
Like most white coat investors, I want to know when and how I can retire. More specifically, I want to have a detailed and accurate understanding of the pathway to financial independence. As much as this knowledge facilitates an action plan, it reinforces prudent behavior and a sense of autonomy. Even more importantly, I see diligent financial planning, monitoring, and forecasting as habits that will allow my family choices and opportunities in the [nearish] future. Finding the best systems to aid in this process has been a wildly engaging and informative journey.
In Part I of A DIY Investor’s Guide to Retirement Calculators, I explored calculators and services of all stripes—simple, complex, spartan, and beautiful—and briefly explained their function and utility. I encouraged your feedback, and I was not disappointed. Pro tips and suggestions prompted me onward in my quest to find the best of the best. Fascinatingly, this exercise seems to be one that many, many investors have undertaken, one which has led to the creation of software like TCRP and Pralana. My goal in this synopsis is to bring you the best, so that you might thrash less than I have in searching for the best solution for your retirement planning needs.
I won’t be creating my own calculator. While I monitor my portfolio with a book of spreadsheets, there isn’t a cell in my body itching to write my own set of code. I do feel a need to employ a calculator, however, and I understand which features and functions are important to me. It must be robust enough to accurately project growth, spending, and contingencies. It must be utilitarian but intuitive, devoid of nudging advertisements, and trustworthy in its methodology and security. Finally, the value proposition must reflect my desire to remain at the helm of my portfolio management.
With that in mind, I bring to you Part Deux of retirement calculators. I will add a few reviews of what I believe (and what you have told me) are the bigger players and nifty newcomers in this space. I will present my method of analysis and provide a synopsis of why I believe these subjective metrics are important. Finally, I will share a living spreadsheet (I love spreadsheets) with calculators and resources that I have found helpful. This information sharing is enriched by your feedback and input, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
A Few More Calculator Reviews
ProjectionLab: This is a thoughtfully designed and elegantly presented online software package. In my trial, I found its interface to be among the very best of all I've encountered. Frankly, there is an Apple-esque appeal to it. Importantly to me, I felt as if this would be an easy tool for my wife to adopt in the event of my demise (or her finally having enough of me). Functionally, ProjectionLab performs well in cash flow and Monte Carlo simulations, with tax planning also baked in. Sharing (for instance, with a financial advisor or as a financial advisor) is readily done. I was also impressed with the robustness of security options. If one opts for a lifetime subscription ($799), they may then become a “private host,” which enables offline access to personal data and advanced encryption and authentication measures. The value proposition for a lifetime membership is lustrous. For an investor 10 years out from their early-ish retirement, this program is a steal (rivaled only by more rudimentary programs like The Complete Retirement Planner (TCRP), which have a much different user appeal). Otherwise, a premium membership (best for individuals who don’t require a lifetime membership) is a modest $9 per month. A Pro version (targeted at financial professionals managing multiple clients) costs $45 per month. Pound for pound, ProjectionLab is a comprehensive program that delivers remarkable functionality for a reasonable cost.
Pralana: This was perhaps the most requested review, and I can see why. Pralana is the result of the monumental efforts of two engineers: Stuart Matthews (whose bio picture is taken in front of an aircraft) and Charlie Stone (a graduate of West Point, an institution with 220 years of tradition unhampered by progress #GoAirForceBeatArmy). Jokes aside, the result of their work is impressive and laudable. I am fond of their origin story and ethos: they are math-oriented folks who encountered a common problem (retirement modeling) and sought to solve it in the simplest way (Excel). Pralana did not disappoint. For those familiar with Excel or any similar spreadsheet, Pralana is a natural progression. Full disclosure: I worked through Pralana Bronze, the free offering. Pralana Gold, the premium platform, is the standard for individuals opting for this software. Pralana is a fully integrated program that projects multiple income streams at modifiable points in the future. Tax strategies, charitable giving, and spousal survival are well within the scope of Pralana’s domain. The interface is rudimentary (though look for the web-based program to be shiny and new), but that also means simple. And what the Excel-based program lacks in intuitive input, the creators more than make up for in support and direction. Manuals and explanations on their forum are easily accessible. Professional versions are available to model multiple clients or if a user wants to model income for family members other than a spouse. Access to spreadsheets is free for Bronze, $99 for Gold. A subscription is required for the online tool, advertised at $119 per year.
