How do account contributions work in the accumulation and distribution phases of a plan?

Accumulation and Distribution Phases

Each Income Lab plan has an "income plan" or "distribution" phase. Some plans may also have an "accumulation" phase. For single (non-joint) plans, the income plan begins on the client's retirement date or, if the client is marked as already retired, the income plan starts in January of the current year.

For joint plans, select the date to begin the distribution phase based on the retirement dates of both spouses. If both spouses are marked as "Client is currently retired," the distribution phase begins in January of the current year, and there is no accumulation phase. If both clients are marked as not currently retired and have different retirement start dates, you'll see an additional toggle to select which date you would like to use as the start of the income plan, also referred to as the distribution phase. 

In the distribution phase, the software specifies the amount of income received, its sources, and the amount to be withdrawn from or added to investment accounts. During this phase, any account contributions or savings plans are ignored, even if a savings item otherwise would have resulted in contributions during the distribution phase. Instead, the software specifies how much money is available to be added to investment accounts, if any. You can think of the distribution phase as answering the questions: how much can I spend or save?

During the accumulation phase of the plan, the opposite is true: the software makes no assumptions about nor mandates any contributions or savings. If you wish to see any funds added to investment accounts in the accumulation phase, you must specify these in the "Savings" portion of the plan. During accumulation, the plan does not specify how much is to be spent. The plan simply assumes that all income in the accumulation phase is spent, other than amounts explicitly included in savings.

What happens to contributions when the distribution/income plan date is changed?

You can always add savings items to a plan. However, if any of the savings items are within the distribution phase, that portion of the savings will be ignored. In this case, you may see that the Savings & Transfers section of Life Hub contains $0 values even though there are savings items shown.

The app shows these items in Life Hub so that they can be edited easily and so that these items are not lost if you change the date when the income plan begins in a way that would allow this savings plan to go back into effect.