| Technology Review February 11,
2009 |
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Brought to you by
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| Should you use “Retirement Savings Planner 2009”
software? |
Kelley Rating (one asterisk = lowest, to five
asterisks = highest):
- Ease of navigation, design of interface and learning curve *****
- Instructional documentation and help system ***
- Carries out the goal of the product as advertised *****
- Overall usefulness ****
The publisher of Retirement
Savings Planner 2009, Professional Edition, suggests that this
software is useful for financial advisors, financial planners, insurance
agents, CPAs, lawyers, trust departments, pension administrators and
human resources personnel. It is intended for client communication or
financial products sales support.
Retirement Savings Planner 2009 computes and projects probable
retirement income and expenses for a defined period of years. It is
essentially cash flow based, but it also includes a goal solver for
retirement savings projections. This program is based on an informative
graphical interface with underlying spreadsheets. It integrates
detailed data on investments and expenses and reflects straightforward
inflation projections.
Specifically, this program assembles data and computes the effect on
retirement of long-term care insurance, wealth management services, 401k
plans, life insurance, annuities, split annuities, equity indexed
annuities, variable annuities, rollovers, reverse mortgages, indexed
universal life insurance, and other products and services related to a
person's retirement finances.
Torrid Technologies, the publisher of Retirement Savings Planner
2009, Professional Edition, also furnishes less comprehensive
Personal and Couples editions with fewer features.
Retirement Savings Planner 2009 is updated a number of times each
year. Updates for each version are conveniently furnished by Internet
download. The software routinely checks for updates, or you can check
for updates manually.
Competitive Products
Programs that offer comparable features to Retirement Savings
Planner include:
- American
Dream personal finance software for professional advisors,
- NaviPlan
financial and retirement planning calculations and graphics, and
- Cygnus IncomeMax financial
planning software for financial planners and life insurance agents.
How Does It Work?
The opening screen of Retirement Savings Planner 2009 presents
the Retirement Income Graph — a stacked bar graph reflecting the
year-by-year results of the client’s income during retirement years.
The lower part of the screen is a clearly presented series of data
fields for entry of client and spouse ages and income; balances and
contributions to tax-deferred, taxable and tax-free investments; and
social security benefits and pension/defined benefits annual amounts.
The Other Assumptions tab allows entry of the retirement income goal,
the projected inflation rate and projected tax rates before and after
retirement.
The graph displays bars that reflect year-by-year inflated amounts based
on the projected retirement goal and expenses, income and growth from
client investments, and the difference between these two values that
must be made up from capital withdrawals. The bar graph also shows
pension income and social security income. Another set of bars shows
other income after retirement. (For instance, salary earned by one
spouse after the retirement of the other, cash infusion income items and
other annual income after retirement.) The program then computes and
displays the critical amount of any shortfall between amounts received
and retirement goals.
As you move the mouse pointer into the graph area, a vertically
positioned line attaches to the pointer. This line is an automatic
graph reader. Boxes at the top of the screen display the dollar amounts
corresponding to each set of bars for each year of the designated
retirement time spectrum. As you move the line, the values in the boxes
change to correspond to the values for that year.
By changing the amounts entered in the data fields, the graph changes
and you can instantly see the effect of such changes on the achievement
of future projected retirement goals. You may create an unlimited
number of retirement plans.
The right hand side of the screen displays several buttons for
navigating spreadsheets created by Retirement Savings Planner
2009, including Investments, Special Expenses, Cash Infusions and
Spreadsheet (an annual spreadsheet reflecting the calculations of
income, adjustments and balances underlying the graph.) Other
navigational buttons are Savings (a bar graph showing the value of
tax-deferred and taxable investments year-by-year) and the Retirement
Income Graph.
- The Investments spreadsheet provides detailed annual future
projections for individual investments, income, expenses and other data
entries entered in the Client or Spouse fields at the bottom of the
graph screen. Before and after income tax data is color-coded to match
the bars on the Retirement Income Graph. The Investments spreadsheet
also calculates life expectancies for each year and the required minimum
distributions for tax-deferred investments. You may enter an unlimited
number of investments.
- The Special Expenses spreadsheet tracks after-retirement expenses
such as long-term care costs or premiums. An inflation factor, start
age and duration can be set for each line item and you may enter as many
items as desired.
- The Cash Infusions spreadsheet tracks various cash receipts, not
otherwise entered, that come in before or after retirement. Such
receipts may be entered as one-time events or as payments received over
a given number of years. This allows planners to account for such
events as home sales, business or other asset sales, inheritances, and
early retirement or severance packages. The tax rate may be separately
set for each event you enter.
The Retirement Income Graph reflects the data entered into the
spreadsheets in a visually pleasing and compact representation of the
total retirement picture on an annual basis.
Free-standing tools are included to project life insurance needs,
savings required to eliminate retirement income shortfalls, income taxes
saved by annual contributions to tax-deferred retirement plans and
savings required to reach a financial goal.
What Reports Are Furnished?
Client reports are created by a facility that allows you to select all
or any of the screens presented by the program (including tools) as a
combined report according to the age range you select. You may print
the Savings Graph or Retirement Income Graph separately. Data appearing
on the Spreadsheet may be exported to Microsoft Excel for further
manipulation or addition of categories and amounts.
What About Help and Support?
Retirement Savings Planner 2009 includes a well-conceived help
system that describes the program settings, screen inputs and program
operation in detail. Technical support for this product is provided by
email and telephone.
Where Do You Get This Software?
The new user price for an annual subscription to Retirement Savings
Planner 2009, Professional Edition is $699. Renewals for prior
users are $349. If you would like to try the product before purchasing
it, both a free demo version and a free 90 day trial are available from
the publisher’s website.
This service is available from:
Torrid Technologies
1860 Sandy Plains Rd.
Suite 204-129
Marietta, GA 30066
Order Line Phone: 770-565-6405
Website: www.torrid-tech.com/
Bottom Line
This program is useful for a quick, visual representation of a
client’s financial picture as it relates to retirement planning.
Trusts & Estates magazine is pleased to present the monthly
Technology Review by Donald H. Kelley - a respected connoisseur of
the software and Internet resources wealth management advisors use to
further their practices.
Kelley is a lawyer living in Highlands Ranch, Colo., and is of counsel
to the law firm of Kelley, Scritsmier & Byrne, P.C. of North Platte,
Neb. He is the co-author of the Intuitive Estate Planner
Software, (Thomson - West 2004). He has served on the governing
boards of the American Bar Association Real Property Probate and Trust
Section and the American College of Tax Counsel. He is a past regent and
past chair of the Committee on Technology in the Practice of the
American College of Trust and Estate Counsel.
Trusts & Estates has asked Kelley to provide his unvarnished opinions
on the tech resources available in the practice today. His columns are
edited for readability only. Send feedback and suggestions for articles
directly to him at dhkelley@qwestoffice.net.
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