Empower: A fascinating mix of banking, investing, planning, journalism, apping (a verb I’ve coined for using their app), and paid wealth management services, Empower's services range in price and dexterity, making it a one-stop shop for retirement planning and execution. Beyond the free calculators, I found it difficult to access their much-touted personal dashboard. While this dashboard does not live behind a paywall, I couldn’t proceed without providing banking information (which I was disinclined to do). In perusing its webpage, there are no advertisements. Instead, much like all of the banks and brokerage houses with calculators that I have reviewed, there are nifty links and segues into paid financial services. Without sampling these services and investment vehicles (which include everything from high-yield savings accounts to annuities), I cannot comment from a position of authority. I can merely reference positive endorsements from some readers of WCI and outlets like Investopedia and the Motley Fool. User reviews are generally positive, as well. For an investor seeking a comprehensive set of tools that dovetail nicely with advisor services—all nestled into a sleek, contemporary interface—this could be a winning option. Personally, it's too much nudging toward paid services for my taste (in fairness, so are all of the banks and brokerages). But it seems to be a reasonable option for reasonable investors.
Investor.gov: This is not a comprehensive retirement calculator. But for any investor looking to row their own boat, those new to the world of personal finance, and anyone looking for a “double-check” on their financial approach and resources, this site is a treasure trove. Created and maintained by the SEC (wait, don’t leave, hear me out!), the site provides simply written resources for investing basics. In addition to some rudimentary (but engaging) calculators, it also houses background information on all registered financial advisors. I can’t imagine why an up-and-up advisor wouldn’t be registered with the SEC, but I am sure there will be reasons detailed in the comments below. (As an aside, I was able to find all of my friends who work in finance registered on the site. I guess they aren’t charlatans, after all.) Being the SEC, there is a tool through which one can report fraudulent behavior, as well. I particularly appreciated the Ballpark E$timate tool, which is referenced on investor.gov but housed on the FINRA website. Further, the resources available to teachers, military members, and veterans are appreciated. While investor.gov doesn’t have everything one would need to DIY their financial independence planning, it will be a primary site to which I refer my family and friends who are new to financial planning and literacy (right after WCI, of course).
More information here:
Social Security Is Not Going Away (But You Might Have to Adjust Your Plans)
Retirement Income Strategies — And Here’s Our Plan for When We FIRE
The Calculator Score
At the start of this column, I shared my needs, wants, and wishes in a retirement calculator. In the process of assessing each tool, I found it helpful to compare them based on a scoring system of my own creation. I went so far as to give it a dumb name like “The Chuck Score” or “The Calculator Calculator.” Seeing just how awful those were, I abandoned the effort, instead focusing on the 10 categories that comprise the 100-point system:
- DIY (15): Can a reasonably competent investor use this tool alone to navigate their retirement planning? For some, this may include paid financial services, as is possible with outfits like Boldin, WealthFront, Empower, and more. For others, a comprehensive calculator, such as TCRP or Pralana, has all the functions one needs. And for a very few savants, Excel may be all that is necessary. Full points were attributed for full functionality for my needs. Notably, some incredible resources on the list (thinking here of Jonathan Clement’s superb HumbleDollar) receive no points since they are not a calculator. This is purposeful: the scoring system is a metric of overall utility and, at a more granular level, a description of how well these resources serve the individual investor in comparison to alternatives.
