A Simple Way to Determine Retirement Readiness

Am I financially able to retire? Isn’t that the number one question being asked by older baby boomers when thinking about retirement? It has to be in the top five. There are dozens of ways and places to find answers to the retirement readiness question. Read more

Forecasting Retirement Income Success

One of the retirement planning tools I use comes from Financial Engines via my 401(k) provider. This service is free to all account holders. If you enter your retirement income goals and information about retirement income sources (investments, pension, and Social Security), Financial Engines will generate and email a periodic progress report and retirement forecast. Read more

Finance Professionals Bid to Help You Online

I’m mostly a do-it-yourself financial planner. But sometimes we all could benefit from professional advice to help us through a complex finance, tax, or estate planning problem. Even then we procrastinate or avoid the issue because of (a) the expense and/or (b) the hassle of having to locate a professional, make an appointment, and visit their office. Now there is a way to receive personal finance and tax advice online. Read more

Financial Calculators for Retirement Planning

I enjoy experimenting with different financial calculators to help me predict how our retirement planning is progressing. There are hundreds of such calculators available online. Most of the major companies that sell investments and annuity products offer such calculators. I have written about many other retirement planning tools previously. This week, I found a new source of financial calculators intended specifically for prospective retirees, all with a time-saving feature I like. Read more

Measuring and Tracking Retirement Plan Progress

If you are like this baby boomer, you are eager to find ways to measure and track the financial progress of your retirement planning. There are a variety of tools on the web that will rate or score how well you are doing with your retirement investing and planning. Not all of them are convenient to use on a regular basis. Those that are easy to use sometimes don’t give you any real metrics that make sense or that you can follow yourself. Let me tell you some of the things that I do to track our retirement plan progress. Read more

Common Mistakes in Using Retirement Planning Tools

Online retirement planning tools are all over the Internet. Many baby boomers use these  tools to help them get back on track or to assess where they are in being prepared for retirement. I have discussed a number of those online tools here at Go To Retirement. Some are free and some are fee-based. Read more

National Save for Retirement Week

I hesitate to even mention “National Save for Retirement Week” for several reasons. First, every week should be save for retirement week. Second, some of the materials I’ve seen published in recognition of the week have been questionable in their accuracy. Read more

Retirement Income Planning and Your Financial Advisor

Many baby boomers plan for retirement by consulting a financial planner or advisor. A key topic in consultations with an advisor is whether your retirement income will last for as long as you need it to. The answer to this question requires a careful analysis of your assets so as to predict with some degree of accuracy if you will outlive your money. This must involve more than a back of the envelope calculation. Unfortunately, some financial advisors oversimplify their analysis of your retirement income. This produces an unrealistic outcome. Read more

Free Money Management Tools from Google

When it comes to managing our money and investments, creating financial plans, or analyzing our retirement portfolio, I’m all about the free stuff. There are lots of online money management tools around. Google has them as well. I like them because they are easy to use and can be found all in one place. There are two distinct sets of free money management tools available from Google. One set is found in the new and improved Google Finance. The other set is found in Google Docs templates. Read more

Asset Allocation Strategies and Online Calculators

Perhaps more has been written on the topic of asset allocation than any other aspect of long term investing. There are so many different strategies and calculators available that it is hard to decide which even should be considered. I have given a lot of thought to asset allocation in our retirement portfolio. Here are some asset allocation models and tools that I have used or at least looked at. Read more

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