Getting started

Right after you sign up, RunwayFI opens a short onboarding wizard — it greets you with “Three questions and you’ll see your runway.” A band across the top, “Your financial independence age,” narrows as you answer, so you watch the estimate sharpen in real time. You can pick how much explanation you want (new to this, comfortable, or FIRE expert), and there is a “Skip for now” on every step.

The three questions are:

1. First — you. When you were born (which sets your age and the exact month you cross 59½) and where you live (for state tax).
2. Money coming in. Your household income before tax, and what you have saved so far — entered separately as 401(k), IRA, and cash savings.
3. Money going out. Your monthly spending. As the wizard puts it, this is “the number your whole plan hangs on — spending sets your FI target, not income.”

Then you tap “Show me my runway” and the wizard reveals your first figure — computed under current-year law — with your financial-independence age, your FI number, and your years to freedom, all marked ≈ because they are projections. From here you can “Sharpen it” with three optional facts (a 401(k) contribution, an employer match, an HSA) or go straight to “Enter RunwayFI” and open your Briefing. Nothing is required now — you can change anything later.

The wizard drops you on your Briefing at /runway — the “where you stand” view. It opens with a verdict header (“Your briefing”, “Computed under current-year law”) and a plain-English line such as “N years of freedom ahead.” Below it are four headline tiles — Net worth, Annual savings, Total tax, and Days of freedom.

The Briefing is read-only by design: it is an observer of your plan, not an editor. Any tile that still needs a fact says so (“Add an account”, “Needs income”) and sends you to the surface that owns that edit. A “One thing worth doing next” card points you at the single highest-value fact to add, and a memory strip shows what changed since your last visit.

My Finances (“Every account, every fact”) at /my-finances is where you record the details. A left rail groups everything — About you, Accounts, Expenses, Debts, Property, Businesses, and more — and “Add account” opens a picker (“What are you adding?”) with categories for cash, retirement, taxable investing, debt, HSA, real estate, and entities. Each account carries a type tag (CASH, RETIRE, INVEST, PROP, DEBT, HSA, 529), and existing accounts are edited inline.

As you go, three kinds of number are kept distinct:

• Facts are numbers you entered or that follow from law — your balances, income, and spending. A balance the app had to estimate shows as ≈ estimate in amber, so a fact and a guess never look alike.
• Assumptions are the planning levers — expected return, inflation, safe withdrawal rate, planning age. Until you change one, it is marked “(default)”. (These live on Plan › Ledger’s right rail; My Finances is your facts.)
• Computed values — net worth, your FI age, days of freedom — are engine output. They are shown, never editable, and update on their own.

Your “runway” is your path to financial independence: your FI age, the years of freedom ahead, and the days of freedom, all surfaced on the Briefing. The status reads something like “On course · FI ≈N” once your income, spending, and age are all in.

You never press a recalculate button, because there is none. RunwayFI is a reactive digital twin: change any fact and every number reflows through the graph automatically. While you type in the Add Account panel, a live runway preview shows Net worth, FI age, and Days of freedom moving with signed deltas; back on the Briefing, the memory strip records what changed. The more real facts you add, the higher the confidence climbs — and the tighter the ≈ gets.

Want to know exactly how solid each number is? The How the numbers work guide explains the ≈ symbol, the provenance badges, and the never-overstate rules behind every figure.