The Duration field is your primary lever for adjusting a client's "Required Monthly Contribution." Run a default Target-Map and use these talking points to navigate the funding goals. These illustrations are for educational purposes only. Every client situation is different and we defer to the expertise of the advisor in any relevant client conversations.

The true power for a financial advisor lies in manually adjusting the Duration of Contributions to match a client's unique cash flow reality or to solve for "sticker shock." Here are some additional perspectives to consider. These illustrations are for educational purposes only. Every client situation is different and we defer to the expertise of the advisor in any relevant client conversations.

⚠️ Advisor Pro-Tip: Use clones for illustrating your scenarios.

Explanation: Modeling the "Survivor’s Cash Flow Gap" In a Loss of Life Target-Map, the default Duration is 0, representing an immediate need for capital. By overriding this to a specific timeframe (e.g., 15 years), you can illustrate the "Self-Funding" cost for survivors.

Example: The resulting Required Monthly Contribution represents the monthly income shortfall the family would face today if the event had occurred "yesterday." For example, a $500,000 deficit modeled over 15 years (at a 5% expected return) reveals a monthly requirement of approximately $3,800. This demonstrates that without an immediate capital injection (like insurance), the survivors would effectively be "at a loss" of $3,800 every month for the next 15 years. This calculation provides a powerful contrast between the high cost of self-funding versus the lower cost of a 15-year level term insurance premium.

The client conversation: "Right now, this map shows a $500,000 gap that your family would face if you passed away yesterday. Since most people don't have that much cash sitting in a drawer, let's see what that 'hole' looks like in a monthly budget. By changing the Duration to 15 years, we see that your family would need to find an extra $3,800 every single month just to maintain lifestyle. That is the 'price' of not having this gap covered. Now, let’s compare that $3,800/month 'self-funding' risk to the monthly cost of an insurance policy that transfers that risk away from your family immediately."

Explanation: The Monthly Contributions are effective at communicating the monthly income exposure in the first year alone depending on whether inflated additions are used (using Annual Increase of Contributions percent to represent inflation).

Example: Illustrating that someone is 68% funded is different from saying they would be $1,500/month short of their ideal spending goal. It also illustrates that other sources of income may be appropriate to consider including employer sponsored disability plans, individual disability, or the requirement to take premature distributions from assets, liquidation or partner increases in earnings.

In the real world, it often becomes challenging for a non-disabled partner to earn additional lost income from their disabled partner due to the support and additional burden on their time.

Explanation: The default approach to Long-term Care expenses is self-funding. With minimal insurance and government coverage, determining the cost of self-funding is the goal.

By considering both the capital cost in a lump sum allocation, and the monthly contributions to fund over time, we can illustrate how we can finance an expense over a duration (i.e. 4 years). Consider this a good barometer of LTC insurance pool or contributions from another source including assets or family.

Explanation: This can be used to extend the “save through college” by adding more years to the duration as opposed to “save to college”. When multiple dependents are included here, it is not uncommon to use the duration until the youngest dependent has completed school thus stretching the additional contributions required to the last year of their expenses.

Another perspective is to assume that the dependent might share in the monthly contribution through summer jobs, loans, work study or other sources at the time in and around the education event.

Explanation: Duration of contributions is very powerful in communicating retirement. It can be used on the fly to illustrate shorter or longer durations of contributions into the retirement fund to have a 100% funded outcome.

In some cases it can make sense to shorten the duration of contributions for households with higher earning years. In some cases it make sense to exceed the years until retirement to illustrate a lower ongoing contribution but an ongoing expectation to generate net contributions post retirement such as consulting, part-time employment, hobby jobs to the extent of the month contributions.

Example: A 90% funded retirement would require $90K today invested at 5% net, or $700/month for the next 10 years until retirement or $500/month for the next 15 years. The assumption is a more affordable contribution today with an assumed continued contribution of $500/month in the first 5 years of retirement. "Can you contribute $500 in earnings for those years to supplement your retirement funding at 100%?"

⚠️ Advisor Pro-Tip: When you apply a Duration override, remember that the Refresh Icon will reset your custom work back to the earliest age on the "What You Want" page. Experiment with the desired duration to find the "magic number" for the client, but be mindful when using the refresh icon.

Directly next to the Duration of Contributions field, you will find a Refresh Icon. This is a critical tool for maintaining the integrity of your plan when timelines shift.

Advisor Tip: > "Consider clicking the Refresh Icon after adjusting goal start ages (like pushing retirement from 65 to 67) to ensure your Additional Contributions to Fund calculation accurately reflects the new, extended timeframe."

Asset-Map provides pre-configured logic based on the specific planning need. Understanding these defaults helps you explain the "urgency" of the figures to your clients.

Note: The various Target-Map types are based on default settings found in your Target-Map Preferences. Review your Target-Map Preferences so that your framing of these preset conversations aligns with your general client base.

The Duration of Contributions represents the specific timeframe used to calculate the monthly cash flow required to reach or maintain a 100% funded status.

This field categorizes time into one of two distinct phases:

To ensure mathematical precision, years are expressed in decimals to account for partial years. For example, a duration of 9.5 years equates to 9 years and 6 months.

The Duration of Contributions directly dictates the Additional Contributions to Fund (or Surplus Contributions) value.

Monthly Contributions = “Present Capital Deficit” / "Duration of Contributions" x 12

Note: If a Target-Map is overfunded, the system displays a Surplus, representing the monthly amount that could be reallocated while still remaining 100% funded.

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12/2025