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 Personal Financial Lifecycle Planner

VeriPlan automatically projects your annual lifecycle tax obligations in eight tax categories. In each projection year, VeriPlan automatically measures and projects your personal federal, state, and local income tax rates and limitations; your tax exemptions, adjustments, and deductions; and your property and other taxes. To prevent obsolescence, you can change tax rates and limits, if laws change. VeriPlan can develop projections using different federal, state, and local taxable income levels.  (See:  VeriPlan helps you to understand your projected lifecycle taxes in multiple categories on a year-by-year basis  and  VeriPlan projects your US federal state and local lifecycle taxes)

Quicken Retirement Planner

The Quicken Retirement Planner asks you to estimate your total average tax annual rate before retirement and after retirement. Quicken uses these averages across your projections. Unlike VeriPlan, the Quicken Retirement Planner does not use variable tax rates and limitations, and it does not separately project federal, state, and local income taxes. Quicken's total average taxation method does not differentiate between ordinary income, long-term capital gains, tax deductions, tax adjustments, tax basis, and other tax factors that could vary substantially from year to year in the future.

* 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.

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