Early Retirement Calculator

J

junopens

Dryer sheet wannabe
Joined
Feb 3, 2008
Messages
11
Location
Bellevue
Hi,

We finaly published a retirement calculator that gives you 2 major answers that I have not seen in other places. It is independent and in beta (trial).

Please try it and let us know though the feedback in the site or the forum.

I really appreciate your feedback and hope this will help you with your most important plan of your life!

http://www.myretirementday.com/site/genpage.jsp?uid=&uname=&page=calculator.jsp - use the Calculator tab.

Junopens
 
Last edited:
I'm a little confused, some questions...

Why link to your forum if you want feedback on the calculator?

What are the two "major questions" that are not answered elsewhere?
 
I can send directly to the calculator, thanks.

The 2 questions are:
1. What is my gap?
2. How much do I need to save every year in order to close this gap (and make my plan work).

Thanks for the quick reply.
 
To be frank it is so simplistic and so basic that it pretty much useless for any serious financial planning.

Why do you prefer it to something like FIRECalc?
 
clifp said:
To be frank it is so simplistic and so basic that it pretty much useless for any serious financial planning.
Why do you prefer it to something like FIRECalc?
Click to expand...
Because FIRECalc isn't sending eyeballs to their website... or spam to this discussion board...
 
The idea was to get an opinion of a forum that is mature and constructive.

The idea behind being simple is that it give an answer.

I am not trying to compete with FIRECalc - just add to the non-biased calculators that can take inflation and growth and put it together in a way that any user can understand.

I think the fancy graphs take away from seeing your plan.

I hope we all agree that any plan is better than no plan.
 
I could not get your new calculator to display for me. Did not even appear, so I could not use it at all. Have you tested for different browsers and platforms?
 
I could get to the calculator, but after inputting data, I got no results when pushing the 'results' button. Suggest further testing before opening to the world.
 
I should add that the calculator failed to show graphically information when I inputed my actual status. (i.e. retired) When I changed it to say that I retired in one year everything appeared.

The idea behind being simple is that it give an answer.

42 is the answer also. But why should anybody give any weight the answer that your calculator puts out.

It doesn't account for asset allocation, volitality of returns, it assume constant rates of returns on investment, a fixed inflation rates. Doesn't account for future salary increases. Nothing about pensions, inheritances, or a host of other factors. Which matter for real retirement platform.

I hope we all agree that any plan is better than no plan.


My plan is to spend all my money until I run out then jump out a window. My brother in law, also retired, doesn't have a plan. Are you saying mine is superior?

I am pretty sure Nords has the right answer, but I'll keep an open mind, tell what am I missing about your forum and calculator?
 
Tried your calculator . Where do you input pensions ? Sorry ,it's really not a great calculator .
 
Considering you're posting this in the Young Dreamer's section, I assumed that the calculator would be for those accumulating. Unless I'm missing something, there is not even a field for yearly/monthly contributions leading up to the year of retirement.
 
It looks like if you entered retirement age is < or = to your current age the graphs don't work. The graphics looked pretty good - I like the pie chart. As was said before, a bit simplistic but a good start. If it can be a starting point and get some of the reported unprepared retirees motivated then... why not. You may be looking for constructive critisim on your site - but I suspect you are looking for your google ad counter hits to go up?
 
Last edited:
I would call your calculator "ok", but we already have one i FireCalc that to me is superior.

Other than trying to get your "hits" up, what is your goal??
 
Thanks for your constructive feedback.
It is a great idea to add pension and to customize it for people in retirement.
I belong to the dreamers and the planners - so this was the goal of this calculator.
The next enhancement will be to save your information under your profile so you can have several plans and what-ifs.
The members that could not get it to work - what did you use (whice browser)?
Junopens
 
junopens said:
Hi,

We finaly published a retirement calculator that gives you 2 major answers that I have not seen in other places. It is independent and in beta (trial).

Please try it and let us know though the feedback in the site or the forum.

