Flexible Retirement Planner Support Forum

Thanks for writing about the flexibleRetirementPlanner. I'm glad you've found the tool useful. You are correct that there's no automated way to have the planner lower the portfolio's return and risk as time goes on. However, I think you could accomplish something similar using the additional inputs ...

The ability to save settings is the feature that I get the most requests for. Unfortunately, it's a really tough one. The restrictions that make it safe for you to run Java applets inside your web browser are also what makes saving data nearly impossible. I can't even access your printer from within...

It turned out that the changes were trivial (hmmm, that sounds dangerous as I write it).

Anyhow, I pushed the updates to the site and you should be able to see them if you close your web browser and restart it.

On the main tab, "Summary View," in the table at the bottom, in the 5th column, a figure "% of Portfolio" is shown. The actual percentage figures exclude taxes. Wouldn't it be more appropriate that taxes be included since they too have to be withdrawn in order to pay them? Also,...

I updated the planner to include money withdrawn to pay income taxes in the withdrawal amount. There were no changes to any calculations and your probability of success should not be different with the new version. (You can tell you have the new version by checking for Version 1.0.2 when you click t...

Now that I'm thinking about this more, I'm convincing myself that I have to get that output to show the gross (before tax) withdrawal amount.

I need to think about it a little bit more, but I bet there's a way to do it without affecting the program's memory footprint.

Thanks for the feedback!

Jim

Thanks for the email and the kind words about the planner. I looked at the code to recheck that the planner is doing the right thing and it looks ok (see code snippet below). As a test (and to convince yourself), you might try adjusting the income tax rate to 40% to see how it impacts the probabilit...

Peter, Thanks for the note. I posted an update to the FAQ to describe what the planner is doing w.r.t. no-cola payments. Please let me know if you think the explanation is understandable... Thanks again for all the feedback, Jim Are the dollar amounts that I enter in the retirement planner adjusted ...

I just pushed out a change on how the no-cola income is handled. Let me know if it behaves as you'd expect it to.

Thanks,

Jim

Peter, You sure are giving the planner a workout. I'm glad to see you using so many of the capabilities. For a no-cola pension that starts in the future, you need to deflate $40,000 before you enter it. I suppose I could have done that myself, but I wasn't sure how people would want it to work, so I...