Cash Flow Priorities tell the simulation where to put your extra money. It's the surplus income left over after expenses each year. The list lives on the Cash Flow tab in Inputs. With priorities, you control the order and amount; without them, the engine routes everything to your brokerage account (see "What happens to the leftover" below).

What a priority is

A priority is a rule that says "before splitting surplus across the rest of the portfolio, contribute to this account first, in this way." Each priority has:

• Account - which account receives the contribution. The picker also has a Debts group listing your loans (Student Loans and Debt rows with a balance) and HELOCs; a priority pointed at one of those pays the debt down instead of depositing. See "Paying down a debt" below.
• Mode - Maximize Contribution (all leftover income), % of Remaining Income, Specific Amount (fixed dollars per year), or Build to Target Balance.
• Time range - start and end milestones (Start of Plan, At Retirement, End of Plan, or a specific calendar year such as 2030).
• Must be funded - when checked, the priority is funded even if the engine has to withdraw from other accounts to do it.
• Linked Job - for 401k / 403b / 457(b) goals, link to a Job adjustment so the contribution is treated as a payroll deferral that reduces taxable income and unlocks employer match. The quickest way to create one of these is from the Job itself: open it on the Income step, expand Job Details, and click Set up 401k contributions - the goal opens with that job already linked. Guided setup selects a destination only when exactly one compatible account is available. When both traditional and Roth accounts qualify, you choose which one to fund. Creating a missing account from guided setup keeps your draft intact when you return. Set up other contributions beside it does the same for a goal that is none of the guided maneuvers: the job is linked, and every account is on offer.
• Mega Backdoor Roth - appears only on a job-linked goal that targets a Roth 401(k). It switches the goal from the employee deferral limit to the total plan limit, so after-tax dollars can go in on top of a maxed-out deferral. These reduce take-home pay but not taxable wages. See Backdoor and mega backdoor Roth.

The order surplus flows through

Each simulated year, after income arrives and base expenses are subtracted, the engine walks the priority list top-to-bottom:

1. Each priority either takes a fixed amount, a percentage of remaining surplus, builds toward a target balance, or absorbs everything left (Maximize Contribution).
2. If a priority can't be fully funded, the engine moves on to the next one.
3. Anything still remaining after the last priority is handled by the Save-vs-Spend selector at the top of the Cash Flow tab (see the next section).

Paying down a debt

A priority whose target is a loan or HELOC sends surplus at the balance. It runs at the same point in the year as every other priority, which is after that year's scheduled loan payment has already been made, so it always reduces the balance the next year's interest accrues on. Three modes apply: Specific Amount (a fixed sum each year), % of Remaining Income, and Maximize Contribution (the whole remaining balance, as far as the surplus reaches). Build to Target Balance does not apply to a debt. The paydown is capped at what is owed, and once the loan is paid off the priority is a no-op that passes the surplus straight through to the next rule.

Choose Pay down a debt from the Add Priority goal picker on the Cash Flow step, or take the shortcut: after you save a loan, its editor offers to rank the paydown, and the goal opens with that loan already picked, Maximize Contribution selected, and a range from the start of the plan to retirement. In the results, each year's paydown appears as a Debt Paydown row in the deposits table and as its own node on the Sankey, between Expenses and Investments; the loan's own row on the Events card shows the closing balance after it. Mortgages will join the list of paydown targets in a future release.

Several debts: avalanche and snowball

When a loan or HELOC on the plan has no paydown priority, a note above the priority list names it and offers to create one. Click a debt's name badge to open its expense editor without leaving Cash Flow Priority. Saving or canceling returns you to the priority list. The create button adds a Maximize Contribution priority for each uncovered debt, highest rate first, running until the debt is paid off or you retire. Priorities you already have are not changed. Leaving a low-rate debt uncovered is a legitimate choice, and the note is only a reminder.

