How much to plan?

[schellem]

I was excited to visit the site you promoted above. Unfortunately it seem to me to be just a slick marketing tool to drive unsuspecting folks to the salesman in sheep’s clothing.

I took the “do I need an annuity” and “...advisor” questionnaires. Let me summarize by saying the only way to fail to need an advisor is if you answer question #3 with “I have $0 saved”. The annuity questionnaire is similarly rigged to drive you to “need” one.

Sad but true from what I reviewed that website is a shill for gathering marketing data and sales leads.

Do you care to share details as to what was surprisingly pleasing to you about that site? I’d give it another look if I just stumbled upon it’s only unpleasant tools and the rest is materially valuable this audience.

I did not look at any of the calculators they are offering. I went straight to creating a 'Planner' account, after reading a review on it somewhere, starting out with the free trial and then moving up to the paid plan after I learned more about things.

Since being a member for a few months I have not been solicited for anything, I think you may have gotten a wrong impression. I did make any inquiry into getting some paid advice, they had someone call me in a couple days, we talked, I wasn't interested and I heard no more from them.

I have actually communicated with the owner of the service a few times, in relation to understanding features of the site. He is active in developing the site, wants to hear feedback and seems to be generally interested in helping folks in this arena.

I have still not fully exercised the sites functionality but I especially like it's simplicity and various charts that are very self explanatory and show all I need to see. They support ROTH conversion analysis and you can work with multiple scenarios.

They are lacking a bit in documentation but if you hang around here you are already probably fairly financially fluent. I suggest you sign up for the free plan and check it out further, it won''t have all the bells and whistles I describe above but I think you will get a much better impression.

 

[mrfeh]

I did not look at any of the calculators they are offering. I went straight to creating a 'Planner' account, after reading a review on it somewhere, starting out with the free trial and then moving up to the paid plan after I learned more about things.

Since being a member for a few months I have not been solicited for anything, I think you may have gotten a wrong impression. I did make any inquiry into getting some paid advice, they had someone call me in a couple days, we talked, I wasn't interested and I heard no more from them.

I have actually communicated with the owner of the service a few times, in relation to understanding features of the site. He is active in developing the site, wants to hear feedback and seems to be generally interested in helping folks in this arena.

I have still not fully exercised the sites functionality but I especially like it's simplicity and various charts that are very self explanatory and show all I need to see. They support ROTH conversion analysis and you can work with multiple scenarios.

They are lacking a bit in documentation but if you hang around here you are already probably fairly financially fluent. I suggest you sign up for the free plan and check it out further, it won''t have all the bells and whistles I describe above but I think you will get a much better impression.

Did you give I-orp a try in your searching?

 

[daylatedollarshort]

I have my own retirement planning spreadsheet with about 40 columns. I cross check that with the Fidelity planner. I have variables in my spreadsheet I can play around with for fields like inflation, real interest rates, tax rates, and can model different scenarios. We have enough pad, conservative investment rates and inflation protections built in so that we feel pretty good about the projections.

 

[schellem]

Did you give I-orp a try in your searching?

Yes, I looked at I-orp early on and I couldn't make to much sense of it. Now that I have gained a fair amount of knowledge I should probably go back and take a look at it.