What Hazel does
Composes a full plan
Out of the box: net worth and balance sheet, cash flow, emergency fund, debt paydown, goal funding, insurance, retirement, and probability of success. Eleven further topics, among them Investments, Roth conversion and Social Security, switch on in Plan design, which also sets the order.
Runs the analysis
Probability of success from a Monte Carlo simulation, a thousand market paths by default, with the range of outcomes behind it. Also withdrawal order, Roth conversion schedules, when each earner claims Social Security, required minimum distributions, college funding, and equity compensation.
Reads your documents
Statements, tax returns, policy documents, estate documents, and meeting transcripts, scans and photographs included.
Answers follow-ups in place
Ask in the plan’s chat: rewrite a section, add a tab, swap a chart, add a lever, tighten the language. Each change becomes a new version.
What Hazel will not invent
Hazel can still misread an unusual statement layout or attach a figure to the wrong account, so check anything you will say out loud.
What Hazel never does
- Hazel does not place trades or move money. A plan can recommend a change in allocation, or in which account holds what. Executing it is your job.
- Tax and legal advice are out of scope. Hazel models the tax consequences of a planning decision, using your firm’s effective tax rates in Market assumptions, sourced from IRS brackets. A tax position, a document, or a filing needs a professional.
- A plan does not reach a client on its own. There is no client login and no share link. Both routes are yours: export the PDF and hand it over, or walk the household through it on your screen.
- Suitability is your call. Whether a recommendation suits this person is a judgment for you to make.
One thing here does email a client, and only when you press Send: the document request you compose in Prepare data on the household’s Financial Planning tab. It goes from your own Gmail or Outlook mailbox and carries no plan.
Two rules your firm sets, and can unset
Two ship switched on: “Never recommend a specific named security or ticker.” and “Never propose a Roth conversion that pushes the client into the next IRMAA tier.” A firm owner can remove either, or add your own. See Guardrails.Where you sign off
Approve and Ignore on each recommendation stage until you press Save, and export is switched off while anything is staged, so save or discard first.The questions the plan puts to you
The questions the plan puts to you
Hazel asks when a judgment call would move the numbers and nothing on record settles it. Some arrive during the build, at the step where Hazel pauses before drafting. See Getting started.A plan can also carry a Questions list, at most three, each with Hazel’s answer filled in and a line saying what it does to the figures. Looks right accepts that answer, so it is a decision. Change it and the button becomes Use this, and the correction queues for recalculation.
The persona Hazel matched
The persona Hazel matched
Hazel matches the household to the closest Client persona, and the Appendix names the one it used. If the match is wrong, tell Hazel in chat which persona fits and ask for a rebuild. See Client personas.
Any figure you would say out loud
Any figure you would say out loud
Select the figure and Provenance and calculations opens: its sources with a confidence label on each, the methodology, and the assumptions used. A figure with no source renders as plain text and does not open. See Where numbers come from.
Your firm's client disclaimer
Your firm's client disclaimer
Until someone at your firm edits the Client disclaimer card, a plan carries no footer at all, on screen or in the PDF. Set it before your first client-facing export. See Planning settings.
Known edges
- A household with no documents and no meetings has nothing to plan from. Balances and incomes arrive through a document, a meeting, an email or a note, and a CRM or custodian connection alone brings none. Upload statements and tax returns, or use Prepare data to ask the client. See Documents and CRM data.
- A household can hold more than one plan. The household’s Financial Planning tab opens the newest, and each plan keeps its own version history. To weigh two courses of action, ask for the comparison inside the plan you have. See Versions and regenerating.
- Only some levers move. A lever that renders as a control recalculates the figures that depend on it in your browser. It does not rewrite the words around it, and moving it never becomes a version, so ask Hazel for a change you want to keep.
- Editing and rebuilding are different tools. Hover a paragraph and a pencil appears: prose, framing and emphasis are yours. Regenerate, in the household tab’s top bar, rereads the household’s data and publishes a fresh version. See Editing a plan directly.
- A plan belongs to whoever built it. A colleague with full household access still cannot open it, so whoever built a plan exports and presents it. See Access and availability.
- A missing section has two causes. Either your firm’s Plan design leaves that module out, in which case Hazel folds the topic into a broader section rather than dropping it, or the household’s facts did not support it. Check Plan design for the first, ask Hazel in chat for the second.
Where to go next
- Planning philosophy: why Hazel asks instead of assuming.
- Where numbers come from
- Guardrails: adding your own rules.
- Access and availability: who can open a plan.