Laurence Kotlikoff Professor of Economics Boston University and President of Economic Security Planning, Inc.

When it comes to personal finance, ESPlanner, our economics-based, life-cycle financial planning software, focuses on one thing — your living standard. ESPlanner calculates your sustainable living standard and helps you find safe ways to raise it.

What exactly is your living standard? It's your discretionary spending per household member adjusted for the fact that "two can live more cheaply than one" and the relative cost of children.

Once you set up a basic profile, you can see in seconds how a host of decisions, such as adding to a 401(k), using a Roth IRA, switching jobs, moving to Florida, retiring early, downsizing your home, refinancing, having a baby, getting married, buying a boat, waiting to take Social Security, and timing retirement account withdrawals impact your living standard.

ESPlanner helps you raise your discretionary spending power by showing you Uncle Sam's best tax and Social Security deals as well as by helping you to make the most economical career and financial decisions.

You may also find it useful to look at our Getting Started tutorials to see how users enter data, create and read reports, and experiment with "what if" cases to try to raise or shape one's living standard.

Next>