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. For post-65 premiums use the Medicare adjustment described below rather than stacking a second Healthcare row: it knows the standard Part B and Part D figures and starts them at 65 on its own.

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.

Medicare

Medicare has two halves and FIREproof models them in two different places. The IRMAA surcharge, the income-related extra you pay when your MAGI from two years earlier is high, is calculated automatically, per person, every year you are 65 or older. Nothing to enter. The standard premiums everyone pays are not automatic, because for many people they are already inside Base Living Expenses and adding them again would double-count. This adjustment is how you model them explicitly.

Add one per person. Premiums are $0 until that person's 65th year no matter what start year you pick, and the section defaults the start year for you. What gets modeled each year:

• Part A: $0. Hospital insurance is premium-free with 40 or more quarters of Medicare-taxed work, or a spouse who qualifies. FIREproof assumes you qualify. If you do not, the 2026 buy-in premium is $565/mo (or $311/mo with 30 to 39 quarters); fold it into the supplemental amount.
• Part B: one flat national premium, identical for everyone ($202.90/mo in 2026). Income changes it only through IRMAA, which is already handled.
• Part D: the national base beneficiary premium ($38.99/mo in 2026), added only under Original Medicare. A Medicare Advantage plan bundles drug coverage, so choosing Advantage drops this line rather than charging you twice. The base premium is a statutory reference figure, not a plan price; CMS puts the average standalone drug plan at about $34.50/mo. If yours differs a lot, fold the difference into the supplemental amount.
• Supplemental premium: yours to enter. Medigap (roughly $100 to $300+/mo by age, ZIP code, insurer and plan letter) or an Advantage plan premium (often $0; the 2026 average is about $14/mo). This is the number that swings your total Medicare cost the most, and it is the one the simulation cannot guess. Under Supplemental Premium Growth, choose Match CPI, Percentage of CPI, or Offset from CPI. The default is 2 percentage points above CPI as a long-term planning assumption. Actual increases vary by insurer, location, and age-rating method and may be higher. For example, 125% of a 4% CPI rate is 5%; an offset of +2 percentage points makes that same year 6%. Saved fixed annual growth settings remain available until you choose a CPI option. The standard premiums always grow with the simulation's own unmodified inflation.

In the year-by-year detail the premium appears as a Medicare row with its Part B / Part D / supplemental breakdown, and the IRMAA surcharge appears on its own separate line. They are never merged, so what you see is what left the portfolio. If someone in your plan reaches 65 with no Medicare expense, Plan Diagnostics notes it, and the ACA Healthcare section offers to add one where marketplace coverage auto-ends.

Long-Term Care

Long-term care is the largest expense most retirement plans leave out entirely. About 70% of people turning 65 will need some form of it, and the average total need is around three years (roughly 3.6 for women and 2.5 for men, with about two-thirds of it delivered at home). Roughly one in five needs more than five years. A Long-Term Care expense models the care event: a stretch of paid care at a yearly cost, growing at its own inflation rate, net of whatever a long-term care policy pays.

Add one per person. The Care Setting chips pre-fill the yearly cost with the CareScout (formerly Genworth) 2025 Cost of Care Survey national medians:

• Home care. Costs $80,080/yr (a home health aide, 44 hours a week at $35/hr).
• Assisted living. Costs $74,400/yr.
• Nursing home, semi-private room. Costs $114,975/yr.
• Nursing home, private room. Costs $129,575/yr.
• Custom. Leaves the amount alone so you can enter a local quote.

These are national medians and the spread by state is large. Look your own state up with CareScout's cost of care tool and type that figure into the Amount field instead.

Timing. The event defaults to the last three years of your plan, which is the average total need placed at the end of life. If the person carries a passing year on the People tab, it defaults to the last three years of their life instead. Both are ordinary Start Year and End Year values, so move them wherever you want to test care starting earlier or lasting longer.

Care cost growth defaults to 5% a year. Long-term care costs have run about two percentage points above headline CPI, so 3% general inflation implies roughly 5% care-cost growth. Or switch the control to Match CPI to grow the cost with the simulation's own inflation, or to Percentage of CPI / Offset from CPI to scale or shift it, the same choices the Inflation settings offer.

Insurance annual benefit is what your policy pays in a claim year, in today's dollars. It is assumed to carry a compound inflation rider growing at the same rate as the cost, which is the standard policy design; for a fixed-benefit policy, enter a lower rate-adjusted figure. Each claim year the simulation spends the cost less the benefit, never below zero. The policy premium is not modeled here: premiums are paid for years or decades before any claim, so add them as a separate Healthcare or Custom Expense adjustment covering the years you pay them.

Paying for it from an HSA. Long-term care services are a qualified medical expense under IRC 213(d), so naming an HSA under Withdraw From makes those withdrawals tax-free and lets you model the "HSA as long-term care war chest" strategy. In the year-by-year detail the expense appears as a Long-Term Care row itemized into gross cost, insurance benefit, and net.