- Fidelity (15): How accurate are the conclusions? What confidence can be placed in the tool? How comfortable would you be making changes to your retirement plans based on the calculator’s output or the content available on the resource? I’ve been amazed at the variation in predictive values between calculators. Even in my own spreadsheets, the breadth of projections is remarkable. Naturally, the only way to know how accurately a tool illustrated an outcome is for that outcome to have actually played out. However, in running thousands of simulations through dozens of calculators—most of which ran Monte Carlo simulations of varying sophistication—in addition to my own more rudimentary projections, I feel confident in calling out an incongruent conclusion (here’s looking at you, USAA and AARP). A score of 7 indicates the fidelity of a simple, free calculator. More points are given for calculators that take in specific portfolio data and those that have provisions for specific contingencies, such as income changes at various points in retirement.
- Simulation (10): Can the calculator accurately project the impact of events (windfalls, black swans, sequence of returns, etc.) at different points in the investing horizon? A higher score credits a calculator with advanced analytics. Like all of these subsets, this is subjective and imperfect—especially considering that I did not pay to review the more advanced features of the comprehensive calculators. That being said, I doubt many folks are going to take the time and money to test all of these. As such, it's beholden to the producers to convey the novelty of their system’s mechanism. Fancy math isn’t the only litmus test here, either: Mike Piper’s Open Social Security performs well here exactly because of the logic behind its conclusions.
- Interoperability (10): How well can the software integrate information from different sources? Can it be exchanged with a financial advisor or a different platform? Perhaps most importantly, could my loved ones (yes, a few people love me) take data from this platform and interpret it themselves? While more function doesn’t necessarily translate to a higher score, most comprehensive calculators perform very well here.
- Interface (10): How easy is the system to use? How supportive are the creators? How well can my family use it when I kick the bucket? This is also subjective! Some folks prefer the hard comfort of cells and Macros. Others prefer a more polished look. I scored based on my impression of each, and those that I felt my kids could navigate received higher scores.
- Tax assessment (5): Can the system model different tax strategies (such as Roth conversions or the order of withdrawal)? This is a fairly simple metric. I take it on the authority of WCI posters and the experience of others that the tax assessments within each are accurate and useful.
- Advertising (5): Is the user prodded to “upgrade” to a higher service level? Is the software riddled with sidebars and popups? Higher points are awarded for fewer advertisements.
- Security (10): How secure is the data imported to the site? Is the software downloaded to a personal computer, or is it web-based? Are accounts directly linked to the site, and if so, what protections are offered for privacy and security? As a disclaimer, I am not an information security expert. But if I felt uncomfortable going to a site without a VPN, then I probably wouldn’t be putting my information in it. A score of 5 is satisfactory. Conversely, those programs with data encryption and cold storage options (such as ProjectionLab) performed well in this category.
- Assumptions (10): How much does the calculator rely on assumptions to produce its results? How granularly does it query the user to avoid assumptions or at least specify them? Calculators that relied heavily on assumptions (simple calculators) scored lower, with a standard value of 3 for the widely available models. Those resources that either take in a great deal of personal data in their modeling (comprehensive calculators) or whose content is particularly well vetted (Investor.gov or HumbleDollar) scored higher.
- Value (10): Does the functionality of the program warrant the cost? Functionality and quality need not be expensive. A 1995 Honda Civic in fair order can get you across the country as well as a 2024 Ford F-250. The question is not necessarily “will this work” as much as “what works best for me?” And for Chuck Patterson, I want to pay as little as possible for an accurate system that can be easily interpreted (and maybe used) in the event of my demise.
Readers will notice immediately that this scoring system is subjective and weighted according to those factors that I prioritize highest. They can certainly be amended to fit yours, as well. As for further disclosures, please bear in mind that while some programs may have sponsorship affiliations with The White Coat Investor, I am not reimbursed by these companies for my remarks. Finally, this is by no means an exhaustive list, and I would greatly value your feedback with these and other honorably unmentioned calculators.
Thus, I leave you with a parting gift, one that invites criticism and is very much worthy of debate. Behold: the Patterson List, a completely subjective, inherently flawed, but mind-numbingly researched chart of some of the most commonly adopted retirement calculators. It is not comprehensive, and it doesn't even include all of the resources that were researched (just the ones I found most interesting and those by your request). I happily invite you to tell me where and how I was wrong, for the betterment of the readership
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Make sure to click to enlarge the image below.]
