For “Gross Income” and “Net Income”, it would be nice to include the account withdrawals. To me, It would make more sense if “Gross Income” included all gross income and “Net Income” is the amount after taxes. Since my total spending for 2024 is forecasted to be net $75,620.66 (taxes are omitted), and having a “Net Income” of $79,689.26 makes it much easier to comprehend. What do you think? My hang-up was having the report state my “NET INCOME” was $47,937.76 but my “TOTAL SPENDING” is $87,798.55.
There is some reason to my madness for presenting it this way. It is part of my aim of trying users to think in terms of cash-flow like the TIME MACHINE does. So Gross income is all your external sources of income. From that you pay your expenses and taxes. If there’s money left over you save it, if you have a deficit you need to make withdrawals. I don’t think of those withdrawals as income because it’s your money! Unlike actual income from a salary or pension, you have complete control over that spending. Increasing your spending (or taxes!) should not make you feel richer because you increased your “Gross Income”. It hurts more to see these withdrawals as spending rather than income, but that is what they are. People generally have no problem with my view of it before retirement, they realize withdrawals are for spending then, but they don’t like it after retirement.
Now it’s just semantics really, I’m not so attached to it as I sounds. The best argument against my view I think is that withdrawals made from accounts include growth and income earned from your investments and thus could be called income.
Ok, that was my speech for the day, that was fun for me, I hope you enjoyed it! Mostly it allowed me to procrastinate for a few minutes on the on the hard problem of making the reports clearer. It’s hard because I don’t want to confuse users with the changes, don’t want to add columns here as the table is already too big, and it needs stay backwards compatible so that old runs are still comparable.
Here’s what I’m thinking for the TIME TABLE which I think can make both of us happy given what you suggested and my constraints:
1. Rename GROSS INCOME to EXTERNAL INCOME, same calculation.
2. Remove NET INCOME
This removes tax-sounding terms which are kind of misleading here. For a tax calculation you should really look at the year report.
3. Add ACCOUNT WITHDRAWALS. This would be the sum of account withdrawals from all accounts (but excluding Wallets which are external. I’m tempted to call this INTERNAL INCOME but I won’t :)
4. Move TAXES to after ACCOUNT WITHDRAWALS. Same total tax calculation.
Essentially you get: … EXTERNAL INCOME, ACCOUNT WITHDRAWALS, TAXES, SPENDING, SAVINGS, NET WORTH ...
I think I can make these changes retroactive for backward compatibility in comparing old runs.
Only one graph is affected, I could change it to Net total income and Spending. Net total income being external + withdrawals - taxes.
Then there’s the year reports, and the big report but those won’t require much change. I already added the "Foreign taxes paid” to the year report, unfortunately that is not retroactive.
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions, sorry for using you as a sounding board!
Fantastic!!
It’s definitely clearer now to read and understand. Really appreciate the effort you put into this!
Thanks again, and Merry Christmas!