Hi @KathleenMc12 ,
I have not tried what @TillerAlice suggests as I didn’t want to make too many adjustments to the template itself. I’m also not sure how you would go about making the suggested change as the withdrawal amount would change annually as it based on a withdrawal percentage of the annual balance. Maybe @TillerAlice can provide more insight into the suggested change.
What I have done in my worksheet is just set the Withdrawal Rate to 0%. When set to 0% the retirement planner will account for the negative cash flow by assuming it came from your investments.
If you enter a Withdrawal Rate that is greater than 0%, that withdrawal amount is over and above your negative cash flow, hence the appearance of a double-dip. You could set a low percentage, such as 0.1% if you want to have an extra withdrawal beyond covering negative cash flow and that would then assume that you will fully spend that money. In my case, I opted not to do that, and instead try to account for all known expenses in my categories worksheet and used the Cash Flow Forecast worksheet to record expected future Life Event expenses.
You can see a previous post about this at the link below:
Hope this helps.
AHB