Winners and Losers
While a higher score may seem like an acknowledgement of superiority, I cannot stress enough that some fabulous resources score lower simply because they are not comprehensive. HumbleDollar, Investor.gov, and OpenSocialSecurity come to mind. With that said, there are some truly impressive platforms (and some that are not so much).
Highlighting the best of the best: ProjectionLab came in with a nearly perfect score. Its in-depth calculator, easy interface, and utility were exemplary. Boldin, WealthMeta, MaxFI, and WealthTrace would absolutely be adequate as comprehensive resources. Others, too, may prefer platforms like Empower. I would be remiss, once more, if I did not mention TCRP and Pralana. While the scores for these simpler programs are far lower than the bigger players, my financial house would be equally well served by an Excel-based program. This is a testament to the imperfection of the scoring system and the need for the individual investor to adjust it according to their needs and preferences.
There are sites that have less utility, and some that I would shy away from entirely. The major banks and brokerages all have their own simple calculators that lead to paid financial services. In and of itself, this is far from evil. But USAA’s conclusions and nudges were egregiously misleading. I won’t belabor this point, as it was addressed in Part I. I will simply reiterate that USAA, like all institutions, can be great at times and, at other times, well off base.
More information here:
A Doctor’s Review of the Retirement Income Style Awareness (RISA) Profile
The Best Way to Create a Retirement Income Plan (and a $1 Million Example)
The Bottom Line
Of the topics that I have covered in my time writing for WCI, this has provided the most torturous and engrossing rabbit holes. It has certainly given me an appreciation for the problem that many of us will face as we prepare to exit our primary careers: identifying the tools best suited to facilitate our financial goals. As Dr. Jim Dahle says in reference to financial success, there are many roads to Dublin. So, too, are there many tools that will help you find success in the latter portion of your investment career. It is my sincere hope that this series of columns makes that chore just a little bit easier.
Looking for some personalized answers when it comes to tracking your retirement? Check out Boldin, a WCI partner that helps you build your retirement plan and keeps you on track for the future you deserve. It’s much more than a retirement calculator; it’ll help you get to the retirement of your dreams.
What has been your experience with retirement calculators? What's your favorite? What's your least favorite? Do you have any other recommendations?
ProjectionLab got 8/5 for taxes?
Good catch! As you can tell, there were many iterations with different weights for each category. In fact, you can change the weights to whatever you would like. ProjectionLab would score highly in that category, in my estimation.
Pralana deserves a second chance, the Pralana Online version is fantastic. Score maybe closer to 85 or 90. I’ve tried many of these calculators and IMHO it’s among the best for the price (and it’s the one I’ve chosen as primary for my needs.)
Can’t wait to try the online version
Thanks for including Pralana in your review of retirement calculators! You refer to Pralana as “one of these simpler programs”, but you are referring to Pralana Bronze whose functionality is limited because it is free. Our paid Gold and Online tools are among the most sophisticated tools on the market and on request I will be happy to give you complimentary access to Pralana Online so you can see for yourself.
Pralana’s high-end products can model virtually any income and expense stream; can model ACA insurance and the associated Premium Tax Credits; can determine the optimum age for husband and wife to start SS to maximize final savings; can present deterministic and Monte Carlo/Historical analysis results superimposed on the same graph; and can perform historical sequence analysis to allow you to see how your portfolio would perform against actual historical sequences. We also model Roth conversions while allowing users to specify control parameters including maximum marginal tax bracket, maximum IRMAA bracket, Federal Poverty Level multiple to prevent loss of ACA PTC, and LTCG brackets to limit the annual conversion amount. We also model multiple spending strategies, including consumption smoothing and fixed rate spending to annually adjust your spending as a function of portfolio performance.
Regarding taxes, we model user-specified asset classes, asset allocation and asset location to allow users to explore tax-efficient asset allocation, with automated annual rebalancing. We do detailed Federal and State tax calculations and Pralana Online goes a step further and shows the user completed IRS forms for each year in the simulation to provide the ultimate transparency.
