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Much of what I write about is specific to my experiences in the financial services industry.

My existing clients are the the type of people that are in need of a ‘formal’ financial plan. And the majority of my clients already have a significant asset base.

They have many complex issues that need servicing. For instance, they pay me to manage their investments, look at their insurance options, provide estate planning solutions, review disability and LTC packages, etc.

This is what I’m trained to do, this is where my expertise lies. My experiences in financial services come from dealing with this sweetspot.

Continue Reading “Integrating ‘Down Home’ planning with other finance blogs”

I hope you can tell by now that I’ve put a premium on financial calculators that help you get to know yourself better. This last calculator I am going to look at is the most detail oriented, and comprehensive, of any of the savings calculator that we’ve looked at so far.

The Home Budget Analysis calculator can work in conjunction with either of the last two savings calculators we’ve examined and really helps to shed light on one’s financial underbelly.

In fact, many of the 6 calculators that I’ve written about can be integrated quite effortlessly. I’m looking forward to bringing you different scenarios where we get to use 3 or 4 different calculators within the same planning experience. Here we go…

Continue Reading “Home Budget Analysis - Calculator Explanation”

This calculator is similar to the ‘don’t delay your savings’ calculator we examined in my last post. In fact, it more or less performs a similar calculation with a few slight variations. The ‘ddys‘ is good to use if you already have previous savings and want to see the effects of commingling the new stream of savings with the pre-existing monies.

Benefits of spending less - Calculator

This calculator focuses strictly on your monthly savings and how to create this new savings stream. It also gives you the option of factoring in the impact of taxes on your monthly savings stream, as well as a separate window, offering ways for you to reduce your monthly expenses.

Continue Reading “Benefits of spending less - Calculator Explanation”

This calculator shows you what happens if you delay your savings. It works really well if you have some kind of big expenditure on the horizon and need to know how much has to be set aside in advance.

Much like alot of the financial planning tools, this savings calculator takes the murkiness out of your personal financial picture. And as I’ve said many times, if you know what you need to accomplish then it becomes alot easier to a put a plan in place to achieve that goal.

Don’t delay your savings! Calculator

Some people might use a calculator like this to begin saving for a future down payment on a home, maybe to plan for a dream vacation, but for our purposes, I thought it would make sense to put it in the context of planning a Roth IRA conversion. This conversion will create a one time tax bill, with the taxes due in 2011 and 2012, and then the monies grow tax free from that point forward. So lets take a look at an example and define the calculator fields…

Continue Reading “Don’t delay your savings! - Calculator Explanation”

This next calculator is pretty cool. Very similar, in fact, to alot of the retirement “What If” scenarios that you can model for clients with more in depth planning software. What you are actually seeing, with these calculators, is a stripped down version of the more formal financial planning software.

These calculators are the engines that make all that fancy software go. Without further ado, lets dive into this ‘Nestegg’ …

Retirement Nestegg Calculator

One thing you must be aware of when using this calculator is its hyper sensitivity. With many of these calculators, there are often only one or two input fields that can dramatically impact the results. With this particular calculator, if you change just about any field, you will see big swings in the future results.

Continue Reading “Retirement Nestegg - Calculator Explanation”

In 1998, the Roth IRA was introduced. Since then, many people have converted all or a portion of their existing Traditional IRA’s to Roth IRA’s, where distributions are eventually tax free. When converting from a regular IRA to a Roth IRA, the amount of the conversion is taxable in the year of the conversion.

This law is changing, starting in 2010, anyone who converts to a Roth will pay no taxes that year, taxes will be due in 2011 and 2012. If there ever was a time to convert, 2010 is it. But like everything else, you need to do your homework. Let’s take a look at the Roth IRA Conversion calculator…

Continue Reading “Roth IRA Conversion Calculator Explained”

Today is the first post, in a series of posts, where I’ll be reviewing the functionality of 6 financial calculators. I will explain, in plain language, how each of these calculators works and how to integrate the results of each, into your personalized ‘down home’ financial plan.

As promised, I will be creating a lot of hypothetical scenarios to use as references, too. I will also be adding more calculators as time goes by.

Roth IRA v Traditional IRA Calculator

The purpose of this Roth IRA calculator is to figure out which type of IRA is best for you. Now, as you may know, I’m a big fan of the Roth IRA and tend to favor it over a traditional IRA. Below is a screen shot where I’ve inputed some data and calculated the results…

Continue Reading “Roth IRA vs Traditional IRA - Calculator Explained”

A little outline of what you can expect…Next week I will be (permanently) introducing 6 financial calculators to the site.

You will be able to click on the ‘Financial Calculators’ tab and go and use any one of the financial calculators whenever (and however) you please and print detailed reports, as well.

I’m introducing the 6 calculators that I think are most essential to my audience.

By using all, or the majority of these financial tools, you’re going to learn a lot about yourself, including the core benefits derived from a formal financial plan, that I always talk about:

Continue Reading “Introducing Financial Calculators”