Living expenses are typically the costs associated with your day-to-day life, such as housing, food, transportation, and healthcare.

On an Asset-Map: Including a living expense cash flow on your client's Asset-Map can help illustrate your client's financial needs. It can be an important part of the conversation when planning wholistically.

On a Target-Map: Living expenses is also part of the Retirement Target-Map's "What you want" page, but does not represent the same dollar amount of the Asset-Map cash flow and is not pulled in from the client's Asset-Map. Rather, it is an estimated spending desire during retirement.

Living expenses are an important part of your client's financial picture. They represent the ongoing costs that your client will need to cover in order to maintain their current lifestyle. By including them on your Asset-Map you can get a clearer understanding of how much money your client is currently using.

On an Asset-Map, you can include them as a cash flow. Click Add Cashflow and select the expense type from the Expense section of the Cash Flow Type dropdown list. This creates a negative cash flow that is subtracted from the cash flow incomes.

Living Expenses as a cash flow can be assigned to more than one interested member. This distributes one tile among the other interested members by percentage selected. Note: financials such as expense cash flows cannot be jointly owned.

It's important to regularly review and update your client's living expenses on their Asset-Map. As their financial situation changes, their living expenses may also change. For example, if you pay off a mortgage or your children move out of the house, their living expenses may decrease. This can be done at annual client meeting conversations or as desired.

Updates to an Asset-Map's living expense cash flow tile do not affect a Target-Map. Feel free to adjust the expected retirement living expense on the Target-Map as needed.

On a default Retirement Target-Map, living expenses are typically included as part of your retirement income needs on the What You Want page. It is calculated as a percentage of the client's current annual incomes.

This is the first estimate of your client's spending desires during retirement. The expectation is that you will refine those values while conversing with your client.

Please note that Target-Maps do not consider living expense cash flow financials that are created on an Asset-Map. Living expense is not generated from what has been entered on the Asset-Map as a living expense cash flow. A Retirement Target-Map generates a living expense estimate based on the client's earned income and the percentage listed in your Target-Map Preference, Retirement section.

Click the "Add Desired Cash Flow" button on the Target-Map's "What You Want" page. Fill out the form to include distinct living expenses and retirement spending goals. For instance, treat a mortgage as a distinct payment with an end date. Create a separate line item for the mortgage expense, indicating when it will conclude, which may be before the client's retirement ends.

1/2026