I have a lot of income securities. Many of these should be taxed as ordinary income (REITs), some are return on capital (MLPs), and others are regular qualified income. How best to model this?

You would want to create custom asset classes for these. Let's look at modeling a REIT as an example. Say that you project 80% of the future returns will be from the dividend, which is taxable at ordinary income tax rates. First, select your username at the top right and go to 'Account'. Then go to the 'Asset Class Assumptions' section. Look at the screenshot below. In this example I assigned an [...]

I have a financial advisor that charges a percentage fee. I also want to add fees for fund expenses. How do I do this?

You can add both fees to every investment as you see in the first screenshot below. This will apply a 1.25% annual fee to every investment account. You can also add fees by individual investment as you see in the second screenshot below. src="https://cdn.livehelpnow.net/clients/21145/kb/fees2_ab4dd6ad-c2ad-4b4a-8dc7-7daec0e7321e.png" id="a424994c-d192-40d7-9b24-750d282d561c" alt="fees2" [...]

Do projected returns take into account any fund expenses or expense ratios?

The WealthTrace default returns do not include any annual fund expenses. What many people do is reduce their overall annual return projections by asset class. You can see how to do that here. You can also be more specific and add the expense ratio to individual investment accounts or to every account at one time. Go here for more information about this [...]

I want to model expenses such as a wedding, car purchases, and home improvement costs. These expenses won't occur every year. Where do I do this?

Add fluctuating and one-off expenses in the 'Goals & Additional Expenses' section as you see in the screenshot below. src="https://cdn.livehelpnow.net/clients/21145/kb/hr1_b3104cce-89ed-4aaf-8f63-8377ac5711ea.png" id="3e1940de-9f6b-4073-be4f-5e4720c52d97" alt="hr1" width="90%" height="auto" data-image="3e1940de-9f6b-4073-be4f-5e4720c52d97 [...]

When I enter a growth rate for a pension, is that growth rate applied immediately, even if I don't receive the pension for several more years?

Yes, the growth rate for the pension is applied immediately. The amount you enter as the payment is adjusted by the ‘Growth Rate of Pension’ starting this year. The amount then changes each year with that growth rate number. For example, if you enter a pension that pays $30,000 a year and the growth rate is entered as 2%, in 10 years the pension payment will be 30,000 * (1.02)^10 = [...]