VeriPlan helps you to understand your lifetime personal savings requirements and whether your current savings rate is sufficient
How much you earn, spend, and save are by far the most dominant determinants of your long-term financial well-being.
You need a means to evaluate your current sustainable lifecycle consumption rate. VeriPlan provides such a means. VeriPlan projects your wealth and your potential estate in each year through age 100. VeriPlan offers you unprecedented direct control to perform your own automated personal financial planning.
If relative wealth is measured solely as assets currently owned, then financial and investment planning would be relatively simple. VeriPlan, however, takes a broader view. While higher income and more current assets obviously help, the consumption differences between one person or family of similar income and another will determine who builds sufficient assets over time. A person with millions of dollars who spends at very high and unsustainable rates, yet still achieves little life satisfaction in life, arguably is dollar wealthy now. Will he be wealthy in the future, and should we really consider him wealthy now, if he is headed toward financial ruin?
Another person who has lesser dollar wealth now, but who achieves higher satisfaction from more modest expenditures that are sustainable across a lifetime, in fact, may be more “wealthy†now, because his financial trajectory is sustainable. By looking at wealth as a lifecycle pattern of sustainable expenditures within one’s resources, then people who are truly wealthy cannot be identified solely by their current assets. While personal wealth should measure current financial and other salable assets, it should also measure the ability to sustain expenditure rates, build assets, and weather financial crises across a lifetime.
A customer comment from the sidebar: "VeriPlan is a big help. I'm in my mid 50's and have been a diligent saver and passable investor for many years. I am going through a work transition from salaried corporate employee to independent consultant, and my aging parents are needing financial help. Financial planning is particularly important to me and my family now. Thanks for making your product available. I've recommended it to a number of folks and will continue to do so." J.H. in Portland, OR
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "VeriPlan has been a very flexible home financial planning tool. It took me a few hours on a weekend to understand what VeriPlan could do and to enter our financial data. Our family financial affairs were scattered all over, and we lacked a comprehensive picture of what the future might hold for us. I wanted a clear understanding of our projected lifetime and retirement income, expenses, taxes, debts, real estate, financial assets, college investments, retirement investments, and everything else all together." S. L. in Altadena, CA
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "You have done a great job of including the necessary instructions in VeriPlan, located close to where the modeling is happening. The thing I like about the VeriPlan User Guide is that it adds substantial additional commentary that I personally find very valuable. I was hunting for a capable and reasonably priced financial planning package, and VeriPlan is an awesome tool. The more I play around with it, the more valuable I find it. Your free user guide was what made me decide to get VeriPlan." C. A. in North Royalton, OH
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "One of the stories that VeriPlan tells me is how much of my money could be lost to excessive investment costs. I just switched to some lower cost funds in my 401k. I loved updating VeriPlan with the new cost values just to see the red bar on the Total Assets chart get significantly thinner - quite a shocking difference." M. W. in Tulsa, OK
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I am extremely impressed with the depth of information that VeriPlan asks for and provides. VeriPlan seems much more detailed than one would expect for the very reasonable price. Although I am not a financial professional, I consider myself more financially educated than the most people of my age (62). I find that VeriPlan's depth to be just what we need for our retirement planning. I am glad I purchased it. Thanks." J. W. in Gainsville, FL
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I have been very happy with this software. I will put VeriPlan to work to help optimize our IRA to Roth conversions, while avoiding the IRMAA penalties if we can. We are in an opportunistic window for the next several years. I have been appalled by the lack of professional knowledge available with respect to the tax burden that will fall upon us when RMDs take effect. Most of the information I have found suggests that it isn't a problem. Luckily, this software will be of great benefit to chart our course." J. S. in Louisville, KY
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I am a recently retired engineer, and I created a cash flow Excel spreadsheet for 25 years of retirement. So, I fully appreciate the data and potential variances that must be accounted for. Yet, mine is so very simple compared to VeriPlan. I love VeriPlan's concept of total control over inputs and parameters. Veriplan's objectives are very much like mine, but it has many, many more input and control options, and the price is spot on." L. G. in Southbridge, VA
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I've been using VeriPlan for a few weeks now, and it is everything I was looking for plus a whole lot more of what I didn't even know I needed. By simply switching VeriPlan to a state that does not have a state income tax, I can see how much I could save on traditional IRA distributions in retirement by moving to a state without income taxes. It is a real education in personal finance, and I think just about everyone would benefit from using this tool." T. H. in Silicon Valley CA
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Your intention to meet all expenses and debts across your lifecycle should influence your current financial behaviors and your current financial plan. You should consume and save across your lifecycle in a balanced and conservative manner. Since the future offers neither guarantees nor any predictability, you must further restrict current consumption to build substantial assets that can provide buffers for times of future difficulty, to fund your retirement, and to provide for an estate, if desired. You need a means to evaluate your current sustainable lifecycle consumption rate.
