Great tool

[Tim]

Thanks for the great tool!

I've been searching for a reason why all of this excellent information is free, but I haven't come up with a good answer.

Nonetheless, thank you.

[jimr]

Tim,

Thanks for posting.

As it turns out, providing the website and planner for free is really a two-way street. First, I get great feedback and suggestions. Also, I use the tool in my own retirement planning, so it's good to have people questioning how everything works and challenging the planner's results. Over the years I've had to explain and defend the most intricate parts of the simulation. This is a great way to work out any kinks and be sure everything is working as expected. Finally, several of the features in the latest version of the planner were the result of great ideas from users like yourself.

For full disclosure, I do run google ads on the main planner site and the revenue from them brings in enough income to cover the site's hosting costs with a little bit left over.

Best Regards,

Jim

[icretirement]

Jim, very nice tool. At first I was also puzzled by the high end balance, or inability to zero out.
On further thought though, I actually like it that way as it provides a more conservative buffer for my purposes.

My first question is around range....
Is there any way to know the "range" of each 10,000? While median is nice, there can be significant outliers that can skew. It would be great to see what those are in a run.

Another thought I have is regarding age related variables. I am mid way thru my year, yet it assumes my birthday is today. I am sure adding a decimal would dramatically increase the space(and horsepower) needed to run it.

Lastly, is there any way to see the "Show More Detail" "Detailed View" columns more clearly? Or output to see columns more clearly?

Thanks a bunch for all your work. John

[jimr]

Hi John,

Thanks for posting. Please see answers to your questions below.

My first question is around range....
Is there any way to know the "range" of each 10,000? While median is nice, there can be significant outliers that can skew. It would be great to see what those are in a run.

Unfortunately, I only store and report the aggregate data. It would be a lot of data if I held onto all the results from all the runs.

One thing I did add in the detailed results table is a way to see how many times the simulation ran out of money in each year. This is the number in parenthesis in the "probability of success" column. This gives you at least some visibility into what went on during the simulation

Another thought I have is regarding age related variables. I am mid way thru my year, yet it assumes my birthday is today. I am sure adding a decimal would dramatically increase the space(and horsepower) needed to run it.

It would be pretty tough to deal with fractional years and in truth there's already a ton of uncertainty in the simulation inputs and the 6 month inaccuracy shouldn't affect the results that much. One thing you might try is to do two separate tests to "bound" the error. In one test assume your birthday is a year away and run the simulation. In another test, assume your birthday just happened and rerun the simulation. By looking at the results of the two scenarios you can get a sense of how much this variable might affect the results overall.

Lastly, is there any way to see the "Show More Detail" "Detailed View" columns more clearly? Or output to see columns more clearly?

This is an area where the standalone version is more flexible since you can export the entire results table to a comma separated file to import into excel. There you can reformat the table all you like.

One thing that may help is to make use of the show/hide columns feature built into the results table. If you right-mouse-click on a column header, you'll get an option to hide any columns you don't want to see, thus freeing up space for other columns. Also, you can resize the width of any column in the table by clicking on the column header edges.

Please don't hesitate to post again if you have other questions...

Jim