The People tab establishes who the simulation is for. Ages drive nearly every age-gated rule in the engine: HSA contribution caps, retirement-account access, Social Security timing, RMDs, and Medicare-related healthcare presets.

Fields

• Name. Display label used across Inputs and Proof.
• Birth Year. Drives age-based simulation behavior.
• Birth Month. Improves age timing precision for adjustments and account rules.

A simulation can have one or two people. Two people switches tax filing to married-jointly assumptions and unlocks per-person account ownership.

Dependents

The Dependents section is where you add college-bound children to the plan. Dependents are optional. They don't affect tax filing status, but they unlock two features that key off each child's college timeline: 529 beneficiary linking and the FAFSA optimizer.

Per-dependent fields

• Name and Birth year / month. Identify the dependent and drive their current age.
• College start year and Duration. Define the award window (e.g. 2030–2033 for a 4-year program starting in 2030).
• Annual cost of attendance. Today's-dollar yearly cost; the simulation inflates it automatically.
• Linked 529 account. Picks which 529 (from the Accounts tab) is earmarked for this child.
• Optimize FAFSA in base years. Opt-in toggle that shapes withdrawals during the FAFSA base years.

How dependents relate to 529 accounts

A 529 College Savings Plan needs a beneficiary to be useful in the simulation. Linking a dependent to a 529 tells the engine which child's tuition that account should fund. Withdrawals for college costs draw from the linked 529 first before falling back to other accounts. You can add the 529 in the Accounts tab and link it from either side; the relationship is stored on the dependent.

How dependents relate to FAFSA

FAFSA bases a family's Student Aid Index on income reported two years before each award year. Those are the base years. With Optimize FAFSA turned on for a dependent, the simulation avoids Traditional / pre-tax withdrawals during that child's base years (college start − 2 through the last award year − 2) to keep reported income and SAI low. The dependent card shows the exact base-year range so you can see which simulation years will be affected.