Use Scientifically Based Financial Planning Strategies

VeriPlan is designed to help you pursue scientifically based financial planning strategies

VeriPlan offers you unprecedented direct control to perform your own automated personal financial planning. VeriPlan’s functionality also implements the principles of scientific finance. VeriPlan’s internal documentation and its links to information on the web help you to understand scientifically based personal financial planning and investment strategies.

VeriPlan’s functionality reflects a belief that individuals will follow optimal, scientifically proven financial planning and investment strategies, if they understand them and have appropriate and powerful planning tools. VeriPlan’s simple premise is that people want to get the most out of their money in a manner that addresses their needs across their lifecycle. While this objective is a ‘no-brainer,’ achievement of this objective requires steady and conscientious implementation over a lifetime. VeriPlan helps you to understand and to adopt financial practices that are more likely to achieve your lifetime objectives.

Providing extensive documentation embedded directly into the product where you need to find it, VeriPlan explains why various features have been implemented and how to use them. In addition, by providing links to scientific finance articles on The Skilled Investor website and elsewhere on the web, VeriPlan helps you to understand scientifically based personal financial strategies.

Whether you are well off or you intend to become so, VeriPlan is capable of generating lifecycle projections about your financial affairs. Explicitly or implicitly, every financial tool is designed with certain points-of-view. If you use a financial planning tool like VeriPlan, you should understand its viewpoints. On a separate, internal “Viewpoints” worksheet, VeriPlan explains many of the viewpoints that have influenced its design. As a sampling, some of these viewpoints include:

* Your personal earnings, expenditures, and savings are the most important and most reliable determinants of your family’s long-term financial wealth. Pay the most attention to them.

* There is no such thing as risk-free money from investing for individuals. You need to allocate your financial assets in a manner that reflects your relative tolerance for investment risk. You need to stay in the securities markets to earn market risk premiums. You need to build asset buffers to protect yourself from unpredictable market volatility and unplanned personal financial setbacks.

* Passive, index-oriented investment strategies tend to be superior, because they narrow the range of outcomes, and thus, they reduce the total investment risk associated with your portfolio. You should always completely diversify your portfolio. Own investment funds rather than individual securities. VeriPlan can easily model and project the value of your individual securities holdings, but low cost, fully diversified funds are more likely to achieve your lifetime objectives.

* Excessive visible and hidden investment costs tend to reduce the potential growth and value of your portfolio unnecessarily and dramatically. Cut your investment costs aggressively and keep cutting them. Pay yourself and not someone else.

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Personal Financial Planning

• Factors Favoring Roth IRA and Roth 401k Plan Contributions ( Factors that tend to favor Roth IRA and Roth 401k tax-advantaged plan contributions In a recent article, "Traditional versus Roth tax-advantaged plan contributions," The Skilled Investor discussed why the average taxpayer would tend to benefit more by contributing to traditional rather than to tax-advantaged Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) retirement plans. This follow-up article in two-parts [...])
• Chance creates the illusion that individual investors can beat the stock market ( "Market efficiency" makes it very difficult for individual investors to "beat the market." Making their own decisions, individual investors perform so poorly that on average their investment returns lag behind the returns that one would expect from random stock selection. The average professional trader does somewhat better than amateurs do, and professionals probably do so, in part, [...])
• The Optimal Investment Strategy for Individual Investors ( The Solution - ONLY follow financial strategies that are scientific, passive, diversified, savings focused, risk controlled, low cost, and tax efficient A previous article, "The Problem - Straight answers about personal financial and investment planning are difficult to find," summarized important reasons why individuals may experience difficulties, even if they are intent upon doing better with [...])
• Commodity Futures in Your Investment Portfolio ( Commodity futures in your investment portfolio - Is there really any future for individual investors? The Skilled Investor's previous article, "Be wary of the new investment asset classes," voiced skepticism about many supposedly new asset classes. This article delves into the financial science behind this skepticism, as it relates to one of these supposedly new asset [...])
• How Investment Securities Are Valued - Snapshots in Time ( Snapshots in time - How investment securities are valued Every securities market transaction requires a buyer and seller with differing viewpoints. Markets can operate, because there are differences between investors in their assessments of the intrinsic value and risk of securities. Current investment values vary in the eyes of the many beholders of investment market securities. Knowledgeable participants [...])
• Stay Invested in Securities Markets to Earn Risk Premiums ( You must stay invested in the securities markets to earn market return risk premiums Securities markets pay risk premiums to risk takers You have to have your money invested and at risk to be paid a risk premium. Attempting to avoid risk or losses by jumping in and out to "time the markets" does not work. Scientific [...])
• 2006 and 2007 Personal Income Tax Rates for the 50 States and DC ( 2006 and 2007 personal income tax rates for the 50 states and D.C. The Skilled Investor has made available for downloading a spreadsheet that contains graduated personal income tax rates and other personal income tax rate information for the 50 states and the District of Columbia. If you want to know about specific U.S. state personal graduated [...])
• When to Take Social Security Retirement Benefits ( When to Take Social Security Retirement Benefits? Concerning when to take Social Security retirement benefits, the Boston College Center for Retirement Research has some research in their publications section that addresses this subject. In particular, see "SHOULD WE RAISE SOCIAL SECURITY’S EARLIEST ELIGIBILITY AGE" by Alicia H. Munnell, Kevin B. Meme, Natalia A. Jivan, and Kevin [...])