Retirement Planner / FIRE Sheet - Request for Feedback

Discussion
1

I’m working on a new Retirement Planner / FIRE template and we’d like to get your feedback.

The sheet will build on the recent Cash Flow Forecast sheet which handles income, expenses, and future life events.

The new sheet adds investments to the forecast.

We will give you the ability to select and add what investment accounts you want to use and include their balances.

Each year, we will take your investments at the start of the year, add expected investment growth based on a growth rate and add your yearly Cash Flow forecast from the Cash Flow forecast sheet. This will calculate your net gain/loss for the year.

If you have a loss, it will assume you reduce your investments by the loss to make up the difference.

We will also show how your investment drawdown compares to a withdrawal rate that you set.

We have some design question we’d like some feedback on:

  1. Investment Growth Rate

    You will be able to add an investment growth rate and change it in future years. Do you want help calculating this rate? If so, would you like to set a rate by account that we could use to give you an initial value-weighted rate? Would you like to set multiple growth rate scenarios at the same time or just change a single setting

  2. Taxes

    Would you like the sheet to include the effect of taxes? This is a complex question since everyone has different circumstances. Many FIRE sheets don’t include the impact of taxes or taxes are built into the growth rates.

    Would you like the option to get a global tax rate on investments sold or a manual rate by year? Or something else?

  3. Other features

    Any other features you would like in the sheet?

Share your comments below.

Jon

4 Likes
2

Looks great so far, @jono. I’m excited to see how community feedback can make the concept stronger.

1 Like
3

Just stuck my head up from the covid hole (overworked healthcare worker here :frowning:) and saw this pop up. Looks interesting… is there some way to exclude categories from being included in the baseline budget? My investment purchases and sales are being included and are dramatically inflating both income and expenses (income more than expenses, thankfully :wink: ). They’re excluded from my budget by hiding the categories they appear in.

4

Hi @aronos,
Yes. categories can be excluded in the baseline budget in the existing Cash Flow forecast sheet.

Just create a Life Event in the first year you want to exclude the budget with the amount of 0.00 and the life event name matching the category name. The event can have the same end year as the start year. From the start year forward, the amount won’t be in the baseline budget.

Also budgets in hidden categories are excluded in the baseline by default.

Jon

5

I think you need to include an adjustment for inflation

6

How about the ability to add required minimum distribution (RMD) and/or a $ amount for withdrawal with the ability to set your age, when you will start withdrawing and the ability to add SS income.

7

Okay, I’ll have to dig in and see why these numbers are so out of whack when I get a chance. Thanks. :slight_smile:

8

Hi @kris,
The Cash Flow forecast sheet gives you the ability to add inflation / growth rates for your core income, core expenses and every life event.

Good point about the RMD. We will include a way to add that to the sheet.

SS Income can already be added to the Cash Flow forecast as a life event by picking the start year and the amount. Those numbers will roll over to the new Retirement planner automatically.

Jon

9

Ok @aronos.
Let us know if you see anything wrong with the sheet.

We have tested it a bunch but if something is wrong, we’d like to know about it.

Amounts in hidden categories are not included, so that might be what caused your confusion?

Jon

10

The “Catagories Budget” for income and expenses is about 3-4 times too high, so my initial thought is that it was including hidden categories. But even in that case, it would be too high so I’m not sure what the deal is. I’ll try to take a closer look after the holidays.

11

@aronos,
Do you have budgets for Jan 2020 and Dec 2020?
If you don’t, it might be taking a different budget range and annualizing it. Check the hidden columns.

Jon

12

This is fantastic news! Can’t wait to see this. I’ve hacked together my own sheet, but look forward to Tiller’s expertise. Any thoughts on when it may be available in the Money Lab?

13

We’re hoping to have it live in a few weeks, @pcmccollum. I think this tool will evolve over time as we learn more from the needs and expertise in this community… so the initial release will be a roughed-in starting point.

14

A section with Projections based on What-ifs would be helpful

15

Hi@jonorlin,randy

The retirement planner should encompass present and future net assets/liabilities i.e., it should include and recognise current and future assets, and current and future liabilities and annual contributions to grow it. The annual contribution will be a regular employer and personal contribution that one has no access to until preservation/retirement age.

The net worth and snapshot sheet recognise total assets less current liabilities. The net worth sheet should be leveraged to build a retirement planner as it summarises all the assets and liabilities.

For example, Family home, all investment properties, shares, cash, credit cards, Home and investments mortgage etc make up my net worth.

In building the FIRE, extensive customization should be allow, such

  • Age, single or couple,

  • Dedicated custom tax and inflation table.

-Annual contribution, Annual Investment return, Annual Retirement expenses, and custom Withdrawal rate at retirement etc.

-Not sure of the US, in AU, withdrawal rate is based on age.

Uncertainty (If scenario) built in

-Investment return uncertainty

  • increase/Decline in value of investment such as real estate etc

  • Annual savings amount uncertainty

-Annual savings increases uncertainty

-Annual Withdrawal amount uncertainty

I currently use generic FIRE I got from the internet and insert into Tiller. I input age, yearly contribution and my Tiller net worth (total assets-total liabilities) to project future retirement balance.

Is unlikely you will build FIRE that satisfies everyone. Above is just an idea.

Attached is the sheet… you might learn something from it.
Retirement

16

The income side needs to allow for various income sources such as pension, social security, annuities, as well as dividend and interest income. These are all handled differently.

Other retirement “planners” I have used skip the dividend and interest side of the equation and just assume you will use the 4% rules or a variation of that.

17

Thanks @blarue001
Yes, we are planning a section that let’s you test out different projections. You will be able to turn them on and off.

1 Like
18

Thanks @robandcindy2,
Yes, we will have that feature. In the current Cash Flow Forecast sheet, you can enter any future income or expense stream along with a time period and an individual growth rate.

This information will roll over to the new Retirement sheet.

Check out:

jon

19

Thanks for sharing your sheet @adekunledauda
Unfortunately, it says i need to request access. Can you switch to a read only access link?

You have a lot of good points in your comments.

As you say, it is “unlikely you will build FIRE that satisfies everyone.” That’s what we are trying to figure out and why all these comments are helpful.

Since everyone has a unique financial position and there are so many financial unknowns about the future, we are trying to build something that can be a starting point for as many people as possible while allowing lots of individual customization. Just the tax part alone can get very complicated very fast.

Jon

20

You should be able to access it now.