Once two or more debt priorities are on the list, a Sort debt priorities line appears with two buttons. Highest rate first is the avalanche method and costs the least interest. Smallest balance first is the snowball method and clears individual debts soonest. The buttons only reorder the debt priorities you already have and never create one. Your other priorities stay where they are, and a debt priority you capped with a Specific Amount keeps its cap and is only moved.

Each loan's scheduled payment is always made first, so the ordering only decides where surplus goes. When the first debt is paid off its priority passes the surplus through, and the payment it no longer needs becomes surplus too, so the money rolls to the next debt on its own. New debt priorities are placed above any priority that takes 100% of remaining income, since nothing below that row is ever funded. The button that matches the current order shows a check mark. Nothing else is stored: drag a debt row out of order and the check mark clears until you press a button again. Snowball order uses each debt's starting balance and is not re-ranked during the run.

The Financial Order of Operations

The Money Guy Show's nine-step Financial Order of Operations is a ranked list of where each surplus dollar should go. With debt paydown available as a target, every step is a priority you can lay out in order:

A sample list, top to bottom: Savings target $2,000; 401k up to the match; Debt Paydown on the credit card (maximize); Savings target six months of spending; Roth IRA maximize; HSA maximize; 401k maximize; 529 target; Debt Paydown on the car loan (maximize); Save to brokerage. The order is yours to set; the plan diagnostics nudge when a high-rate debt sits unranked while surplus is being deposited.

What happens to the leftover

The dropdown labeled "Leftover cash:" at the top of the Cash Flow tab decides what happens to any surplus the priorities don't claim. New simulations start with this toggle unset, so you'll see a "Choose one..." placeholder and Run is blocked until you pick one of the two modes. There's no silent default; the choice is significant enough that we want it to be an explicit decision.

While it is unset it shows up twice on the Inputs page: as a row in the setup drawer's Needs attention section (reached from the N issues button beside Run) with a button that brings you back here, and as the sixth task of the first-simulation checklist.

• Save to brokerage (shown in green) - the leftover lands in your brokerage account. If you have more than one brokerage, a secondary picker lets you choose which one; otherwise the engine uses the only brokerage you have. This is the simulation's catch-all for unallocated cash and is why every plan needs at least one brokerage account.
• Spend it (shown in red) - the leftover is treated as discretionary spending and drops out of the simulation. Use this when you want to model "I'd just spend any extra money rather than save it" - a useful baseline for figuring out how much portfolio you actually need rather than how big it could grow if you kept investing every dollar of surplus.

In Spend mode, the discretionary amount appears as a red sink on the Proof view's Sankey and a "Discretionary Spending" row on the year-detail card. Fixed priorities (Must be funded) still fire regardless of the mode - they represent contributions the engine treats as non-negotiable.

Where to set them

The list lives on the Cash Flow tab in Inputs. Add Priority in the section header opens a goal picker with five shortcuts and a Custom option: build a cash reserve, contribute to a workplace plan, contribute to an IRA or HSA, pay down a debt, or invest extra money. A goal opens its form with the defaults FIREproof can infer already filled in: the only compatible account or loan, the funding mode, and a start and end. When more than one account or owner would fit, the choice is left to you rather than guessed. Back returns to the picker and keeps the draft for that goal; Custom is the full editor with every supported destination. Drag rows to reorder. Click any row to edit it; a saved row always opens with the values it was saved with.

Each priority describes itself in one sentence, live in the editor and on its row: where the money comes from, where it goes, how much or up to what cap, and between which dates. The sentence states what is configured, not a forecast: what a surplus priority actually funds in a given year depends on the cash that reaches it. Rows carry a Payroll or Surplus tag. Payroll rows are taken out of a paycheck before any surplus exists, so they run ahead of every surplus row whatever their position in the list; dragging a debt above a 401(k) row does not make the debt consume the paycheck deferral. Above the list is the Save-vs-Spend selector covered above. Empty priority list + Save mode = the entire surplus lands in your brokerage account.