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gbVisualRetirement
To install, just unzip the contents of the distribution file into a folder of its own! Then create a shortcut to the gbvisualretirement.exe file on the desktop, or where is convenient. To remove gbVisualRetirement just delete the installation folder.
Disclaimer:
Table of Contents
Feature ListgbVisualRetirement provides the following features:
IntroductiongbVisualRetirement is designed to be used by people of all skill levels. It's simple to use yet the analysis it provides is comprehensive enough to support sound pre-retirement and post-retirement financial decisions.There are two types of financial plans supported, Basic and Advanced. The Basic Plan is the easiest approach and uses a minimal set of financial inputs. The Basic Plan is used to provide quick overviews of impact of the factors involved in retirement - giving the user useful information without requiring excessive time to build the results. The Advanced Plan allows entry of a much wider range of financial information. While the output is the same for both plans (net worth graph), the greater level of detail is intended to provide greater assurance of the accuracy of the financial plan results. Wizards are available which walk the user through providing inputs for the Basic and Advanced Financial plans. Wizards utilize default settings, based on user inputs, to speed up the process of creating a financial plan. Once the wizard is complete, the user can manually change the settings to tweak the results. When I retired, analysis similar to that provided by gbVisualRetirement compared favorably (though with much less detail) to the results of the software utilized by my financial advisors. I consider gbVisualRetirement to be an excellent tool to use in getting familiar with retirement planning and especially as a tool to use before sitting down with your own financial advisor!
Financial PlansThere are two financial plans supported by gbVisualRetirement - Basic and Advanced. The Basic and Advanced Financial Plans differ by the detail with which the user can specify settings. Additional details on how user inputs are made for each plan are provided in sections further down this page, but the bottom line is that the user can exercise greater control over the Advanced Financial Plan than can be done with the Basic Financial Plan.For both plans, however, the primary output is a graph showing net worth during pre-retirement and post-retirement years. A financial plan file (*.pln) contains both the Basic and Advanced versions of the financial plans. The two plans can be modified independently of one another, but both are saved when the toolbar Save option is chosen.
Net Worth GraphA typical retirement plan includes a pre-retirement period of time in which money is saved for retirement, followed by a post-retirement period in which savings are used to cover post-retirement expenses.The primary output of gbVisualRetirement is a graph which shows the user's net worth throughout pre-retirement (in green) and post-retirement (in red) through the age of 100.
Automatic Adjustments The graph draws a bar for each age, but if the chart is sized too small for all ages to be shown without overlapping one another, the chart automatically skips printing of ages to ensure that printed ages can be read. By default, the vertical chart values are sized so that the maximum net worth fits within the dimensions of the chart, ensuring that the graph is as large as possible. The maximum vertical axis value (net worth) can also be fixed, which may be less confusing than a chart whose maximum value shifts with changes in the input values or as the user resizes the main window.
Graph Content The chart can optionally include 4 annotations - NW@retirement, year@zero net worth, rate at which net worth is reduced during retirement and a pie chart of the principal and interest accrued during pre-retirement. A toolbar button is available to toggle display of annotations and menus are provided to fine tune which annotation elements are shown. The rate of reduction may optionally be replaced with the calendar year.
Basic Financial PlanThe Basic and Advanced Financial Plans differ by the detail with which the user can specify settings. Both, however, provide a graph showing net worth during pre-retirement and post-retirement years.
User Inputs
Each of these setting values can be selected from dropdown lists. The wheel mouse may be used to move quickly through the values available to each setting. Just select one of the setting with the mouse, then use the wheel mouse to scroll up or down through the dropdown list. If you have manually entered a value that is not in the dropdown list, gbVisualRetirement will detect the appropriate next value to display when the wheel mouse is used. Settings may also be manually typed into the fields. This allows entry of a value other than one found in the dropdown list. After typing in a value, pressing ENTER will update the financial graph. Next are some comments about the pre-retirement inputs needed by the Basic Financial Model.
Retirement Inputs
Intermediate Calculations
(click on the image to see a full size, readable version) A user may occasionally want to review the intermediate values for each year to determine what then-year values have been used by the plan.
Advanced Financial PlanThe Advanced Financial Plan uses a completely different approach to specify the user inputs, as shown in the following image.
Here's a close up image of just the Advanced Financial Plan input section:
The Advanced Financial Plan allows up to 100 lines of input, where each line consists of a description and the age at which the additional (optional) 10 inputs on the line become effective. Here's a description of the parameters found on each input line. One or more input values can be assigned to any input line.
The Advanced Financial Plan input lines can be placed in any order. gbVisualRetirement always sorts the lines by age before using them to generate results.
Persistent Inputs
Desc Age Int% Current Age 30 5.0 Retirement 65 4.0 The interest rate of 5.0 applies for years 30-64. The interest rate of 4.0 applies for years 65-100 (100 is the maximum year of both the Basic and Advanced retirement plans).
Yearly Inputs
Required Input Lines A second line must have the description of "Retire" or "Retirement". The Age on that line is considered to be the retirement age of the Advanced Financial Plan.
Toolbar for Advanced Financial Plan Inputs
Many of the toolbar functions are also conveniently available via the plan context menu.
Intermediate Calculations
(click on the image to see a full size, readable version) A user may occasionally want to review the intermediate values for each year to determine what then-year values have been used by the plan. In the Intermediate Calculations you'll see headers which start with nm, ny, tm and ty. These are just shortcuts for "Now Monthly", "Now Yearly", "Then Monthly", "Then Yearly". The shortcuts are used just to keep the header widths to a minimum.
Main ToolbarMany gbVisualRetirement features and settings are accessed through the toolbar, as discussed in the following paragraphs.
Basic Input WizardgbVisualRetirement provides a built-in Wizard which can walk users through providing the inputs needed for a Basic Financial Model. Just click the "Wizard" button on the main toolbar to start the Wizard.
The Basic Wizard walks the user through the necessary inputs in just 5 questions.
Advanced Input WizardgbVisualRetirement provides a built-in Wizard which can walk users through providing the inputs needed for an Advanced Financial Model. Just click the "Wizard" button on the main toolbar to start the Wizard.
The Advanced Wizard walks the user through the necessary inputs in just 10 questions.
Wizard AssumptionsThis section documents the settings used by the Wizards, in response to user inputs. In particular, the primary input from the user is the "Risk" level, which I've listed as 'Conservative', 'Typical' and 'Best Case'. That choice affect the interest/inflation rates, savings amount, and expenses that are used in the financial model, as shown in this table:
Notes: Another question is how much monthly income does the user make. The Savings percentages in the table are applied to that value to determine pre-retirement savings. Post-retirement expenses are estimated as a percentage of the pre-retirement expenses. Finally, post-retirement alternate expenses (those which use a higher inflation value) are estimated as a percentage of the post-retirement expenses.
Keyboard ShortcutsThe following key combinations are available to the user to access gbVisualRetirement features:
Other CommentsComments and suggestions are welcome!
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gbVisualRetirement is a free retirement planning tool which makes it very simple to
create a financial plan in just minutes. Wizards are available to help guide the user
through the steps of creating a basic or advanced financial plan, covering both pre-retirement
and post-retirement. Beginners and more experienced users will find
gbVisualRetirement easy to understand and use, but also very powerful in how
quickly it can be used to examine financial options. Financial plans are generated
in real time in response to user changes.
