The what-if sandbox

In your first few visits a short card (“Test a big decision before you make it”) introduces the tab. Tap its button, “Change my income”, or close it and it stays gone.

What is the what-if sandbox?

Tap “What-if” in the top bar of the plan dashboard, and the app copies your plan. Everything you edit afterwards happens on that copy, not the original.

A fresh copy starts identical, so the screen opens on a prompt to make a change first. Edit any screen, or drag a goal marker on the chart, and the comparison fills in automatically.

The prompt reads “Your what-if is an exact copy of your plan. Edit any module from the sidebar, such as income, housing or goals, and the difference appears here beside your plan.” It also says nothing here touches your plan until “Apply” is pressed. The what-if sandbox banner is visible at the top with “Compare”, “Discard” and “Apply”.

Navigate there with none open, and you’ll see a plainer prompt: “No what-if in progress. Start one to compare it against your plan.”

How do I make adjustments and compare?

Once you’ve changed something, a “Before / After / Compare” toggle appears above the chart. Before shows your plan’s pathway, read-only; After shows the copy, behaving like the dashboard’s hero chart. The same Next 10y / To retirement / Full buttons sit above the chart in every mode.

“Compare” is built for judging the difference: two clean net-worth lines instead of stacked bands, your plan dotted and muted, what-if solid, gap shaded green where ahead and red where behind. Scrub either line for a tooltip with both figures and the difference.

An “Adjustments” list below itemises what changed, grouped by screen, each row reading field before → after, with its own “Edit” and “Revert” (undoing just that screen’s changes). Ad hoc income and temporary expenses you add or change get their own rows, for example “Inheritance $50,000 on 1 Mar 2031” or “Rent $2,000 a month, until Mar 2028”. An ad hoc income also draws a marker on both the Before and After charts.

For example, with both applicants’ “Target FF age” brought five years earlier (“55 → 50” and “50 → 45”), the solid what-if line splits well below the dotted real-plan line from the 2050s on.

What does the what-if banner do?

While a what-if is active, a banner reading “What-if · your plan stays unchanged until you apply your changes” sits across the top of every screen, not just the comparison screen, so it’s never ambiguous which version of your plan you’re looking at. It carries three actions: “Compare” jumps back to the comparison screen, “Discard” throws the copy away, and “Apply” commits it as your plan.

The banner is visible on every screen for as long as the what-if is open, with Compare, Discard and Apply always one tap away. While you are replanning to a later year, it reads “Replanning to” that year instead, and your current plan stays unchanged until you save the replan.

Should I apply or discard?

“Apply” commits everything as your plan, in a single undoable step; Undo puts it back right after if you change your mind. “Discard” restores your plan exactly as it stood before, leaving no trace. Either way, you return to the plan dashboard.

What-if or a saved draft plan?

The what-if sandbox is deliberately short-lived: it merges back (Apply) or vanishes (Discard), never saved on its own, right for a quick question against your real numbers now. Weighing a job offer for weeks instead? That’s a separate saved plan, not the sandbox. See Plans, saving & your data.

Does what-if work on a couple’s plan?

In a couple’s plan, the what-if screen carries the same “Us / You / partner’s name” toggle as the dashboard, so you can view the household total or either person’s pathway in Before, After, or Compare. The Adjustments list labels every change the same way, prefixed with whose it is, like “You · Citizenship” or “Sophia · Income”.

The toggle scopes the chart to the household or either person, and carries through to the Adjustments list.