Expenses come in two flavors in FIREproof: base spending (your steady-state retirement budget) and discrete expense adjustments (one-time or recurring line items that sit on top of base).

Base Living Expenses vs discrete expenses

Base Living Expenses is the main retirement spending model. Its yearly amount is governed by the spending plan chosen on the Parameters tab (Inflation-Adjusted, VPW, Guyton-Klinger, etc.). Base spending is the floor everything else stacks on.

Discrete expenses are individual Adjustments. A new roof, a wedding, an annual vacation, monthly healthcare premiums. They have their own start, end, recurrence, and inflation rule, independent of how base spending is computed.

One-time vs recurring vs every N years

• One-time. Applies in a single year (a kitchen remodel, an emergency repair).
• Recurring. Applies every year between start and end (a club membership, a tuition payment, a healthcare premium).
• Every N years. Lumpy expenses that repeat on a regular cadence — a car replacement every 8 years, a roof at 25, an HVAC at 15. Toggle "Occurs at regular intervals" inside the Recurrence section, then set how many years between fires. The expense fires in the Start Year and again every N years through the End Year. Not available for Mortgage, ACA Healthcare, or built-in continuous types.

Healthcare

A recurring expense for premiums, deductibles, copays, and out-of-pocket medical costs outside of an ACA subsidy context. Defaults to CPI inflation scaled up 120% (medical inflation runs hotter than headline CPI). Use it for the gap between early retirement and Medicare, or stack a second Healthcare adjustment for post-65 Medicare premiums.

ACA Healthcare

A subsidy-aware variant of Healthcare for pre-Medicare years on a marketplace plan. You enter a benchmark monthly premium, household size, and ZIP code; each simulation year the engine looks at your MAGI and computes the actual ACA premium tax credit, so the cost shown to you is the post-subsidy net premium. Withdrawals can be clamped by the ACA cap to keep MAGI inside the subsidy zone. See the withdrawal-strategy page for how that cap interacts with your draw order.

College Tuition

A recurring tuition payment for a fixed window (default 4 years). Use this when the cost is paid out of pocket from your normal accounts. Combine with the FAFSA optimizer if financial aid eligibility is part of the plan.

Education Expense

Like College Tuition, but funded from a specific 529 account instead of generic withdrawals. Qualified withdrawals are tax-free, so the engine pulls from the linked 529 first and only falls back to other accounts when the 529 runs out. Pair with a Dependent on the People tab to link the 529 to the right child.

Student Loans

A fixed yearly debt payment for student loans. The amount stays flat year over year (loan payments don't inflate). End the adjustment at your projected payoff year so the simulation reflects the spending drop after loans are paid off.

Vacation and Travel

Two near-identical recurring discretionary-spending presets that exist mainly so users can track them separately in their plan. One for shorter / cheaper getaways, one for bigger annual trips. Both default to CPI inflation. Functionally interchangeable; pick whichever label matches how you think about the spend.

Debt

A generic recurring debt payment for non-student-loan obligations: car loans, personal loans, credit-card paydown plans. Defaults to a 10-year window. Like Student Loans and Mortgage, set the end year to the projected payoff so spending drops cleanly afterwards.

Charity

A recurring charitable-giving line item, treated as a normal expense. Itemized deductions are not modeled, so this preset has no tax interaction. See the next preset if you want giving that affects taxes.

Qualified Charitable Distribution

A direct transfer from a Traditional IRA to a charity for owners 70½+. The distribution is excluded from taxable income and can satisfy that year's RMD. Pick the source IRA in the adjustment's account selector. Use this instead of (or alongside) a regular Charity adjustment when giving from pre-tax retirement money makes sense for the plan.

Mortgage

A simple fixed-payment mortgage line item. The same payment every year, not inflation adjusted, ending at the payoff year. For a richer model that tracks the property value, capital gains on sale, taxes, and insurance, use the dedicated Real Estate adjustments (Primary Residence: Mortgage / Rent and Rental Property) instead.

Custom Expense

The escape hatch when no preset fits. Custom Expense exposes every adjustment field, including inflation type, growth rate, ownership, recurrence, and the post-tax flag, so you can model any expense shape you need. Use the presets first and only drop down to Custom Expense when you actually need the extra knobs.