Am I misunderstanding the calculations resulting from the value (Assets & Saving / Current Saving) "Less amount of asset income not reinvested" or is this a bug? When I enter a value ranging from 0 to 999 "Equals current saving" calculation seems correct; e.g., 16777 - 999 = 15778.
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new user of ESPlanner. Report shows my max age as 93 and spouse maximum age as 100. We are both 64 and want to model maximum age 93. How do I change spouse max age?
I am 65 and my wife is 63. We have no life insurance now. The Annual Suggestions portion of our report indicates a recommendation of Life Insurance for me in annual amounts beginning in 2018 for $56K, rising each year to 2023 at $153K and then declining till my presumed death in 2041 to $10K.
Will ESPlanner use Head of Household tax rates where appropriate? It doesn't seem possible to be make it explicit anywhere but I was wondering if it might assume that in any cases?
Hello,
My wife and I live in Maryland and when I run the planner your tax calculations in MD seem to come up short. I am wondering if you are accounting for the local county taxes which can add up to 3% plus to the calculation.
Thanks,
J. Banks
I've specified conservative spending in my Monte Carlo setup. Everything looks fine in the non-MC report. Everything seemingly looks great in the MC report - all graphs go from something fairly horizontal at the Specified Mean Real Return to sloping dramatically upward for the 95th percentile.
I need to check my understanding of some of the program inputs and their interactions. I've made some assertions (below) for which I would certainly appreciate any comments or corrections.
Using Economics-based planning:
My reports were looking odd, especially the amount of social security tax paid each year, until I realized that I'd changed my salary in the Earnings tab, but it hadn't been updated in the Social Security / Future Covered Earnings tab.
When I run ESPlanner it suggests this year I should save tens of thousands less (the recommended amount is negative savings), increase discretionary spending by tens of thousands, and reduce life insurance to zero for myself and my spouse.
What does the Living Standard values in the monte carlo analysis represent, compared to the baseline reports? Specifically, two questions:
1) do they represent all spending or just discretionary spending?
2) do they represent 'per adult' or 'total household' living standard?
The program is projecting FICA tax for my wife who has no income. Also it is showing FICA tax in the year we sell our house, and have no income from employment.
I want to see the long term impact of decisions I am making. Is there a way to fool ESP into thinking it is 1/1/2018? I can estimate end of year account values based on what I know now and the decisions I am making
Approximately 6% of my investments are in gold bullion self directed IRA. How should I account for this in Esplanner? Is there an established return rate for gold? Thanks!
I don't understand what this Monte Carlo report is trying to tell me. It has columns that go all the way to 200%. Not sure how there can be a 200% probability of anything.
I am now 60, my wife is 59. We do not plan to take social security until we are each 70. Next to my retirement file date (2/1/27) ESPlanner shows a negative number (-29) and next to hers (-32).
Is there any easy way to model making a very occasional, but significant (up to 10% of balance), extra payment of principal on a mortgage?
Does the program periodically rebalance regular and retirement assets when performing a Monte Carlo simulation, or are portfolio allocations "initial conditions" only? If rebalancing isn't performed is it thought to be a bad idea or a feature to possibly be added to a future version? TIA
My pension is partially tied to the stock market. Without using Monte Carlo, is there a way I can model losses for a few years? Besides, there is not way to link a pension to stocks so Monte Carlo wonld not work.
When can we expect the next version of ESPLanner to be released
james
I am trying to see the difference between a pension with Inflation Index of 2% (1% less than modeled inflation) vs. and a pension with 0% Inflation Index. When I changed the index from 2% to 0% the pension didn't change. Did I miss something or is this a bug?