How to use Our Excel-based financial planning spreadsheets.

Download a Word doc showing what the asset class colors should look like. If they don't look like this on your computer, then blame Bill Gates at Microsoft for never fixing this that and the other. They can be easily set back to what they should be when you buy the program

A site with tons of Excel help: http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/index.htm

Most of the money calculators on this site were written in Microsoft Excel ' 2002. So they will work on most old computers, and all new ones.

If you have Excel 2007, the first thing you want to do when you open the workbook is to save it in the new format. For all spreadsheets but RP, both RWRs, and both College programs, save as xlsx. For RP, both RWRs, and both college programs, save as xlxm, and if the Security Center asks what to do about the Monte Carlo macros, click “Enable the Content.”

We recommend getting Excel 2007. You can get it in the Student suite that has Word and PowerPoint for ~$199. Everything is better, but they did move everything around, so it is annoying to learn where stuff is over again.

This investment software will not run using MS Works.

If you have a Mac, are using QuattroPro, OpenSource, Lotus 123, or any other non-standard platform, and want to know if these financial tools will work - follow the directions in the red text on most all of the product pages for downloading the free non-functional demo programs.

If you can download, open, and look at a spreadsheet demo, then you'll be able to use these financial planner programs. All you'll be able to do is look at the demo spreadsheets, as the formulas are stripped out and they are password protected.

Most of the money calculators will not download into PDAs, because they have password protection on the calculation sheets.

The Very Basics of Excel

Rows go left to right, and columns go up and down. The intersection of a row and column is called a cell. Cells are where you enter data or formulas. The current cell you're "on" is shown on the top left of your screen, under the menus.

When you open a new Workbook, it will go to the top left cell, and will display "A1." This is the cell in row #1 in column A.

How to switch between open workbooks in Excel: Press Control Tab. For some reason, this does not work in MS Word.

When you open a spreadsheet, the whole spreadsheet is called a workbook. Each workbook/spreadsheet can have many sheets within the spreadsheet. Look at the bottom left and click on the sheets tab names to go to each sheet. If nothing is there, go to Tools, Options, and click Sheet Tabs.

All input areas, where you input data into the programs, are shaded green. Anything that is yellow on a non-presentation sheet is not an input cell, and you probably won't be able to input anything into it (depending on the program).

Passwords are not required for unprotecting presentation sheets. If you're inputting/typing in a cell, and the password protection dialog box comes up, go to Tools, Protection, Unprotect Sheet (or Review in Excel 2007). If it unprotected, then a password wasn't needed. If it asks for a password, then you're stuck, because they are not given out to anyone for any reason. When you're done, re-protect the sheet. Protection is to prevent accidents from destroying formulas and to prevent copying/reverse engineering of the software.

If you don't like what shows or prints on the very bottom of the page, this is probably the Footer. These are not protected, and you can change them by going to View, Header and Footer.

If you're inputting data, and strange things keep happening before you finish typing something, you probably are battling "AutoComplete." This is where Excel takes the first character you type, and then tries to help you by remembering what you used last with the same first letter(s), then it completes it all for you. This is used when people are doing the same thing many times. Most of the time, this is just annoying. To turn it off, do this: Tools, Options, and then ensure that "Enable AutoComplete for cell values" is not checked.

Another tip is to use Excel's "Freeze Panes" function. This will freeze the inside of the workbook on the selected column and row, so you can scroll around and see other parts of the sheet, but still be able to see the titles, dates, and the main parts of the sheet. To turn this off, go to Window, Unfreeze Panes. To turn it on, first put your cursor on a cell where you want to see what's both above and to the left all the time when you scroll. Go to Window, Freeze Panes. Then scroll around to see what it did. More than likely you didn't get it right the first time, so you'll have to try again. Just try again.

The biggest tip of all is Excel's built-in "Goal Seek" function. With this, you can do any and all of the "what if" and "Goal Seeking" functions that any other financial planning software can do, plus dozens more that they can't do. An excerpt copied from the retirement software page:

You can use Excel's built-in "Goal Seek" function to do your "What-ifs," which is something that no other retirement planning software can do. For example, just click on cell B35 of the Assumptions and Additional Need sheet, then go to Tools, Goal Seek, Change the "To value:" field to zero, then click on the bottom field, then on any other input cell that will help make the retirement plan reach the goals better (like a rate of return input field of an asset sheet).

