Quote:
Originally Posted by Spud
I have looked all over the place for a retirement calculator that will tell me what I want to know (are we saving enough, and if not, how much more do we need to save?). I can't find one that allows me to control enough of the variables on my own. They all either assume social security is going to be there when I retire, assume a rate of inflation that is invisible to me, won't let me add in our farm income during retirement, don't take into account Roth IRAs versus traditional IRAs versus 401(k)s, or any number of variables that make me think that the ol' GIGO rule applies.
I looked at Firecalc that JimOhio mentioned earlier in the thread, and it just confused me. Quicken has a great retirement calculator that lets me control all of the variables, and the bonus part about it is that it already knows all my financial info -- less entering for me. Except that for some reason it won't use my taxable account (almost half of our current retirement savings!) for retirement -- it counts it as "General Expenses."
So I don't know what to do. I guess I'm just venting. And wondering if I should just go ahead and try to figure out how to make my OWN retirement calculator in Excel. Dagnabbit.  |
This is why a withdraw plan is different from an accumulation plan. I would design the calculators differently for each.
When accumulating the most important factor is time, taxes and rates of return. Other variables come into play, but those are by far the biggest contributors.
When withdrawing, the most important factor is to be "not negative" on return scale, followed by taxes, tax brackets and a few other variables which escape me right now.
It is not the same equation.
If I lose 8% of NAV, but fund shot off 2% in dividends, that 2% in dividends is more important than a loss of NAV when withdrawing. When accumulating the 8% loss is clearly a bigger issue.
Firecalc is more of a spend down calculator (spending), not accumulating (which appears to be what you are after). However version 3 is much harder to use than version 1 and 2- I believe I used 1 a few years ago and really liked it/ Apparently the programmer had too much time on their hands and messed it up.
I have a chart I use to track my progress. Check my blog or search my posts (search for one called "how many doubles" or something like that).
I can re create the chart to track contributions if needed.