Justin Fitzpatrick
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How to use the AI Plan Builder
Published October 15th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
The Income Lab AI Plan Builder allows you to move away from traditional data entry - finding pre-specified fields in the app and typing/choosing your answers - and toward simply giving the software any information you have already and allowing an AI agent to find the information useful for building a plan. To use the AI Plan Builder, go to the House
How other/variable expenses work and how they can add risk
Published October 16th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
An Income Lab plan does not require any expenses. (Instead, it can just build a plan using the household's resources to figure out how much they can spend.) However, most complete plans will include at least some baseline and/or other/variable expenses. While baseline expenses do not affect the plan's retirement paycheck or spending capacity, other/
How do I model distributions from Inherited IRAs and retirement accounts?
Published October 16th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
The rules surrounding how someone can or must distribute funds from an inherited IRA or retirement account are complex. This article summarizes the rules for distributions and shows how to include inherited account distributions in an Income Lab plan. For more on these rules, see Kitces.com. Types of Beneficiaries Designated Beneficiary Any individu
How do I address Gross-of-Tax and Net-of-Tax Retirement Income?
Published September 25th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
The dance between gross- and net-of-tax income is, without a doubt, one of the most complex (and, frankly, frustrating) parts of retirement planning. This is true no matter what software you use for planning (or even if you use no software at all). In some ways, Income Lab makes this dance much clearer than you’d see it in other software because Inc
How can changing the date when the income plan begins change the retirement paycheck (spending capacity)?
Published October 16th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
In Income Lab, you will see two related by independent concepts: Retirement Date: When will a person stop working? Beginning of the Income Plan: When should the income plan itself begin planning for how much to take from or add to the retirement investment portfolio? What is a Retirement Date? Each person in a plan has their own retirement date. Thi
Understanding Test Plan Results
Published October 16th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
The “Test Plan” section of Income Lab offers a way to explore the ways a plan might progress through a huge number of possible futures. However, by providing such a broad reach, it can be somewhat difficult to interpret these large-scale results. Those looking for easier-to-follow single-example versions of what Test Plan does should use the Retirem
How to Copy a Plan in Income Lab
Published November 5th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
When working with Income Lab, creating a new plan for a client doesn't mean starting from scratch every single time. The platform offers a simple and efficient "Copy" feature that enables you to quickly duplicate existing plans and customize them for new clients. To copy a plan, follow these straightforward steps: Navigate to the Income Lab screen c
Modeling Cash Inheritances in an Income Lab plan
Published December 8th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
Sometimes an expected inheritance is an important resource in a financial plan. To enter this resource in an Income Lab plan, simply add it as an “Other Income” item. You can do this a few different ways. You can enter the inheritance via the plan data stepper (accessed from the pencil icon anywhere in the application) as shown here.   You can als
How do I enter a Donor Advised Fund (DAF)?
Published October 16th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
A Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) is a charitable giving vehicle that allows individuals, families, or organizations to donate assets to a public charity and recommend how those funds should be distributed to other nonprofit organizations over time. You open a DAF account with a sponsoring organization — typically a public charity, community foundation, or
How does the Preretirement Planner work?
Published October 21st, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
The Preretirement Planner, found in the Income Lab Decision Center, is designed to help you have valuable discussions about some of the most basic and important questions people have when planning for retirement:Â When can I retire? How much should I save? This tool helps you explore a wide range of possible answers to these questions and find mixes
Explain the Tax Treatment and Inflation Treatment types for a plan's Non-Portfolio Income Streams and Expenses
Published October 17th, 2025 by Justin Fitzpatrick
Planning for retirement (and life in general!) involves a lot more than just investment planning. That's why Income Lab takes non-portfolio income —such as pensions, rental income, wages, Social Security, and other income — so seriously. It is very important that the plan contain all of the important non-portfolio income that a household receives or