Life-Event Financial Decision Tools
Model financial scenarios side by side for major life transitions. Compare the 12-month impact of housing, insurance, income, and investment decisions using the inputs and assumptions displayed in each tool.
Work and income
When the income changesFamily and household
When who you live with changesHealth and care
When health drives the moneyLoss and estate
After a death, for either roleHome, money and moving
When the ground under the plan shiftsNo engine matches that. Clear the box to see all 24, or try the word for the event itself — divorce, layoff, adoption, probate.
What is the Financial Decision Center?
A financial decision support system (DSS) models possible dollar outcomes before you commit. PivotReset's Decision Center compares scenarios side by side to show how the values you enter and the assumptions displayed by each tool affect cash flow, savings runway, and estimated net position over 12 months.
How does it work?
Select a life event, enter a financial snapshot, choose a decision to model, and compare the estimates. Secure AI analysis, account features, paid upgrades, and PDF exports are temporarily unavailable; the basic on-page scenario tools remain open to use.
Who is it for?
The Decision Center is for people comparing financial choices during a major life transition. Its estimates are educational starting points based on the information entered, not personalized financial, legal, tax, insurance, or investment advice.
Which engine should I open?
Each engine models one life event over twelve months. You enter your own figures, pick between two or three named choices, and the tool shows what each path does to cash flow, savings runway and estimated net position. The formulas and defaults are printed on every engine page — nothing is hidden behind a score.
| Life event | The decision it models |
|---|---|
| Divorce | Keep the house or sell it; how support and asset division change the next year of cash flow. |
| Job loss | How long the runway lasts, COBRA against a marketplace plan, and whether bridge income changes the answer. |
| New baby | Daycare against one parent leaving work, priced with your own quotes and salary. |
| Career change | A clean break against a gradual transition, and whether paid retraining pays for itself. |
| Marriage | Joint, separate or hybrid accounts; filing status; which employer plan to consolidate onto. |
| Retirement | When to claim Social Security, what withdrawal rate the portfolio supports, how to bridge to Medicare. |
| Home purchase | Buy now with PMI or wait for twenty percent down; fifteen-year against thirty-year. |
| Medical emergency | Paying, negotiating or appealing a bill, against the income the event costs you. |
| Bankruptcy | Chapter 7 against Chapter 13 against negotiating outside court. |
| Caregiving | Cutting hours, hiring help, or moving a parent in — and what each does to your own earnings. |
| Business startup | Quitting to build against keeping the job, priced against your personal runway. |
| Widowhood | Survivor benefit timing, whether to keep the house, and what the estate settlement changes. |
| Disability | Applying for benefits, requesting accommodation, or reducing hours. |
| Inheritance | Paying down debt, investing, or holding — compared against the rate on each debt. |
| Empty nest | Downsizing against staying, and where the freed monthly cash is best pointed. |
| Military transition | Timing the GI Bill, keeping or rolling the TSP, and where to land. |
| Disaster recovery | Rebuilding, relocating, or selling as-is, against what insurance and assistance actually cover. |
| Adoption | Foster, private domestic or international, financed against the credit and any employer benefit. |
Six option reviews that produce no score
Six further pages cover events where a dollar model would be dishonest — post-loss decisions, end-of-life planning, workplace crisis, relocation and immigration, identity transitions and medical event preparation. These once produced readiness scores. The formulas behind those scores could not be supported, so they were removed rather than rebuilt, and the pages now lay out the options and the trade-offs without scoring you.
What these models do, and what they do not
They are arithmetic on your inputs. Every engine is deterministic: the same figures always produce the same projection. There is no model of you, no prediction, and no score of your readiness or your psychology. Each page prints its inputs, its defaults and its formula so you can check the arithmetic or disagree with an assumption.
They do not know your state, your plan or your contract. Unemployment rules, community-property law, Medicaid eligibility, insurance networks and employer plan terms all vary in ways no general model captures. Treat an output as a starting number to take to your state agency, your plan administrator or an attorney — not as the answer.
They cannot recover a missed deadline. Several of these events run on clocks that close for good. COBRA election and the marketplace special enrollment period each run 60 days from the later of your notice or the day coverage ends (HealthCare.gov). A severance release that waives age-discrimination claims gives a worker 40 or older at least 21 days to consider it, 45 days in a group program, and 7 days to revoke after signing (29 U.S.C. § 626(f)). Model the decision if it helps, but file, elect and sign inside the window.
They are not advice. Nothing here is personalized financial, legal, tax, insurance or investment advice, and no one at PivotReset reviews your figures. For a decision that is hard to reverse, pay a professional who is accountable for the recommendation.
Reading a life event end to end rather than modelling one choice? Start from a life-event guide, which covers the deadlines, the sequence and the sources, then come back here to price a specific decision.
Decision Center FAQ
Basic on-page scenario modeling is open to use. Secure AI analysis, account features, paid upgrades, and PDF exports are temporarily unavailable.
Outputs are estimates based on the values you enter and the assumptions shown by each tool. Verify important figures and consult a qualified professional before making a high-stakes decision.
The Decision Center emphasizes side-by-side scenarios and explicit assumptions for major life transitions. It is an educational aid, not a substitute for personalized professional advice.