FIREproof Help

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Common issues

Sim will not run, numbers look wrong, login and subscription.

A short triage list for the issues users hit most often. If yours isn't here, the year-by-year waterfall and Plan Diagnostics drawer between them solve about 95% of "this looks wrong" moments.

Sim won't run

You should not have to guess. When Run is greyed out, a red N issues button sits beside it; clicking it opens the setup drawer on Needs attention, which lists every blocker as its own row with a button that takes you to the exact field that fixes it. The count drops as you resolve them and Run comes back on at zero.

Numbers look wrong

A few quick checks resolve most "the success rate is way off what I expected" reports:

  • Inflation mode. Check the Parameters tab. Historic vs. Constant inflation can shift outcomes meaningfully, especially for long retirements.
  • Retirement year. Confirm the retirement year on the Parameters tab is what you intended. Off-by-one errors here are common and they change which adjustments fire pre- vs. post-retirement.
  • Future retirement setup. If your retirement year is still ahead, add a working-years period to your Base Living Expenses reflecting your current life, and make sure you've added income sources (jobs, self-employment) covering the years before retirement. Without the income, the sim starts drawing from savings on day one; without the period, the working years spend nothing at all.
  • Adjustment date ranges. Start and end years on each income or expense matter. An expense that ends a year early, or a job income that starts the year after retirement, will quietly throw off cash flow and taxes.
  • Inflation flag on adjustments. Each adjustment can be inflation-adjusted or held fixed in nominal dollars. Over a 30-year horizon the difference compounds dramatically, so pick the one that matches the underlying obligation.
  • Account ownership. Which Person owns each account drives RMD timing, early-withdrawal penalties, and Social Security interactions. The wrong owner can shift penalties or required distributions into surprising years.
  • Asset allocation inside accounts. The per-account stock/bond split is what the simulation actually grows. If returns look off vs. expectation, confirm the allocation on each account matches what you really hold.

If those check out, open a year-by-year row in the Year-by-Year analysis. Watching one year's waterfall (income → adjustments → withdrawals → taxes → returns → rebalance) almost always reveals where reality diverges from expectation. Plan Diagnostics often points right at the same culprit with an action button to compare the alternative.

Buttons silently doing nothing after a long-open tab

If a tab has been open for a long time and clicking Add Account, Edit Glide Path, or another in-app button appears to do nothing, FIREproof has almost certainly been redeployed since the tab loaded. The hashed JavaScript chunks the page was holding in memory no longer exist on the server.

FIREproof detects this and shows a toast in the top-right with a Reload now button. Click Reload now (or refresh the page yourself) and the button will work again. You can also see a "A new version of FIREproof is available" toast in the same corner shortly after every deploy. Clicking Reload now there picks up the new build immediately.

Login & subscription

Account, billing, and subscription management lives off the user menu in the top-right of the app. From there you can change your email, reset your password, view active Pro features, and manage billing through the Stripe customer portal.

Pro-only features, including Custom Assets, Compare Sims load-all, Roth Optimizer, and FAFSA Optimizer, surface a "Get Pro" prompt when you don't have an active subscription. Existing inputs are never deleted; the gate only blocks new actions.

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For sim-specific issues, open Plan Diagnostics from the Proof view. For everything else, reach out to support.