Tools to plan for retirement?

barnstar2077

I'm with OMG (I only just noticed the acronym! :  )

I use spreadsheets, which I have changed many, many times.  I like to colour code as much as possible and leave little notes for myself in adjacent cells so I can remember how it all works the next time I want to change things!

TBH, I just love a spreadsheet, sad I know, but there is just something so satisfying about making one and getting it all to work properly.  It is like building a clock and seeing it all come to life at the end.

Like I said, sad! :  )

TBC15

cFIREsim did it for me. It gave me the confidence to put the tools down, (the tools were taken off me in the end). Working well so far.

cfw1994

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

Spreadsheet for me too....close to the point of giving up daily work and therefore more focussed on drawdown than accumulation.
Sounds a bit like Stubod - a row for each year....a few columns for different pensions and income streams for each of us, kicking in at different years....
Then a target income (growing with inflation, but perhaps dropping a little at 75, for example).
Then a main DC column and another volume for “other savings”.   Next to each of those is a % growth to allow a “manual play with numbers” (eg, bad early years!).  So I might inflation (for income) to 2.5%, DC pot to grow at 4%, other funds perhaps 3%....but all can be independently tweaked.  

I envisage just updating each row with actual numbers as the years roll by.
Next part is figuring out where to draw from to minimise tax.
But.....I do love a good spreadsheet!

Have played a little with Firecalc etc: for me it is useful vague confirmation, but not specific enough for us (hard to show 5 pensions kicking in at different times with a general tool).
Did try the Timeline app used by IFAs briefly....again, when I looked, it struggled to work well with our data. 

Certainly welcome another tool, but the flexibility you get in your own spreaddie is hard to emulate, I suspect!

Thrugelmir

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!

Expensive to buy access to. Outside the pockets of the average investor. 

samshort

BritishInvestor said:

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.

I'm basically trying to solve my own problems at the moment! (I'm a Millennial who works in tech and doesn't want to speak to a financial advisor - I just want the tools to do it myself and make sure I'm on track for the future (retirement and all other life goals)). In terms of monetising, the plan is to sell to (tech) companies as part of their wellbeing strategy. So, not an app that's solely focussed on retirement, but this is obviously a very important part of it (hence my post). Still really early days, though! (In case you're interested, this is the site/app: https://moneyed.co.uk/app/ )

My background is in data science, so I plan to implement things that would be too difficult to do in Excel. For example, I'm currently implementing an optimisation algorithm that builds a financial plan to: meet all life goals, whilst being tax efficient (ISA and pension allowances), affordable and also minimises the total contributions you should make (i.e. fully utilises compounding). What if scenarios are also on the list of things I plan to add, too!

A Zoom call would be great! I'll send you a DM with my contact details

samshort

Thank you all so much for the replies! It's really useful to hear how you structure your spreadsheets and what things you vary/track. (Also, who doesn't love a good spreadsheet!)

Dandytf

OP
I uses EPA's ILife Saving+Spending Tool,
Which allows me to view effect of frozen DB and Active DC schemes.
Which basically means to me -double up contributions late 2021 when I free up 100 pounds per month.
Excellent tool to play with current and future Contribution rates -from 12% combined DC+AVC which I'll be taking up-to 20%+ next year.
Next 10 years is critical -have even viewed various retirement Dates.
from current 47 to 55 years -is possible, though far from ideal.
from 57 maybe more realistic, which gives me motivation to clear Mortgage.
thanks

cobson

cfw1994 said:

Have played a little with Firecalc etc: for me it is useful vague confirmation, but not specific enough for us (hard to show 5 pensions kicking in at different times with a general tool).

Firecalc only seems to allow you three, but with Flexible Retirement Planner you can have any number of pensions or other income streams kicking in at different times.

Stubod

cobson said:

cfw1994 said:

Have played a little with Firecalc etc: for me it is useful vague confirmation, but not specific enough for us (hard to show 5 pensions kicking in at different times with a general tool).

Firecalc only seems to allow you three, but with Flexible Retirement Planner you can have any number of pensions or other income streams kicking in at different times.

There seem to be different issues of firecalc/cfiresim.

The one I looked at recently (http://www.cfiresim.com/) seems the simplest to use and also offered options to add extra pensions, (and other things) to suit, but the data only seems to go to 2016?

I find all the various analysis options ("spending plan") a bit confusing for the untrained, eg Hebler autopilot(!?), Guyton Klinger, (wasn't  he in MASH?) etc. so I just use the "inflation adjusted" option and hope I am filling in everything in correctly...   ...

That's why I like a spreadsheet as I know exactly what goes into it and how the calculations work, only thing is you have to make your own assumptions regarding returns on investments, interest on savings and inflation. The only problem with this is that if you work on "safe" / worst case  numbers, (eg I use 4% inflation and 1% interest / growth on all savings and investments), then potentially you are not spending enough money! I did try to find out if there is a natural link between inflation and interest but could not find anything.

Our only (financial) problem is that we have my OH's pension which is index linked as will (hopefully) our state pensions, but my DB pensions are smaller but not index linked so we need the cash/investment buffer to support our longer term projected income. Although we are not concerned about leaving anything so we can plan to drawdown the lot including the option for equity release at some point.....

cobson

Stubod said:

The only problem with this is that if you work on "safe" / worst case  numbers, (eg I use 4% inflation and 1% interest / growth on all savings and investments), then potentially you are not spending enough money! 

Your other problem is that spreadsheets hide sequence of return risk - even using 'safe' return rates doesn't make you immune to this.  Thats why the specialist tools use techniques like Monte Carlo analysis to try and gauge the risk.