Tools to plan for retirement?

samshort

Happy Monday!

Given the collective knowledge and expertise on this forum, I'm really interested to know what tools/software people use to plan for their retirement (or for any other life goals)? If you use tools, what features are especially valuable? Or, what do you wish existing tools did?

Full disclosure as to why I'm asking, I’ve spent the last few months developing an app to make the types of planning tools used by financial advisors accessible to everyone. I’m still in the early stages and I'm trying to understand what functionality people want, so I can include it in the app. 

Thanks!
Sam

BritishInvestor

samshort said:

Happy Monday!

Given the collective knowledge and expertise on this forum, I'm really interested to know what tools/software people use to plan for their retirement (or for any other life goals)? If you use tools, what features are especially valuable? Or, what do you wish existing tools did?

Full disclosure as to why I'm asking, I’ve spent the last few months developing an app to make the types of planning tools used by financial advisors accessible to everyone. I’m still in the early stages and I'm trying to understand what functionality people want, so I can include it in the app. 

Thanks!
Sam

What kind of tool? Cashflow planning or income sustainability or both?

Stubod

..just a spreadsheet for me with each year on its own row, and columns for income and expenditure for each year, and the "pot remaining", then some cells that allow input of various inflation and interest levels that you can give it your best guess.

Or if you are inclined there is the firecalc website, but I find that a bit more complicated but at least you can plan based around actual historic stock market data...

BritishInvestor

Stubod said:

..just a spreadsheet for me with each year on its own row, and columns for income and expenditure for each year, and the "pot remaining", then some cells that allow input of various inflation and interest levels that you can give it your best guess.

Or if you are inclined there is the firecalc website, but I find that a bit more complicated but at least you can plan based around actual historic stock market data...

Does firecalc have UK data?

samshort

BritishInvestor said:

samshort said:

Happy Monday!

Given the collective knowledge and expertise on this forum, I'm really interested to know what tools/software people use to plan for their retirement (or for any other life goals)? If you use tools, what features are especially valuable? Or, what do you wish existing tools did?

Full disclosure as to why I'm asking, I’ve spent the last few months developing an app to make the types of planning tools used by financial advisors accessible to everyone. I’m still in the early stages and I'm trying to understand what functionality people want, so I can include it in the app. 

Thanks!
Sam

What kind of tool? Cashflow planning or income sustainability or both?

Mostly interested in cashflow planning at the moment, as that's what I've implemented in the app to date. In the future, I want to include Monte Carlo simulations, so would be great to hear about the income sustainability tools you use, too. Thanks!

samshort

Stubod said:

..just a spreadsheet for me with each year on its own row, and columns for income and expenditure for each year, and the "pot remaining", then some cells that allow input of various inflation and interest levels that you can give it your best guess.

Or if you are inclined there is the firecalc website, but I find that a bit more complicated but at least you can plan based around actual historic stock market data...

Thanks so much for sharing! If you don't mind me asking, do you use spreadsheets because the tools you want don't exist? Or because you just prefer doing things in a spreadsheet? Do you have any pain points?

samshort

BritishInvestor said:

Stubod said:

..just a spreadsheet for me with each year on its own row, and columns for income and expenditure for each year, and the "pot remaining", then some cells that allow input of various inflation and interest levels that you can give it your best guess.

Or if you are inclined there is the firecalc website, but I find that a bit more complicated but at least you can plan based around actual historic stock market data...

Does firecalc have UK data?

I didn't think so. It's really hard to find UK data!

AlanP_2

I use MS Money to record expenditure / income across different accounts and then use Excel to look at future cashflow and pension (DB & DC) levels, playing with inflation / investment returns etc. as required.

I prefer to use Excel rather than an off the shelp App or package as I understand my logic as it has evolved over time and know how the various key numbers are derived.

My Excel skills are limited and all the formulas are "long hand" in the main, no fancy lookups or anything.

BritishInvestor

samshort said:

BritishInvestor said:

samshort said:

Happy Monday!

Given the collective knowledge and expertise on this forum, I'm really interested to know what tools/software people use to plan for their retirement (or for any other life goals)? If you use tools, what features are especially valuable? Or, what do you wish existing tools did?

Full disclosure as to why I'm asking, I’ve spent the last few months developing an app to make the types of planning tools used by financial advisors accessible to everyone. I’m still in the early stages and I'm trying to understand what functionality people want, so I can include it in the app. 

Thanks!
Sam

What kind of tool? Cashflow planning or income sustainability or both?

Mostly interested in cashflow planning at the moment, as that's what I've implemented in the app to date. In the future, I want to include Monte Carlo simulations, so would be great to hear about the income sustainability tools you use, too. Thanks!

I'm not sure how far down the road you are at present but I wonder who the target audience is going to be and how you can monetise that.
Excel is great for building a basic plan and a tool that adds significantly more functionality/complexity may come with a steeper learning curve. What do you plan to offer that that someone with reasonable skills in Excel couldn't easily cobble together themselves? What if scenarios? Complex tax planning (IHT, LTA, income, CGT tradeoffs etc)?
(Hopefully not coming across as negative but would be great to see you make a success of this - in a previous life I worked as a developer in a software startup )
Pg 29 has some of the cashflow tools used by professionals (I use Voyant)
https://www.thepfs.org/media/10123132/financial-advice-business-benchmarking.pdf
For income sustainability Timeline is the market leader IMO
https://www.timelineapp.co/
If you want a demo of these more than happy to setup a Zoom call.

BritishInvestor

samshort said:

BritishInvestor said:

Stubod said:

..just a spreadsheet for me with each year on its own row, and columns for income and expenditure for each year, and the "pot remaining", then some cells that allow input of various inflation and interest levels that you can give it your best guess.

Or if you are inclined there is the firecalc website, but I find that a bit more complicated but at least you can plan based around actual historic stock market data...

Does firecalc have UK data?

I didn't think so. It's really hard to find UK data!

Yep, so maybe that could be a selling point.
You'd need
UK inflation
Global equities
Global bonds
UK equities
UK bonds
Global value
Global small
as a starting point.

OldMusicGuy

Spreadsheet for me. No app would be flexible enough for my circumstances and Excel is just much easier and more flexible.

However, I am in the decumulation phase so am looking very closely at year by year cash flow. I think I would have been more open in the accumulation phase to a planning tool that was more along the lines of cfiresim to help me decide when I could retire.