Do you know how much you need to retire and maintain your current standard of living?

A recent Forbes article featured a George Washington University professor who has studied savings behavior for two decades. She found that those who have used retirement calculators enter retirement with considerably more in savings. She also concluded that saving more is hard, and if people don’t do the calculations and see the numbers, they don’t save more. Yikes.

Drum roll, please…. we’ve provided a simple, FREE retirement projection calculator on our website. Punch in a few numbers and see how close you are to meeting your goals.

Retirement projections are like knowing your weight or your bank account balance… once you know the number, you have the power to make better choices. Until you know how much you need to save and the “right” steps to take, you can’t make a decision about how to move forward. Our newest financial planning service is geared specifically toward aligning your goals with the steps you need to take each month to attain the financial freedom you deserve.

If you check out the calculator and find you need more information and a plan to make it happen- give us a call at 913.402.6099. The first meeting is always free and most people leave feeling better already.

Thanks for your time,
John

P.S. While you may estimate a portfolio return to be 7-8% per year on average, it certainly won’t be 7-8% each year. Retirement calculators you find online (as well as the above-referenced calculator) are based on the assumption you will have fixed rates of return, that don’t vary from year to year, and will apply to your entire retirement portfolio. Thus, a financial plan that works on average can be disastrous a high percentage of the time; these calculators should only be used as a rough starting point. If you would like a more precise retirement projection that takes into account uncertainty, variable rates of return over time, and irregular cash flows, you should consider hiring a fee-only financial planner who utilizes Monte Carlo Simulations (MCS) when creating a financial plan. MCS is a math technique used to model situations that involve uncertainty, and thus cannot be modeled deterministically, but can be described statistically.