Stack more than one change in a scenario

A single what-if scenario can hold more than one life change at once — Buy a car and Moving in the same scenario, for example — each in its own section with its own Pause, Resume, and Remove. The totals panel always shows every active change combined, and each section's own numbers are its share of that total.

Before you start

• You need an existing scenario to stack onto. See Test a what-if scenario to create one from a template first.
• Stacking is part of the free What-if planner — no Pro plan needed.

Steps

1. Open a scenario and scroll to the bottom of the page.
2. Click + Add a change.
3. Under What else is changing?, pick a template. It's built the same way as when you started the scenario, with locked items already accounted for (see below).
4. If a card is dimmed, it can't be added right now — the reason is under the card, along with Go to X when one change is the cause. Clicking it closes the picker and opens that change's section.
5. Adjust the new section's amounts and choices, then click Add change. It appears at the bottom of the change list, after your other changes and before Something else.

How stacking works

• One change per real item. The first change to touch one of your real items — your rent, your car loan, a specific bill — owns it. If a later change or template would also touch it, that item shows Changed by X instead of Replace/Remove/Keep, in whichever section it appears. Removing the change that owns it frees the item up again automatically.
• A paused change still owns its items. Pausing (in a section's footer) takes its rows out of the totals — its header shows "Paused · would be −$X/mo" — but keeps its claim on its items, so resuming it later can't double-count something another change picked up in the meantime.
• Some templates only stack once. Moving, Downsize, and Buy a home share one housing slot per scenario — only one of the three can be active (paused or not) at a time. Cut costs can only appear once. Retire and Something else aren't offered in "+ Add a change" — Retire opens the Retirement planner instead, and Something else is already on the page. Every other template is blocked only when everything it would touch is already claimed by earlier changes.
• Something else is separate from every change. Hand edits there (searching to remove a real item, or adding one with Add Item) don't count against the 10-change limit and are never blocked by another change — if a change already removed something you also remove by hand, it just shows "Also removed by X".
• Values are a snapshot from when the change was added. Each change's footer shows "Values as of" the date it was first created — editing the section afterward doesn't move that date. Nothing refreshes a change's amounts from your current real numbers; to pick up a changed amount, remove the change and add it again from the template. The one exception is a matched item that's deleted from your real data entirely — its row shows No longer in your data with no action choices, and it stops counting in the change's numbers automatically, without you re-adding anything.

Good to know

• Two separate limits. A scenario holds up to 10 changes — paused changes still count toward that number, so pausing one doesn't free a slot for another; only removing it does ("Remove one to add another."). Each side (items taken out, items added) separately holds up to 100 items combined across every change and Something else; pausing or removing a change frees room there, since a paused change's rows drop out ("Remove or pause a change to make room.").
• Removing asks first. A confirm shows the before → after money left over and what comes back or stops being added, before the change is removed.
• Undo is brief and positional. After removing a change, an inline Undo sits where its section was for a few seconds and puts it back at the same spot in the list — it isn't a permanent history.
• On a phone, only one section is open at a time; opening one closes the last. On a wider screen, any number can stay open together.
• Legacy scenarios stay in Something else. A scenario created before stacking existed shows everything in Something else, including any purchase bundle, with the same edit and remove controls it always had.