I have found that if I set the borrowing constraint to $50,000, that ESPlanner is unable to provide a Lifetime Smooth Consumption Amount. Instead, it provides four very different Smooth Consumption Amounts for 4 distinct periods (e.g., 2016-2021, 2022-2025, and 2016-2027, 2028 and later).

If I set the borrowing constraint to $500,000, then ESPlanner is able to find a Lifetime Smooth Consumption Amount. However, in this case, the borrowing reaches $367,000 in 2017, which is unrealistic for me.

When I run an economic model I'm finding a jump in consumption in out years... what typically contributes to this?

Just want to make sure I have this all straight --

Income is the total income from all sources (wages, investments, SS, Real Estate)

Spending is the total of spending from all source (Housing, Taxes, Medicare..including expenses identified in the special expense entry) but does not include discretionary spending such as vacations or Green Fees

I have created a simple Jack and Sally Sprat planner file to experiment with the impacts of changes on net worth, spending, returns, etc.

I set inflation to zero for the base case and kept returns at 6%; not real world but a clean starting point;

The Sprats have $100K per year in cash flow income from SS and an annuity. They have $1M in their asset account (under mutual funds for simplicity sakes) and zero in retirement accounts to create a true base case.

I've recently tried funding (modeled as being funded in 2014) the Reserve Fund and noticed that the Consumption column now has a 14% step increase on the 10th year of the resulting Total Spending page. Consumption is constant before the step and also constant (at the higher step value) thereafter. I've also been modeling several Special Expenditures within the first ten years so I don't know if such a step in Consumption should be expected, although I assume that the point of consumption smoothing is that such a step is probably not expected.

I'm 58 and plan to retire at age 62. Whenever I set age in ESPlanner for collecting Social security to 62, then resulting report shows a smooth discretionary spending amount for the rest of my lifespan . However when I set Social security at age 70, the discretionary spending is not smooth--it shoots up at age 70 quite a bit.
I thought the advantage of ESPlanner was it was able to project smooth spending throughout the rest anticipated lifespan. What gives???

I am retired at age 62. I want to plan for level consumption. Since I am planning to defer social security until 70, I expect to draw more heavily on my retirement accounts until social security kicks in. In ESPlanner, the draw is the same each year. So my spending is less now and then spikes up when social security starts. How can I get a level plan?