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Insights Library: Surplus-Gap Chart
Insights Library: Surplus-Gap Chart

This video describes how to read the Surplus Gap Chart.

Nancy Gates avatar
Written by Nancy Gates
Updated over a week ago

Once the Planner computes your expenses, the Planner funds your expenses. The Planner first attempts to fund your expenses (including plan dependent taxes) using your income. If the income coming into the plan is not enough to cover the expenses going out, the Planner will draw down from savings.

We refer to this as a shortfall, drawdown or funded gap. Once all of your savings are depleted, the Planner will resort to modeling debt. We refer to this as a deficit.

You can view any shortfall or deficit in your plan in the Insights > Surplus Gap Chart


Important terms

Saved Surplus

A saved surplus indicates you had “Excess Income” – income that was not spent on specified expenses. And, you have told the system where to save that money.

Unsaved Surplus

An unsaved surplus (also called “Excess Income”) indicates you have excess income that is not being saved and is assumed to be spent.

We recommend that you intentionally set the percent of excess income to be saved \ in My Plan > Money Flows > Excess Income.

Funded Gap

A funded gap indicates that your total expenses for the year exceed your income and the system withdrew funds from available savings to cover the difference.

You can view any withdrawals from savings in the Insights > Savings > Withdrawals Chart

Unfunded Gap

If you have an unfunded gap, it indicates that your total expenses for the year exceed your income and you have exhausted all available savings – there is nothing left to withdraw to cover the difference.

In this case, the system accrues “Lifetime Debt” within your plan. Lifetime debt indicates the amount of debt you would theoretically accrue. In other words, lifetime debt is exactly how much you are living beyond your means.

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