Anyway, this is just a quick summary of some things you might not have been fully cognizant of in writing your review. These are both high-fidelity financial planners and Pralana Online is getting better every day. Its user interface still reflects its Excel roots, which we will be addressing as we can, but our current focus is on improving the simulation capabilities while taking guidance from our customers.
Stuart Matthews
I would love to see a column on your chart, much less an entire blog post, that focused on the best DIY software vs using a professional and their more expensive software, to plan Roth conversions. I would love to gain confidence in how much I am going to choose to convert per year.
I’m not sure more or better calculators really should give you more confidence. There are so many unknowable variables in the calculation that maybe aiming for “good enough” should be a worthy goal.
how is projection lab different from new retirement?
Alan, you really should try both–and for an extended time, like 4-6 months or so. It is difficult to really see all the differences in a shorter timeframe. I have used both extensively, and continue to do so, although I’ll be dropping my Boldin (formerly NewRetirement) subscription this year and will go singularly with ProjectionLab. It is difficult to summarize the differences, although I’ll characterize it as this:
PL is to Boldin as Apple is to Microsoft
PL is to Boldin as Target is to Walmart
PL is to Boldin as Trader Joes is to a normal grocery store
Ultimately, IMHO, PL is simply a more enjoyable experience, a sexier user interface, with more control, and more tweak ability. Boldin always felt clunky to me and actually had a few errors I could go into more detail about but don’t really feel like typing out here.
Good luck!
A couple of thoughts. First, about your rating scheme. It seems to me that criteria for DIY and Interface overlap, at least the way you’ve spec’d them. For DIY, you ask “Can a reasonably competent investor use this tool alone to navigate their retirement planning?” For Interface, it’s “How easy is the system to use? How well can my family use it when I kick the bucket?”
If your family members are reasonably competent investors, then the answer for both of these is the same. FWIW, I wouldn’t rate Pralana high on either of these. While it’s a terrific tool in its completeness, it is not the most intuitive or user-friendly UI, even for someone who likes to build their own spreadsheets. At least, that’s what I felt. It does offer the advantage of ROTH modeling with state and fed tax impacts.
You didn’t mention a couple that might be worth noting.
As for other tools, as a DIYer you can get access to a couple of different pro tools for a nominal cost. If you sign up for PlanVision, they give you access to e-Money, an platform used by CFPs. I really like PV – been with them for a couple years now. For less than $100/yr they give me access to their full staff of CFPs and tax pros for 1:1 consults as well as the eMoney platform. Still the best deal going, I think.
Also, I just signed up with IncomeLab, another pro platform that doesn’t have a consumer-facing offering. Except that if you ask them they will sell you an individual, personal use only license for $20/month – a remarkably good value.
This is THE best planning platform l’ve found for retirees who are in decumulation mode. ROTH conversion modeling, tax modeling, stress testing (how would our plan fare during the 1970s Stagflation era?), withdrawal strategy, comprehensive SSA claiming strategy and break-even analysis – this tool does it all.
The best part is that is uses a risk-based spending guardrails methodology. Instead of running MC and giving you a percent chance of success/failure (I mean really – what is the right percentage there?? Impossible to know), this approach shows you what the chance is that you’ll need to adjust your spending – up or down – in order for your plan goals to be met.This is huge. It means I can quit worrying about whether or not my plan is going to work, and focus instead on just living my best retired life and spending right up to whatever IL tells me my limit is. So far, this limit has been way higher than I ever would’ve attempted otherwise.
On your rating system I’d give it full points on every metric except the Interface category. Handing this off to a family member who isn’t involved or hasn’t been involved in setting it up and using it would probably not work. Other than that, for DIYers, it is the best thing out there that’s I’ve found, hands down.
Reply to post on WCI about ranking different tools/platforms.