VeriPlan provides such a means. While most people tend not to save enough, VeriPlan is not a “you must always save more†projection engine. VeriPlan projects your wealth and therefore your potential estate in each year through age 100. You can adjust your projection assumptions and decide about the balance you wish to set between your current expenditures and your projected estate (or lack thereof) in the future. The small minority of people who already save significant amounts and/or who already have substantial assets can use VeriPlan to help decide when they are comfortable with increasing their current consumption.
Most people, who want a forward-looking lifecycle financial planning toolkit like VeriPlan, already use one of the many available methods for current budget tracking. VeriPlan does not require you to adopt yet another personal budgeting system. With a few adjustments, you can use the output of your current budgeting system to determine your baseline of expenditures for VeriPlan’s projections.
A customer comment from the sidebar: "VeriPlan's financial projection graphics simply lay out what the future might hold for my family. Also, VeriPlan is a very fast and automated financial investment calculator that allows me to change anything and to test alternate investment decisions rapidly. Its integrated documentation explains clearly how it works, and it also includes a wealth of well-researched personal finance and investment information that has been very helpful." T. F. in Muncie, IN
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I do most of my own financial modeling, and I like the way VeriPlan generates “what if” scenarios that I like to compare, such as possibly buying a rental property, selling my house and renting, moving social security retirement age payment timing, and pulling out IRA money after taxes. Plus, I like VeriPlan for its automated projection of detailed investment costs. Thanks for making a great product." K. W. in Naperville, IL
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I am 10 years out from retirement, and I needed to start thinking more seriously about having enough to retire on. I'm following the suggestions of you and others in opting for more hands-on retirement planning. I am also using lower cost index investing. There are too many wealth management companies out there, all ready to charge an arm and leg for what should be straightforward financial planning work." G. B. in Smith Mountain Lake, VA
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "Larry, Hello again! I've continued to work with VeriPlan, and the more I work with it the more I'm amazed at how much it does. It's an incredible decision support tool for my financial planning. Since I have already built a model of my lifetime finances, it is easy to test new ideas as they come to me. Thanks again." M. W. R. in Austin, TX
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A customer comment from the sidebar: "I first learned about the zero federal taxes on long term capital gains when under the 25% marginal income tax rate from working with VeriPlan a number of years ago. I’m no longer working but not yet receiving RMD’s or social security so my ordinary income is relatively low. So I’ve been taking full advantage of zero federal capital gains taxes by selling off my high expense ratio mutual funds which have a lot of capital gains built in since I’ve held them a long time and then I reinvest them in index mutual funds which don’t generate as much capital gains distributions. So the education that you and VeriPlan provide has saved me thousands in taxes, not to mention the expenses on high cost mutual funds. Thanks again." M. D. in El Paso, TX
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Because the future is completely unpredictable, your ability to modify VeriPlan’s assumptions over time can help you to adjust as the financial world around you changes. You can change any value in VeriPlan and instantly develop a new projection. VeriPlan allows you to update all assumptions, such as tax rates, personal asset values, asset allocations, and asset growth rates. VeriPlan is also a tool that can evolve as your life evolves. VeriPlan is always ready for your next update, unlike paper plans that will increasingly grow obsolete, as time passes.
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