How does Life Hub account for partial years?

The values shown in Life Hub reflect different things for balances and for cash flows. These differences can be important to understand when viewing the first and second years' values.

• Balances (asset and liability values): 
  • Current Year: The current balance of assets and liabilities
  • Future Years: Estimated beginning-of-year balances for assets and liabilities
• Cash Flows (income, expenses, savings, flows between accounts): Estimated full-year totals

You are able to change how these values are displayed using the display options menu in the upper right of the screen. (Look for the icon that looks like a radio equalizer).

These controls change how the data is displayed, but they do not change the plan itself. For example, the Real/Nominal toggle changes whether you are viewing values in today's dollars (stripping out inflation) or in future dollars (including inflation). However, either way the plan does account for inflation - you're just choosing how to view the results.

What if the current year is partly over?

You'll notice that in the current year, the balance shown in Life Hub is not the beginning-of-year balance, but rather the current balance. If, for example, you are building a plan in July 2025, you will have entered current account balances. The software will treat these as beginning-of-July 2025 balances rather than beginning-of-January 2025 balances. However, cash flows are still complete-year estimated totals. These totals are used for tax estimates, so it is important that the full-year totals are shown and used.

This mismatch leads to some puzzling things; however, if you are not working in January. And these puzzles get more obvious as the year goes on. For example, let's say the current balance of an account in July 2025 is $100,000 and that account has $1,000/month in planned withdrawals in the current year, from January to December. You might expect to see the beginning of 2026 balance to be $100,000 - $12,000 = $88,000, plus some extra to reflect 12 months of growth in the account. Instead, however, you'll see $100,000 - $6,000 = $94,000 (plus 6 months of growth). The reason for this is that the $100,000 balance is assumed to be correct for July 2025, not January 2025. So half the year's growth and withdrawals have already passed!

This difference is particularly puzzling in December, because from that point on, there is only 1/12 the growth and 1/12 the withdrawals still remaining that year. So the 2026 balance may be very similar to the balance shown for 2025. But this is actually correct, assuming that the current account balances in the plan are current, and not for the beginning of the calendar year.