each item has its own growth rate, such as Income growth rate for a salary that rises every year.

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Take out a loan

Under Liabilities, add the loan account and enter the amount you’ll borrow. As in the scenario, a loan item needs an Interest rate and a Payoff: Amount with the yearly payment in Annual pay, or Period (years) with the number of years in Pay years. How the loan itself is tracked is described in Track a loan or mortgage.

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Plan your retirement income

Every scenario has a Retirement event. It starts in the year you reach your retirement age, and it lists each of your income categories at 0: from then on, your salary and other income stop. Add what you’ll live on after you retire:
  1. Open the Retirement event.
  2. Under Income, open Pension, or another category such as Investment Income, and enter the yearly amount in today’s money.
  3. Save the event and the scenario.
In the example, a pension of 12,000 USD a year kept the plan’s net worth growing after retirement instead of running down. If you delete the Retirement event, your income continues until the end of the plan.
Pension item in the Retirement event with Effective from retirement, Annual income $12,000.00 and Income growth rate 0%.

A pension of 12,000 USD a year from retirement.

Heritage, above the events, is the amount you want to leave at the end of the plan. finerd uses it to estimate your financial independence age; see Find your financial independence age.

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See events on the chart

On the web, each event with a date shows its icon above that year in the chart. Select the icon to highlight the years the event covers, counted as Year 1, Year 2 and so on. When you point at a year, the details list the events in it.

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Turn off, change or delete an event

To see the plan without an event but keep it for later, open it and turn off Active. The event stays in the list, dimmed.
  • To change an event, select it in Future events.
  • To delete an event, point at it in Future events and select the trash can icon that appears. finerd removes it straight away, without asking; it’s gone for good once you save the scenario, so close the scenario without saving to keep it.
  • You can’t remove a single item from an event on the web. To drop one, delete the event and add it again without it.
Future events list with Heritage $0.00, Retirement Oct 14, 2056, and Help test new car Oct 1, 2030 with a trash can icon on the right, followed by Add event.

The trash can appears when you point at an event.