I apologize if this has been addressed previously. After searching, I can’t seem to find anything related.
Background: I’d like to broadly forecast my cashflow leading up to retirement and through retirement. I plan to use it with the Retirement Planner Template. I don’t really need to use any of the categories of my primary Tiller sheet. In fact, I’d like to run it separately without using any of my categories. That said, the basic functionality isn’t working for me, so I haven’t even gotten this far.
Issue: Several of the ‘Life Events’ aren’t calculating correctly. When I make them ‘Active’ or not, the calculations don’t change. Hence, if/when I try to add life events, they don’t change the calculations.
Illustration: I started with a brand new Tiller Sheet. I have not changed a thing. I note that several of the start dates are 2022 and we are now in 2025.
On line 21 I change the start date and then the end date of ‘Buy new car’ to 2030. Nothing happens in the running cash flow chart.
If I only change the end date to 2030 (so that I’m buying a car every year from 2022 to 2030), the plot updates. (I’ll also note that Column M, Yearly Cash Flow adds in $50,000 to EVERY year, from 2025 through 2055.)
If I then change the start date to ANY number, say 2029 or 2030, the plot reverts to its original shape and the ‘Buy new car’ isn’t factored in.
There are lots of other examples, but this is a simple one to help debug the issue.
Is it me? Am I doing something wrong? I’d love for this template to work. Thank you for your help.
Hey @pkyoho. I’m sorry to hear it isn’t working like you expected. If you haven’t changed the template, I expect it should work properly. Can you share some screenshots of your inputs and the expected outputs?
Also, most templates have a “hidden area” off to the right. I’d also unhide that and keep an eye on how the values change. It might help in your debugging.
Randy, thank you for reaching out. Here are my steps. I’m not sure the screen shots uploaded properly. Submitting in three posts since I can only upload one file per post.
Create a brand new Tiller Foundation Template. Link it with my account, but I didn’t import any of my accounts or transactions.
Add the Cash Flow Forecast sheet. Shown here, with the hidden columns expanded.
I simply chanced A22 to 2030 and B22 to 2030. No other changes were made. You would expect the running cash flow (cell M7) to be reduced by $50,000, but it doesn’t change at all. Similarly, Column T (Live Events Expenses - should be Life Events Expenses) should show a $50k increase in 2030 (T7), but it doesn’t change.
I reset A22 to 2022 and B22 to 2022. Then I changed B22 to be 2030, (like buying a car every year from 2022 to 2030). This did change the running cash flow in column M correctly for 2025 (negative by $50k), 2026 (negative by $100k), and 2027 - 2030 (now negative by $300k). However, 2031 should also be negative by $300k, but it is off by $350k, and 2032 is off by $400k and so forth. Column T (Live Events Expenses) also shows an additional $50k for all 30 years. Clearly something funky is going on here.
Thanks for sharing the screenshots. I dove into this this morning and you definitely found a problem. It looks like the year values in columns A and B were formatted as text so the formulas in the hidden area were not evaluating them properly.
I’ve updated the template to version 0.94. Can you use the Restore feature in the add-on to update your template and let me know if you see any additional problems?
One more one the Cash Flow Forecast sheet. It appears that nothing works below row 32 of the sheet. If I add more life events, they don’t calculate. If I change the forecast length from the default of 30 years to 50 years some of the columns populate automatically, but others don’t. Might be worth taking a look.
Sorry for the slow response, @pkyoho. I have been traveling.
I can see the 32nd row limit in some of the formulas: O2, P2, Q2, S2, T2. This affects the number of years that are calculated. I think we built it on the expectation that 30 years would be plenty. I can envision an update that either:
Adds a cell validation to ensure that the year selection in A1 doesn’t outrun the calculations (at 30 years max)
As for the life events, I’m not seeing that as clearly… it looks like the formulas access life events to the bottom of the sheet. Is it possible it looks like it isn’t working because the referenced life events (beyond row 32) are also occurring after the 30 year timeframe that the sheet is functional for?
Thanks for flagging this and sorry again for the delay.
I published an update, @pkyoho that bumps the max years to 50 and adds data validation if the user enters a greater number. Again, I was not able to repro the issue with life events further down the sheet not being active. Can you update your sheet and let me know if it is working for your now?
