What does registration (donation) get me?

[rmcelwee]

I am pretty cheap (can only think of one time I gave a website money and it was $5) and I've only used firecalc a couple of times. I'm one year out from retirement and if I start using firecalc more I might want additional features if there are any.

[rodi]

The donation gives you some more 'what if' type scenarios to play with. For example you can set different spending for different years (eg years 1-5 are $x/year... year's 6, 8, and 10 are different...) I found that feature useful when I was modelling years after the kids moved out. (Spending actually increases, in my mind, when that happens because travel kicks up.)

I'm cheap, too. But since I got a lot of value out of the calculator, I tossed a small amount of $ towards it. But that was me... Your mileage may vary.

[rmcelwee]

If you register, can you save your data ($, years, expenses, etc) or do you still have to enter it every time you go to the site?

[Whisper66]

I'm relatively cheap person also. I donated because I relied so heavily on this free calculator for my retirement decisions and felt it offered as much or more than most. I continue to donate a small amount yearly because I use it yearly to check where we are in our retirement. I want others to have the tool available to them as well and recognize it takes some funds to do that.

[Jerry1]

I’ve come across a few programs/apps, whatever, that were worth way more than anything they charged or requested. Sometimes I’ve just stepped up because either I wanted the extra features or it was just a good value. But it also comes down to the realization that we either come out of our pocket for these things or we get advertised to death or our information monetize.

If you tried to program a model like FireCalc, the hours would be huge. If you went to an advisor for the information FireCalc provides, you’d spend way more money, especially if you want to run a ton of different scenarios. So there’s no doubt the value is there. So, it pretty much boils down whether or not you’re feeling the value or the need to support.

[rmcelwee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerry1 So, it pretty much boils down whether or not you’re feeling the value or the need to support.

So registration doesn't get any extra features and you can't save your data. Got it!

[DayDreaming]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rmcelwee If you register, can you save your data ($, years, expenses, etc) or do you still have to enter it every time you go to the site?

On the results page, look for "Link to this set of data" near the upper right. Save that link as a bookmark or something, and that saves your data - use that link to to get to that set of data. You could bookmark different data sets if you are playing with different scenarios. This feature is free.

[Jerry1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodi The donation gives you some more 'what if' type scenarios to play with. For example you can set different spending for different years (eg years 1-5 are $x/year... year's 6, 8, and 10 are different...) I found that feature useful when I was modelling years after the kids moved out. (Spending actually increases, in my mind, when that happens because travel kicks up.) I'm cheap, too. But since I got a lot of value out of the calculator, I tossed a small amount of $ towards it. But that was me... Your mileage may vary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rmcelwee So registration doesn't get any extra features and you can't save your data. Got it!

Rodi mentioned one feature from registration. There may be others. As for saving your data, you can do that without registering. I just looked and the link to save your file is in the results page on the top right of the page - it says “Link to this set of data”. You’d need to save it to a text file or something. I saved my links in Excel because I had a retirement file I was using.

I mean heck, that right there (personal service to help you figure out how to save your data) should be worth the cost of registration. Hope that helps.

[Katsmeow]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rmcelwee So registration doesn't get any extra features and you can't save your data. Got it!

That is not true at least about extra features. I made a single donation years ago and I absolute use the feature of being able to vary spending by year. When I first started using Firecalc I was till working and we still had kids at home and in college. So I can foresee our spending would change radically over time. Even after kids were gone and I had retired I still needed to vary spending as I was not yet on Medicare. Even now that I am I like to play with spending changes. I find it very, very helpful.

That said, I would probably pay a recurring fee to be able to save my data....

[rmcelwee]

FWIW, as I said in my original post, I had only used FC a couple of times. I have found that four months later, as I have gotten closer to retirement, I started using it more often so I sent a donation. Thanks for the great tool!

[tb001]

Yes, the variable spending feature was huge for us. We have younger kids, so being able to understand the impact of changing expenses, downsizing later in life, etc was huge.