Flexible Retirement Planner Support Forum

Jim: I've been using your excellent tool since late 2014. On New Year's 2015 I ran a formal analysis based on my financial data at that time and one of the default investing styles for each of my 3 portfolio types. I've done this analysis each year since then and have just now completed my Jan 1, 2021 initial analysis. Setting the median 2021 projection (from 2015) for total portfolio value as 100%, my actual portfolio value for 2021 is just over 99.4% of that value. This gives me high confidence in your tool and my retirement plan. Thanks for making your tool available and for the guidance you have provided over these last many years.

My opinion is that your tool suffices as is for retirement planning. But if you do want to look at some potential adds, well, here you go...
1) Ability to configure portfolio withdrawal in any order desired (would be nice to set caps on deferred withdrawal for tax purposes)
2) Ability to configure Deferred withdrawal to earlier than 70
3) Ability to create multiple portfolios of a given type
4) Ability to more easily evaluate tax impact across scenarios

Thanks again,

Doug

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestions. I'm not doing a ton of new development on the planner at this point, but I did make a note of the suggestions on my feature request list just in case I'm in any of that code.

Number 2 on your list seems like it might be easy to do. For that one, do you mean allowing the minimum age for RMDs to be lower than 70 as a way to "trick" the planner into taking money out of tax deferred before taxable?

If that's what you're thinking, it would be relatively easy to do. The only snag is I'd need to figure out what life expectancy value to use for ages below 70. The IRS uniform life table starts at age 70 now, and the table for use in 2022 starts at age 72. For ages below that I'd need to wing it somehow.

Jim

Yep, that is what I am thinking. Here is the SS actuarial table if that helps.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html