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Retirement Calculators
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Can you trust online retirement calculators?
I have mixed feelings about the retirement-planning calculators available on the Web. You enter certain financial data and the calculators purport to tell you how much more you ought to be saving for your retirement. Their weaknesses are obvious. Some ask for data that are hard to get (if you have a pension, do you know how much it will pay when you retire?). Some ask for too little data to give you a meaningful result. You have to make loads of assumptions (What’s the likely future inflation rate? How fast will your salary increase? What will you spend in retirement?) — as if you knew. A 1 percent change in your forecasted returns could add or subtract $200,000 from your projected retirement assets.
What good is that? A couple of years ago, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine put a simple case through five prominent online calculators: a married couple, with a simple savings plan, wondered how much retirement income they could expect their growing nest egg to deliver. The answers differed wildly.
On the other hand, using an online calculator shows a commitment to finding out what you’re going to need to retire on. The answers may be different, but they give you a general sense of whether or not you have enough. Usually you don’t, and the numbers you see are a wake-up call. Research has shown that people who use these calculators save more money than people who don’t.
Excerpted from Making the Most of Your Money Now by Jane Bryant Quinn
Copyright 1991, 1997, 2009, by Berrybrook Publishing, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc
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Calculating Retirement Goals
Editor-At-Large Jill Schlesinger explains to an author how a retirement calculator will estimate the future value of her retirement savings and determine if she has enough to retire.
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How Much $$ Will You Need To Retire?
Are you on target to achieve your retirement savings goals? Editor-At-Large Jill Schlesinger offers advice on calculating retirement and maxing out investments to secure a healthy nest egg for your future.
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Tools for researching debt, retirement, insurance
Established workers in the peak of their careers need to balance saving for retirement with their many other obligations. One of the most essential is to provide for their families with adequate insurance coverage.The money challenges they encounter are numerous and varied. To help balance these...
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Retirement Calculator Roundup: Top Tools For Boomers
So how's the retirement planning going? Not sure? With these free online tools you have no excuse for not giving your retirement plan a mid-stream checkup. by Carla Fried
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Calculate Retirement Income With a Simple Online Tool
Generating a lifetime retirement income from your retirement nest egg is one of the biggest challenges facing boomers. There are many approaches to figuring out how much to draw down each year from your retirement savings, ranging from buying an immediate annuity to doing it yourself. Here's how...
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Calculate Retirement Income With a Simple Online Tool: Test Drive
Let's take a test drive of a simple online program that calculates your retirement income. You'll see how to generate a retirement income that can last as long as you do. by Steve Vernon
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Retirement Calculators: 6 Things They Get Wrong
Online calculators can help you run the numbers to figure out how much you need to save for retirement. But take a close look at the assumptions they make (or leave out). by Mark Miller
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Top Tips for Using Retirement Calculators
Use these tips to determine just how much money you need for retirement -- and how much more you need to save to reach your goal. They may sound like a lot of work, but it sure beats being wrong and broke at age 80! by Steve Vernon
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Retirement Calculators: Should You Use Monte Carlo or Deterministic?
Some retirement calculators use sophisticated techniques called "Monte Carlo" forecasts, also known as "stochastic" projections. Other calculators use much more simple projections, such as assuming fixed rates for your asset return and inflation, a specified life expectancy, and so on. I don't...
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How Much Retirement Income Do You Need?
If you rely only on conventional wisdom to decide how much income you need in retirement, the consequences can be unpleasant. If your goal is too low, you might run out of money before you die. If your goal is too high, you might postpone your retirement. Do the math to estimate how much money...
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