The Flexible Retirement Planner

[Focus]

Saw this mentioned on Bogleheads. Not sure why I hadn't come across it before.

The Flexible Retirement Planner

It seems to be one of the better online tools out there (although FireCalc and ORP remain at the top of my list). Anyone tried it? Thoughts?

 

[Katsmeow]

I've seen it. I get stopped right away though since it seems to assume that everyone is single. I was sort of able to "cheat" it by putting in SS twice in the settings but I didn't like the fact that it really didn't seem to have a way to set it up as having a spouse.

 

[Midpack]

I entered my data in it years ago. It's better than many, but I always thought FIRECALC was more useful. YMMV

 

[REWahoo]

I've seen it. I get stopped right away though since it seems to assume that everyone is single. I was sort of able to "cheat" it by putting in SS twice in the settings but I didn't like the fact that it really didn't seem to have a way to set it up as having a spouse.

So you're saying it should be renamed the Inflexible Retirement Planner?

 

[Katsmeow]

So you're saying it should be renamed the Inflexible Retirement Planner?

- Good one!

I actually had a bigger problem. I tried to set it up to have the first year have the default annual spending of $X and then to have additional expenses of $Y which were substantial but well below $X. Then I had additional spending in the next year of about half of $Y and then in the third year additional spending that was about 1/4 of $Y. I carefully set it up so that the additional spending was for only one year.

Well I was shocked to find that I had 0% probability of the portfolio surviving. I was shocked and looked at the annual spending. The planner was showing year 1 spending of three times $X when the actual entered spending was about 1.4 times $X. Same thing was that it showed huge spending for the next two years as well.

I worked with this entering and re-entering the information several times. Double checking that I clearly showed the extra spending as only being for one year....but all to no avail. I finally just gave up.

 

[FRPGuy]

I actually had a bigger problem. I tried to set it up to have the first year have the default annual spending of $X and then to have additional expenses of $Y which were substantial but well below $X. Then I had additional spending in the next year of about half of $Y and then in the third year additional spending that was about 1/4 of $Y. I carefully set it up so that the additional spending was for only one year.

Well I was shocked to find that I had 0% probability of the portfolio surviving. I was shocked and looked at the annual spending. The planner was showing year 1 spending of three times $X when the actual entered spending was about 1.4 times $X. Same thing was that it showed huge spending for the next two years as well.

Hi,

I'm the guy that created the Flexible Retirement Planner and I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience with it. I'd be happy to work with you by PM or email to get to the bottom of what was going on with those inputs.

The Flexible Retirement planner was created around 6 years ago and runs Monte Carlo retirement simulations for tens of thousands of users every year. At this point, it's pretty well vetted.

Still, there's always a chance that you may have uncovered a corner case that hasn't been seen before. If you can spare a few moments and could PM or email me with the inputs that were causing the problem (use fake amounts), I'd greatly appreciate the chance to work through it with you.

Jim