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You already have three Client personas, so your first decision is which ones to keep. HENRY, Pre-Retiree, and Retiree / Decumulator are in Settings → Planning the first time you open it, and Hazel matches households against all three from the start. They are ordinary firm personas from that moment: rename them, rewrite their instructions, redesign their plans, or delete them.
When a persona below leaves a topic out, no part of its plans is devoted to that topic on its own. Hazel still covers it where it belongs in the plan, and can still answer a question about it in chat.

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HENRY

High earner, not rich yet. Ages 28 to 44. Its instructions tell Hazel to:
  • Lead with the savings-rate target and how it moves the retirement date.
  • Call out concentrated single-stock risk when restricted stock units or an employee share purchase plan appear.
  • Show tax-advantaged headroom, such as 401(k), mega-backdoor, and HSA capacity, before taxable saving.
  • Compound efficiently toward competing goals at once: a house, college, financial independence.
  • Show what each extra dollar of savings buys.
What it changes:
  • Its plan design is Hazel’s default set of modules minus Monte Carlo success.
  • It sets its own success threshold of 85%, where Hazel’s firm-wide default is 90%.
  • Its design ships at Flexible strictness.
Keep it if you serve high-income professionals whose plans turn on how much they can save.

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Pre-Retiree

Five to ten years out. Ages 55 to 67. Its instructions tell Hazel to:
  • Anchor to the household’s stated retirement year and frame every trade-off around it.
  • Model Social Security at both 67 and 70 for each earner.
  • Stress-test spending at a 4% real return.
  • Surface Roth conversion capacity in the 12% and 22% brackets.
  • Answer a question like “can I retire at 60?” with a defensible number.
  • Build and lock the reserve ladder so rebalancing does not erode the floor.
What it changes:
  • Its plan design is Hazel’s default set of modules minus Debt paydown, usually resolved by this age.
  • It holds a five-year cash reserve, against Hazel’s default of three years.
  • It sets the Roth conversion strategy to Fill to top of 24% bracket, with a note to fill the 22% bracket between ages 60 and 72.
  • Its design ships at Flexible strictness.
Keep it if your clients are asking when they can retire.

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Retiree / Decumulator

In retirement or transitioning. Ages 65 and up. Its instructions tell Hazel to:
  • Fund spending from taxable accounts first, then tax-deferred, then Roth, unless the household says otherwise.
  • Call out the year required minimum distributions start, for each earner.
  • Show healthcare cost inflation at 5.5% separately from general inflation.
  • Show a band of modeled outcomes rather than a single success figure.
  • Draw down tax-efficiently without running out.
  • Smooth income to avoid bracket creep and IRMAA cliffs, the income thresholds that raise Medicare premiums.
What it changes:
  • Its plan design is built for the income phase, so it leads the tabs inside Getting there with Retirement income, then Cash flow, Investments, and Insurance.
  • It drops the Retirement, Emergency fund, and Debt paydown modules, and adds Retirement income sequencing, Healthcare coverage estimation, and Investments.
  • It holds a seven-year cash reserve, the longest of the three, against Hazel’s default of three years.
  • It replaces the firm’s withdrawal guardrail wording with its own: Guyton-Klinger plus or minus 10%, with a 20% ceiling in goal years.
  • Its design ships at Guided strictness rather than Flexible.
Keep it if you serve retirees, and expect its plans to look structurally different from the other two.

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Deciding which ones to keep

1

Delete the ones you do not serve

An unused persona still competes to match. Open it in Settings → Planning and select Delete. It leaves your firm’s Plan templates straight away and cannot be undone, but the preset stays available: select New persona and pick it from Hazel presets in the Starting template list.
2

Read one plan from each persona you keep

Pick a household you know well and read the finished plan, then check the Persona row in Applied settings, in the plan’s Appendix.
3

Edit the description first

The description is the main matching signal, and the field says as much. Rewrite it in your firm’s words, for the clients you have. The age range under the name is fixed at creation.
4

Then adjust instructions and design

Small, specific changes. If you are rewriting a persona wholesale, your base template is probably what needs fixing.
All three shipped personas carry a plan design of their own, so each reads Customized on its Plan design card and offers Re-sync from base. They will not pick up a base-template change until you re-sync.

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Where to go next