Repayment (loan principal)
Real estateRepayment is the part of your monthly loan installment that actually reduces your remaining debt. Unlike interest and running costs, repayment is not consumption – it builds wealth by lowering your debt.
Distinction:Repayment ≠ costs. Repayment reduces your debt and increases your equity. Running costs (service charges, insurance, property tax etc.), on the other hand, are real consumption. Interest is real consumption too – it belongs to running costs, not to repayment.
What to enter?In FireLotse, only enter the pure repayment portion of your monthly installment – the part that actually reduces the remaining debt. Enter the interest together with service charges & co. as "running costs". For annuity loans you can find the split in your bank’s annual repayment schedule.
In FireLotse:Repayment flows into your cash flow as an obligation – it weighs on your monthly budget but is not a consumption expense. Once fully repaid, this item disappears completely.
FIRE assumption (important!):In the FIRE phases (Barista, withdrawal, pension), repayment is currently NOT taken into account as an expense – FireLotse assumes that your property is paid off when you start FIRE. If you go into FIRE with ongoing repayments, your FIRE number will be too low for the remaining repayment years. Workaround: temporarily set your living costs higher, or plan the remaining repayment amount separately as a safety buffer. Time-dependent cash-flow modeling with a repayment end year is planned.