Quicken and VeriPlan Comparison: Investment Asset Classes and Asset Allocation
In this series of short articles, The Skilled Investor compares the functionality of the Quicken and VeriPlan financial lifecycle planners. At the bottom of this article you will find links to the previous topic and the next topic. A link is also provided that returns you to the main topic listing of this comparison.*
VeriPlan Investment Asset Allocation Planner
Your asset allocation strategy allows you to align the risk of your investment portfolio with your risk tolerance. VeriPlan provides five user selectable and adjustable asset allocation methods for your lifecycle projections. VeriPlan provides fixed, variable, and age-based allocation mechanisms. (See: VeriPlan helps you to align the risk and return of your financial portfolio with your relative tolerance for investment risk)
VeriPlan automatically projects your asset holdings in five asset classes: 1) cash and cash equivalent assets, 2) bond and fixed income assets, 3) stock and equity assets, 4) property and real estate assets, and 5) other assets. For each of your individual asset holdings, VeriPlan collects information from you about share ownership, values per share, investment costs, and account taxability.
Quicken Retirement Planner
The Quicken Retirement Planner combines your portfolio into one "Investment Assets" category. Then, it projects future values using this aggregate. The Quicken Retirement Planner does distinguish between your taxable and tax-deferred investment assets. If you have entered assets accounts elsewhere in Quicken, you can select one-by-one to include or exclude them from your retirement plan in the Quicken Retirement Planner.
Because Quicken's Retirement Planner uses only a single, aggregated "Investments" asset class for your projections, it does not do any asset allocation. Quicken provides an "Asset Allocation Guide" document that discusses some of the considerations that would go into constructing a portfolio of various investments, but nothing related to asset allocation is automated in the Quicken Retirement Planner.
<< Previous Topic* Lawrence Russell and Company is the publisher of The Skilled Investor and the developer of VeriPlan. The Skilled Investor has made an attempt to characterize factually the functionality of both the Quicken Retirement Planner and VeriPlan.