What If I Have a Big One-Time Expense?

A new RV, a kitchen renovation, a dream trip, a wedding, or helping a child with a down payment — retirement has big one-off costs, not just monthly spending. This recipe shows you whether your plan can absorb a large lump sum, and when it hurts least.

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The quick version

1. Add a one-time expense in a specific year.
2. Save it as a named strategy — "Renovation 2030."
3. Run Comparison against your baseline — and try the expense in different years to see when it stings least.

Step by step

1. Add the lump-sum event. On the Strategy tab, add a lump-sum withdrawal event: a label, the calendar year, the amount (in today’s dollars), and whether it should grow with inflation to that date. By default the withdrawal is taken in that year using your normal account allocation — but the row’s Draw From dropdown lets you source it from a specific tax type instead (Taxable, Traditional, or Roth), which controls the tax hit of the expense. Sourcing from Roth or Taxable is mostly tax-free in the year you spend it; sourcing from Traditional adds ordinary income. See Strategy tab for how the sourcing cascade works.

2. Save it as a named strategy (the Strategies button) — "Renovation 2030." Save a few different years if you want to compare timing.

3. Run Comparison on the Compare tab; with Compare against baseline on (the default), your baseline is drawn automatically beside the expense version. Load Baseline (⤺) returns you to your plan.

What to look at

• Success Rate — does the plan still clear your comfort line after the expense?
• When you spend it matters. Try the same amount in an early year vs. a later year. A big withdrawal early in retirement does more damage, because that money would otherwise have had decades to compound (and selling into a weak early market is the sequence-risk trap). Later expenses usually hurt less.
• The trajectory dip — watch how far the portfolio drops in the expense year and whether it recovers.

If it’s more than the plan can take

• Spread it out — model it as two or three smaller events in different years instead of one big hit.
• Delay it to a later year when the portfolio is larger or the horizon shorter.
• Trim ongoing spending modestly to make room, and compare.
• Pair it with good timing — avoid stacking a big expense onto a year that already has a large RMD or Roth conversion.
• Change where it’s funded from — use the Draw From dropdown to pull the expense from Roth or Taxable (mostly tax-free that year) rather than Traditional (ordinary income), and compare the tax and legacy impact.