Education Expense

A recurring education cost for a fixed window (default 4 years) - tuition, room and board, K-12 tuition, an apprenticeship, or a student-loan payoff. One type covers both ways of paying for it, and the Withdraw From picker is what chooses between them.

Leave the picker blank and the expense is funded like any other: the withdrawal planner draws from your accounts in your normal order. Use this when college is paid out of pocket.

Name a 529 and the withdrawal becomes a qualified one - tax-free, with no 10% penalty - so the engine pulls from that account first and only falls back to your other accounts once the 529 runs out.

If you have dependents on the People tab, pick which one this expense is for with the For dependent selector. That link drives everything downstream: the out-of-sync warning that offers to match the adjustment to that child's college years and cost, the FAFSA projections, and a check that the child's linked 529 expects its first withdrawal in the year they actually start college. With more than one dependent and no selection, FIREproof leaves these prompts off rather than guessing a child. Combine with the FAFSA optimizer if financial aid eligibility is part of the plan.

The quickest way to get all of it right is the Create college expense button on the dependent's card or in the 529's editor, which builds this adjustment already filled in and linked.

Student Loans

An amortizing loan. Enter the balance you owe today, the annual interest rate, and either the term in years or the annual payment; whichever one you leave blank is derived and shown beside the other. From those three numbers the simulation builds the whole payment schedule, so the row ends itself: the end year is the year the balance reaches zero, the payoff year, or the forgiveness year, whichever comes first. You no longer set an end year by hand.

Payments are nominal. A loan payment never inflates, so the inflation controls are hidden on a loan row. Results are shown in today's dollars, so the figure on the timeline is what that fixed payment is worth in each simulated year's prices, not the payment itself. It usually shrinks as prices rise, and it grows in a deflationary stretch such as the early 1930s. The loan's row in the year-by-year Events table carries an info icon naming both numbers, and expanding the row repeats the payment under the balance. The editor's preview line reports the payoff year, your age that year, and the lifetime interest.

• Type of loan (student, auto, personal, credit card, medical, other) is a label for the icon and help copy only. The simulation treats every type the same way.
• Origination year models a loan you have not taken yet. The balance does not exist and no payment is due until that year, and the schedule starts there.
• Acceleration. A payoff year makes that year's scheduled payment and then pays the remaining balance as a lump sum, raised through the normal withdrawal path, so it realizes gains and moves ACA and IRMAA income like any other withdrawal. Extra annual principal is applied on top of each scheduled payment, optionally only between a start and end year. The preview reports how many years early the loan ends and the interest saved.
• Forgiveness year. The balance entering that year is written off and no payment is due that year. The forgiven amount is ordinary income in that year unless you uncheck forgiven balance is taxable, which is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness case. A payment below the first year's interest lets the balance grow (income-driven repayment plans do this); the simulation allows it, but only with a forgiveness year, so a loan always ends.

Interest deduction. Student loan interest paid in a year is an above-the-line deduction on the US federal return: up to $2,500, phased out over modified adjusted gross income of $85,000 to $100,000 for single filers and $170,000 to $200,000 married filing jointly for 2025, and not available married filing separately. Because it is above the line it also lowers the income that ACA subsidies and Medicare IRMAA tiers read. A Debt row never takes this deduction.

Pay it down faster with surplus. Any loan can be the target of a Cash Flow Priority, which sends part of each year's surplus at the balance after that year's scheduled payment. After saving a loan, the editor offers to rank its paydown in the same motion.

A row saved before this feature has no balance and keeps working exactly as it did: a fixed yearly payment between the start and end years you set. Its editor shows a Convert to a loan button that carries the current amount over as the annual payment; add the balance and rate and the schedule takes over.

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.

Loan or Debt

The same amortizing loan shape as Student Loans for every other non-mortgage obligation: car loans, personal loans, credit cards, medical debt. Balance, rate, and term or payment build the schedule; the end year is derived; payments are nominal; the Acceleration and forgiveness fields work identically; and a Debt row can be a Cash Flow Priority target. The one difference is tax: only a Student Loans row takes the interest deduction. A Debt row saved without a balance stays the fixed 10-year payment it always was, with the same Convert to a loan button. Mortgages stay on the Real Estate adjustment, and a HELOC has its own type.

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 (or an Inherited Traditional IRA) to a charity for owners 70½+. The distribution is excluded from taxable income and can satisfy that year's RMD - for an inherited account, it counts toward that account's own required distribution. 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.

Budget line, or adjustment?

With the budgeter you spell base spending out line by line, which makes one question sharper than it used to be: does this cost belong in the budget, or is it an event? The test is time. A cost you expect to keep paying, year after year, at roughly today's level is a budget line. A cost with its own start year, end year or schedule is an adjustment.