The Profile (the chip at the bottom of the sidebar) is the single home for facts about real people: who's in the household, tax situation, current income, and housing. Settings and the Projection read these facts rather than creating competing copies.
What lives here, and what reads it
- Household: each person's name and birth date. An Individual retirement account's one owner supplies its RMD clock. A Joint Brokerage links both people but remains one taxable account and has no RMD route. Every age-keyed rule about a person reads the birth date from here, not from the Projection: their ACA→Medicare transition, their Medicare enrolment, and the 65+ deduction. The Projection's "spouse's age now" field is a planning knob for a second earner's saving and Social Security claim. Moving it explores a what-if; it does not change when a real person turns 65.
- Taxes: filing status, state rate, the taxable embedded gain, assumed capital-gains rates, and lot method.
- Income: salary and contribution percentages, Social Security, an HSA contribution, pensions, and passive income.
- Housing & health: current rent or home costs, coverage, premium, and out-of-pocket medical spending. Scenario-specific ACA, Medicare, and IRMAA choices remain in the Projection.
People and account ownership
Accounts is the editable home for an account's legal registration. Brokerage may be Individual or Joint when both Profile people exist. Retirement and specialty accounts always select one individual person; filing jointly never makes those accounts Joint.
Removing a spouse is blocked while any Joint Brokerage still links that person. The Joint accounts use this person dialog names the count and routes Review accounts to Accounts. Reclassify every affected account to an Individual owner, then return to Profile and remove the spouse.
Draft and scenario rules
Editing Profile never rewrites an existing saved plan: plans snapshot their assumptions, while new plans seed from current Profile facts. Profile money facts use today's dollars, matching the Projection's real-dollar engine.
The four section buttons edit one draft. Left/Right, Home, and End move through the tablist; changing sections preserves unsaved entries, and the one Save profile footer commits the whole draft.
A birth year you have typed but that can't be stored, meaning anything outside 1901–2099, stops the save and says so, for you or for your spouse by name. Leaving it blank is still fine: the Profile is where a fact is allowed to be unanswered, and the chip's ring is what nudges for it. What is no longer possible is a save that appears to succeed while quietly discarding the year you just entered, which left Projection gated with nothing on screen to explain why. The guided wizard's About step applies the same rule, and additionally requires a birth month before it will continue.