Thanks for sharing the details. PlanVision is appropriate for a very small percentage of validators. Hard to argue with the price of course, but people seeking out a real financial planner need to understand what is really being offered there, which is mostly just eMoney. Sure, you can theoretically meet 1:1 with a pro, but the amount of time you can spend with them is extraordinarily limited. So limited that it’s really only appropriate for a validator that is very, very close to being a true DIYer. If you’re asking for more than an hour every year or two, the model doesn’t work and they’ll tell you that. It’s a great option for the right person and doesn’t cost much to try though.
Thanks for this article, Charles and Jim–super practical, and extremely helpful. Please keep this type of content coming!
Jim, although I hear what you’re saying regarding PlanVision, I echo the thoughts of TomS. For the money the service is a real bargain, and although I suspect that almost all of us who are customers are cognizant that we can’t reach out for too much hand-holding, PV does offer SOME of this. I don’t want to paint Mark Zoril into a corner, but I reached out to him via email with a fairly detailed question this past Saturday evening, and early Sunday morning he responded by video with a spot-on answer that incorporated some of my eMoney graphs. I then reached out with a f/u question on Monday, and again received a very prompt video answer. I certainly would avoid doing this too often, but this sort of service for less than $100 annually is a no-brainer for me. As an aside, Mark leans toward the “satisficer” end of things which is how I roll, but his team members are happy to get down in the weeds on optimization issues.
I agree it’s an incredible bargain. So good I’m not sure it is a financially viable way to run an advisory firm. So I’m cheering for them for sure. But I’m just pointing out it really only serves a very tiny slice of those who need an advisor well. And those people are awfully close to being DIYers already.
You recommended TCRP (The Complete Retirement Planner) last year (and I use it!), but seemed to back off a bit this year, so I just wanted to stand behind it. Nothing is saved to the cloud/servers, so security is as good as it can be. Easy to use, no subscription, plenty of detail, and you can follow the calculations. Not as fancy looking as others, but I don’t need tons of pie charts or a Monte Carlo probability % (just an advisers sales tool if you understand its inherent flaws), just clear, detailed results. Best value there is and gives me what I need. It’s nice to keep things simple for a change!
For my purposes (and my preferences) TCRP is unbeatable for the price and functionality. After trying out all of the calculators I don’t think that my position on that has changed. One of the many, many flaws of my spreadsheet is that its results make it seem like the highest score is actually the best option for every individual.
Agreed – on both points. TCRP continues to get better and better every year, but what each person chooses should depend on what they are really looking for, and what they feel comfortable with.
I’ve tested almost every tool on the list and ended up sticking with ProjectionLab too. Definitely one of the best!
awesome article Charles and well done on the research and trying to come up with a comprehensive scoring system on these calculators. Rob Berger has written on this https://robberger.com/best-retirement-calculators/. mostly you guys seem to jive with the exception of Fidelity. Also he mentions cFIREsim and NetWorthify and I did not see that you have reviewed it. I wonder if you could take a look and give your thoughts on these 2?
I have been trying a lot of these calculators. The Projection lab indicates that my plans have a 0-32% success rate, whereas all the other calculators give me a rate of 90% or higher – I’m not sure what I’m doing incorrectly in the projections calculator. Needless to say, I am not excited about that one.
Wow. You neglected perhaps the best, and its also Free, ad-free, and open source, with continual updates: FIRECalc
As my family continually tells me, there was probably a nicer way to say that.
Ok, point taken. But do you have any comment/opinion about FIRECalc?
Everything I’ve ever heard about it is great. I didn’t write this post. I haven’t used most of this software.
I was scrolling this entire post and comments just to find any mention of firecalc. I’ve tried so many calculators over the years and haven’t found anything better!
Under Empower, I think you meant “perusing” here:
In pursuing its webpage
You’re welcome.
–Grammar Police
I’m neither the author nor the editor, but I think you’re right that this got by both of them. Fixed now.
Good read. Thanks for the research and effort!
MaxFi is in fact MaxiFi Planner, correct?
https://maxifiplanner.com/
I’ve found it valuable.