Online Retirement Planning Calculator
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| Review: Retirement Calculators |
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Everyone wants to find the best online retirement planning calculator or retirement income calculator. That could be a difficult choice because there are so many elements involved in the circumstances for each person.
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I have examined a number of online retirement planning calculators during the period leading up to my retirement and researched many more since then. Numerous calculators are available, but many may not answer the question that you are interested in.
You should also recognize that many calculators are placed on the internet just to try to draw traffic for the possibility of making a sale of their product. So be aware and search for those sites that are trying to give its visitors valuable information, as they are the ones that usually provide the best tools.
You have heard the saying before – “You get what you pay for.” That holds true regarding any retirement calculator. Your payment is your time. If you spend more time putting data and details into a form for the calculation, you are more likely to get more accurate results from the provider.
There seems to be two major categories of calculators:
- Retirement Planning Calculator Generally, this type is used when the person has not yet reached retirement. It allows one to run cases, altering many variables, to determine how much money that one would have at retirement and a general estimate as to how long it will last.
- Retirement Income Calculator This type calculator will generally provide an estimate of how much monthly income that your retirement savings will provide during retirement.
- What impact does social security have on my retirement?
- How much would I save under a 401 (k) plan?
- What is the impact if I saved under a 401(k) plan or spent that amount?
- How do retirement contributions affect my paycheck?
- Is 401(k) or traditional IRA better?
- What if I have a Roth IRA?
- What is the impact of a traditional IRA calculation?
So here are my recommendations:
Best:
- New Retirement
- Fidelity Investments
- ESPlannerBasic
- CNN Money Retirement Planner
FIRECalc®
| NEW! Read our Interview with Mark L. Fox of Nestegg Software on a different approach to a Retirement Calculator. (Click here to go to our Nestegg Software Interview.) |
Input tables are available for Income, Spending, Not Retired Yet, Spending Models, Your Portfolio, Portfolio Changes, Investigate.
FIRECalc is the best online retirement planning calculator that I have seen.
It was developed as a Decision Support Systems to illuminate retirement planning. This tool provides guidance in pre-retirement and post-retirement planning. It also allows the user to run the program in a Simulation Mode to calculate after-tax, inflation adjusted money that can be used for spending each year. It also shows flow of money into and out of retirement savings accounts.
The second mode of operation is the Monte Carlo Risk Assessment Mode that demonstrates how your set of choices behave under certain economic environments. This is an interesting tool with lots of flexibility.
It provides numerous data input fields for the user which provides more accurate results than using averages or general assumptions. It also identifies 15 questions that a person may want to ask about their retirement and provides a calculator for each of those 15 questions.
This site also provides articles regarding how to plan for retirement, other savings calculators to help you determine how to get out of debt faster. Their blog on retirement provides some interesting comments.
T. Rowe Price Retirement Calculator
This online retirement planning calculator runs around 1,000 market simulations under a monte carlo analysis to help you figure if your retirement portfolio will stand up under various market conditions. You can determine how much you may have available to you for your expenses each month. It determines the chances of your portfolio lasting throughout your retirement. Should you have a shortfall, it provides you with options to make the difference
Since there are several tables which need to be filled in for this calculator, its answers tend to more accurate that the short table form for other sites. So you will spend 10 minutes or so for input. That’s a good thing.
It provides for tax-deferred and non-deferred savings as well as detailed worksheets underlying several of the input fields. It has been considered a valuable calculator for a number of years.
If you have lots of data that varies by date, then you may want to evaluate VestingPoint.com as an online retirement planning calculator. It allows you to input as much data as you want or take a more simple approach. It gives you a simple answer of the percentage chance you have of succeeding in meeting your retirement goal to retirement or to the end of your plan. The 7-day trial version is free, but one must pay an annual charge of $18 to use it whenever you choose. This is a newer tool that was released in 2009.
Consider the Social Security Retirement Calculator
Of course, one thing that we must all do is to visit the Social Security Retirement Calculator at its site to determine the benefits that you may receive from Social Security.
It provides a high level view of your benefits, but you can download a more detailed approach to the calculation by using their Detailed Calculator.
In addition to the Good Calculators identified above, I am providing a list of other calculators that you may want to review.
- Analyzenow.com
- Retirement Calculator – AARP Bulletin Today
- Choose to Save.org
- 401(k) Retirement Plan Calculator
- Online Monte Carlo Retirement Planner
- Retirement Planner – MSN Money
- Bloomberg Financial Tools
- New Retirement
- U.S. Department of Labor
- Retirement Calculator.com
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Many online retirement planning calculators are available. Take your time to evaluate them to ensure you find the one that best fits your needs. |
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