I really appreciate your feedback and hope this will help you with your most important plan of your life!

http://www.myretirementday.com/site/genpage.jsp?uid=&uname=&page=calculator.jsp - use the Calculator tab.

Junopens
Click to expand...
I don't like the calculator at all. It is very simplisting, but not very helpful.
  1. It appears to state that I need $13M in order to retire if I'm drawing out $75k/yr. When, in reality $1.875M would work (assuming rate of withdrawal @ 4%.
  2. It is also VERY limited, since it has drop-downs that are only populated with 3, 5, 7, & 9. What happened to 8.4%? This should be a free form numeric field, not a specific concrete amount.
  3. The after retirement section doesn't appear to be calculating correctly . Or at least based on human consumption. Using the pre-chosen numbers, and putting in my birth year (which is irrelevant for this calculator), anticipated retirement year (18 years from now), and 38 years for retirement, it figures that $75k today is the equivalent of almost $207k in 2042. What it's obviously doing, is raising the withdrawal rate by an additiona 3% (or so) every year in retirement. Well, if it's going to cost me that much money in retirement to go golfing/fishing/whatever, I won't do it. You see, withdrawal rates shouldn't increase every year. It's typically withdrawal of 4% +/- of the amount that you have saved for retirement.
  4. It suggests putting aside basically everything that one would make every year. In this case, with the specs from #3 above, it says I'd have to put away $67k/yr. In order to receive $75k/yr when I retired.
 
As stated, too simplistic to be of use.

One error I noticed was when I loaded a retirement age of 55, it immediately starts assuming I get full SS at retirement age of 55.
Wishful thinking but not likely.
 
myself said:
...You see, withdrawal rates shouldn't increase every year. It's typically withdrawal of 4% +/- of the amount that you have saved for retirement.
Click to expand...

While I agree this calculator has many, many opportunities for improvement, I would disagree with your statement above. Although you may choose not to increase your withdrawal % for inflation each year, the 4% withdrawal rate does incorporate an annual inflation adjustment. See this thread in the "Best of..." area for more: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f35/explain-4-withdrawal-rate-19234.html
 
If you look at the associated forum on that site, there is a two-message thread (OP and responder are one and the same) along the lines of:

"How much to I need to save for retirement?"

"You need to save $3mm to $4mm for retirement."

End of thread. I think I'm done serving as an alpha tester for this project.
 
Most of the caculators will not let you enter in SS before your 62nd birthday .I 'm a widow so I got SS at 60 and then I am transfering to my SS at 66 so in order to get proper calculations I have to put in SS as if it's a pension and then put in the additonal amount ( the difference of the SS widow benefit and my benefit ) as SS payout at 66.
 
REWahoo said:
While I agree this calculator has many, many opportunities for improvement, I would disagree with your statement above. Although you may choose not to increase your withdrawal % for inflation each year, the 4% withdrawal rate does incorporate an annual inflation adjustment. See this thread in the "Best of..." area for more: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f35/explain-4-withdrawal-rate-19234.html
Click to expand...
Yes, there are dangers of not increase a little with inflation. However, even FIRECalc states that there's a 95% chance on withdrawal of $74,500k/yr with only $1,875,000 in retirement funds, which is just slightly less than 4% withdrawal rate. According to that calculator, it thinks to have a withdrawal of $75,000/yr, one would need $13M in retirement.
Granted, if one had that much, I would say there's a 100% chance (or better), that one could increase their spending by inflation every single year. :D
 
omi, all these numbers being thrown around, slightly hard to follow being a newbie and all. does the calculator assume you have the same income each year?
 
Again - we appreciate all the feedback.
I still think that there is merit to showing that 75K today is 207K in 2042 as inflation awareness is too low with baby-boomers.

As stated - the idea was to start simple.

I view the Fire-calc to be a superior calculator for a serious retiree but too complex for first time users.

I value to concept of creating a plan - "what is my gap and how can I close it".
 
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