Quick QLP question

[explanade]

Tried importing a QFX file into Quicken 2013 from Quicken Essentials for the Mac.

But there were 40 errors and none of the investment accounts are created in Quicken 2013.

Do I need to set up all the investment accounts to download in order to use QLP?

Or can I just use some static figures just to get QLP working? I guess in that case, it would be just like other retirement calculators, not using "live" data.

 

[pb4uski]

For QLP I think if you set up your investment accounts (or at least 3 - taxable, tax deferred and tax free) and just input tickers and current share counts that would be enough. QLP doesn't care about history - just from now forward using the assumptions you provide.

 

[explanade]

OK, I'm going to try going through it without hooking in all the investment account logins, see if it'll let me.

Looks like a lot of the data allows you to estimate or plug in actual values.

For Average Tax Rate though, I put in figures from last year's tax return and it's using the figure generated from that for my post-retirement tax rate too. Does that make sense?

Seems like it should allow for lower retirement income, especially taxable income.

 

[pb4uski]

QLP allows for a pre-retirement and post-retirement tax rate.

Lifetime Planner | Additional information

Tax rates
Tax rate before retirement is the percent of your income you will pay in taxes on average from now until you retire. Your before retirement tax rate is applied to your earned income from salaries and your unearned income from taxable realized investment gains. A higher average tax rate reduces the money you have to spend and slows the compounding of your taxable investments.

Tax rate after retirement is the percent of your income you will pay in taxes on average each year after retiring. Your after retirement tax rate is applied to your salaries, benefits, and taxable realized gains due to investment growth or withdrawals from investments. The higher your tax rate after retirement, the more investments you'll need to sell to net enough money to cover your expenses.

 

[explanade]

I just haven't found an obvious way to adjust the post retirement tax rate..

Or even guess at what it will be like.

 

[pb4uski]

I dunno what version of Quicken you are using but every version I can recall using provides for before and after retirement tax rate assumptions. Are you not finding that? In my version if is under taxes under assumptions.

In terms of guessing, what I did was I took my then current tax return and zeroed out employment earnings and made other applicable changes and then looked at the revised taxes. Form 1040 line 44.

 

[explanade]

OK finished it and it generated a 40-year chart. If you click the bar for a given year, it would show your withdrawal for that year as well as investment balance.

Oh and it does show the assumptions, with each category bringing up a dialog so if I click the tax rate, it has a place for entering post-retirement tax rate.

So it shows a success for me but one thing different from other calculators and planners is that my retirement savings balance is never higher than in the year I retire, whereas my recollection with other calculators, which show a small balance at the end of the 40-year period, still show some peaks some time after retiring.

I'll have to dig more into the details and compare with other results though.