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I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good retirement online calculator. One that gives the option to include ss income and spouse info. How accurate are they?
going forward none may be accurate, things have possibly changed so far from any of the past .. historically they are only a model of what was and i wouldnt call them accurate as much as a guestamate of what would have been . most depend on a certain amount of up markets and down markets to have transpired no matter how they figure it.
traditionally we always had markets up 67% of the time and down 1/3...that hasnt held true now for quite a while.
there are none that reflect the fact that someone who retired in year 2000 will have spent their entire savings in less then 8 years from now unless they grow back some capital over the next few years if they figured inflation adjusted traditional safe withdrawal amounts and made no adjustments along the way for lack of returns... you dont even need a retirement calculator to figure that one out its simple math..
Basically there is no way to know if they are accurate as they are all over the map, ie answers vary a great deal...so really, there is no such thing as a " good retirement online calclulator" and frankly I wouldn't recommend them at all.
there are none that reflect the fact that someone who retired in year 2000 will have spent their entire savings in less then 8 years from now unless they grow back some capital over the next few years if they figured inflation adjusted traditional safe withdrawal amounts and made no adjustments along the way for lack of returns... you dont even need a retirement calculator to figure that one out its simple math..
Nonsense.
Using the calculator from your link I plug in one million dollars, 40k (4% safe withdrawal) with 0% returns and cost of living increasing 3% per year. It says my money will run out in 18.1 years. Hell even thinking in your head 40k x 8 years = 320k, even accounting for increases for cost of living it's obvious you're not going to blow a million in eight years using a 4% withdrawal rate.
In fact it says that withdrawing $8k/month (96k annually) from a million with 3% inflation adjustments will last over nine years. Where get this < 8 years for safe rate bunk?
Using the calculator from your link I plug in one million dollars, 40k (4% safe withdrawal) with 0% returns and cost of living increasing 3% per year. It says my money will run out in 18.1 years.
And there in is the source of the future retirement crisis. Risk of future returns on the shoulders of each individual vs risk spread over the many.
I have used a number of calculators and some take more interpretation than others but in my experience none of them account for the inflation rate of health care or the fact you may need more health care as you get older.
This may not be of great concern for those of you that have a plan provided by an organization but it is a staggering issue for others in the years before Medicare. Our family health care costs are ten times greater than they were at retirement.
We all know than the industry and plans are changing in the coming years but it is unknown what the real impact to individual finances will be in the future.
Using the calculator from your link I plug in one million dollars, 40k (4% safe withdrawal) with 0% returns and cost of living increasing 3% per year. It says my money will run out in 18.1 years. Hell even thinking in your head 40k x 8 years = 320k, even accounting for increases for cost of living it's obvious you're not going to blow a million in eight years using a 4% withdrawal rate.
In fact it says that withdrawing $8k/month (96k annually) from a million with 3% inflation adjustments will last over nine years. Where get this < 8 years for safe rate bunk?
oops, i see you figured it out.... i was going to say to read it again....
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Another good retirement calculator is AARP! Personnally think that although none really has all the answers that they do ask the right questions to get you thinking in the proper way. Worked many calcuators before I retired and glad I did!
Not using any calculators because they cannot give you all the answers is kind of like burying your head in the sand instead of trying to find out if there could be problems ahead. Better to have your figures a little off than retiring without a clue and blowing your entire retirement egg in the first few years and trying to replace for the rest of your life!
Then think conservatively~ I'd rather die early an lave some to my kids than figure I'll die early and live in poverty for a lot of my retirement~ so far I'm doing fine but got a lot of retirement living left I hope!
heres yet another reason the results from these calculators can be questionable. it would be interesting to see what his way of thinking calculates for those poor folks that retired this decade and have blown tthru savings like wild fire based on the results of the popular calculators telling them it was just fine to take the swr that they took and they had plenty of money to do so..
the reason im so interested in that group is because thats the group nearest and dearest to my own up coming retirement and i dont believe we will have years and years of double digit stock market returns like we did the past decades to help save our nest eggs. my best guess is we will see higher inflation and lower real returns at least for my retirement period...
theres no margin for what if im wrong here ....your playing and guessing with your pay check.
Last edited by mathjak107; 07-18-2010 at 04:44 AM..
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