The design of any retirement analysis is to tell you one or both of these two categories of data:
1. the amount you need to save monthly to be able to retire or
2. how big of a portfolio you need to retire
The retirement calculator crunches these mathematics by taking into account the retirement savings you already have accumulated:
* accumulations in a retirement plan such as 401k or IRA
* monthly income you will receive from a government pension or from social security or retirement deferred comp plan
* non-retirement assets that you have: equities, debt instruments, mutual funds, notes, etc.
* usable equity in your house that you may have accessible if perhaps you want to sell and rent and free up equity for investing or take a reverse mortgage home loan.
The retirement calculator also computes the age at which you wish to retire and your predicted life expectancy. While you may be thinking like the important input is the money you bring to your retirement that will impact your retirement ease, it is really not a financial variable that is most significant. The biggest items of influence of your retirement ease are the age at which you retire and the quantity of years you live in retirement. Therefore, when applying a retirement calculator, we recommend you test the scenario many times using different life expectancies and also see what occurs when you adjust your retirement beginning age from say age 64 to age 66. You may be surprised at the difference you see.
The best retirement calculators are commonly NOT those found on the Internet. The best calculators are software that you purchase (not very expensive) as they offer much more refined scenarios. For example, while the web-based on-line retirement calculator will give you an approximation of the sum you require to put away or the nest egg you need to meet your retirement income objectives, the paid-for retirement calculators often engage Monte Carlo scenarios to take into account a variety of future outcomes. Unlike the free on-line retirement calculator that provides one average outcome, Monte Carlo calculations show a range of possible results with their likelihood. You can thus experience the chance of a particular scenario happening.
Note that any retirement calculator has weaknesses because it must rely on presumptions such as:
1. Expected annual returns for the asset types you select (e.g. equity funds, bonds, etc). Some retirement calculators ask you for these forecasts while others have implicit assumptions. Either way, if the assumption is that stocks produce a ten percent return over the next 30 years and instead they provide an 8% return, your retirement finances may not go as anticipated.
2. Anticipated assumptions about asset type volatility and correlations with other classes may not be as predicted. For example, even if stocks are estimated to generate 10 percent yearly returns over your retirement years and they do, if the stocks lose 8 percent for each of the first 3 years of your retirement, your retirement objectives will still not be attained because the sequence of returns has a profound affect on your retirement calculations.
3. No individual knows what income tax rates will be. When you make your estimates, it is best to bet that income tax rates will be more down the road (How else can the federal government close the deficit)?
4. No person knows what inflation rates will be. Closely related to this is the economic value of the US dollar and most retirement calculators don’t account for that. If you plan to travel outside the US in retirement and the US dollar buys 20% less, then it means your travel expenses abroad will cost you 25% more. The value of the dollar plus the impact of domestic inflation are two other uncertainties that a retirement calculator may possibly not account for or may need to depend on forecasts that prove wrong.
Before you come to the decision that employing a retirement calculator is a waste of time, we encourage you to reconsider that decision. By going through the practice and thinking about the elements and seeing how the different retirement components inter-relate, any retirement calculator provide you with a lot better sense of realism for your retirement objectives.