Click OK, and Excel will automatically increase rate of return until the amount of more money needed shown in cell B35 goes to zero. Then you'll know what the rate of return you'd need to get to reach your retirement goals, assuming all other input stayed the same.

With this feature, you can do all of the "What If?" and "Goal Seeking" functions that any other retirement software can do, plus dozens more that they can't do (because it's not written in MS Excel). You can use both any result cell with any input cell with Goal Seek. For example, if you wanted to Goal Seek to determine what the Social Security inflation rate needs to be to only fund retirement through the wife's age of 70, with $100,000 left over, you can do that.

Just click on cell R38 on the Annual Summary Numbers sheet (see demo), open Goal Seek, input $100,000 into the middle field, go to the bottom field, click on cell E13 of the Summing & Input sheet, click OK, and Excel will increase the Social Security inflation rate in cell E13 until there is no more money needed to fund retirement at the wife's age 70, and $100,000 left over. You're going to get a crazy number like 75%, but you can do this, and any other crazy thing you can think of. You can use any of the dozens of input/result fields as the key variables in reaching your retirement goals.

To use these Excel-based money calculators, the user should be already proficient in:

· Knowing what sheet tabs are (the things at the bottom left of the workbook telling where stuff is) and moving around from sheet to sheet within the same workbook.

· Opening workbooks (spreadsheets).

· Saving workbooks with different names and folders (directories) using the Save As... command.

· Moving around from cell to cell.

· Knowing what a cell is, and how to locate and enter information into cells (press F5 and then enter the cell address to go directly to a certain cell).

· Knowing how to copy (*C) and paste (*V) data from one place to another.

· Changing the view magnification to make sheets look right on your monitor.

· Changing the size, inserting, deleting, hiding, and unhiding columns and rows.

· Tinkering with page setup margins, and row and column sizes, to format sheets to print right on your printer.

· And be able to deal with simple formulas, like =sum(b1:b10), and know that this will add the contents of all of the cells from B1 to B10.

Users should familiarize themselves with the basics of using Excel before purchasing these financial tools.

Some money calculators also assume the user has basic knowledge in TVM (Time Value of Money) concepts, and basic principles of investments (e.g., why you wouldn’t enter a municipal bond as producing taxable income into an IRA, etc.). There are short explanations of TVM parameters on the financial calc pages.

Please try to find the answers to Windows, MS Office, Word, and Excel questions yourself before calling or e-mailing.

Generic Tips

Tips for saving financial planning client computer work are here. Basic personal computer tips are here.

Basic input concept for most all of these Excel spreadsheets: Input your data into the green-shaded cells of the input sheets (usually grouped in the middle of the workbook). This will flow through the calculation sheets, on the right side of the workbook. This will populate the presentation sheets (usually grouped in the left of the workbook), where you look at the results.

Then you fix mistakes, repeat, format, print.

If a cell is not colored green, then it's not an input cell, so you won't be able to do anything with it (if it's not a presentation sheet). If you could, then you may end up damaging the spreadsheet.

Delete all of the sample input (everything in green-shaded cells) before inputting your data.

After manually setting the amount of decimal places that Excel rounds numbers to when it displays them, it still uses up to 21 decimal places in the calculations. So don't worry that it's only using the first decimal place in its calculations.

If you're an investing consumer (not a professional financial planner working with clients), then when you read "client, prospect, or they" just think "you." You would be both the advisor and the client (or spouse).

Since Y2K, Excel has had a hard time parsing years correctly. So if you input 6/30/10, Excel may think it's 6/30/1910. So instead, always input dates with the whole year types out, like this: 6/30/2010.

Read about financial planning software integration (sharing data between modules)

For Financial Professionals: How to E-mail Financial Plan Reports to Clients without Sending Working Programs

You probably don't want to e-mail working programs (Excel spreadsheets) to your clients because then they won't need to hire you to do the work anymore, the files are too big, and that's not something we support.

There are several ways to e-mail finished reports to clients without sending the working programs.

· You can use a PDF file maker. Once you have a program that prints to a PDF file (not easy to come by unless you can get Adobe to work, and want to deal with its constant annoying updating process and littering its stuff all everywhere), it's as easy as selecting a printer when you click Print...

You basically choose to print to the PDF file maker program. So you'd print all of the presentation pages, and then name and save the PDF file when closing. Then you e-mail the PDF file to the client. Then they open it with their PDF Reader, which most computers have when it's new.

So first you'll need to get a PDF file making program. The first thing people think about here is Adobe. The problem with that is Adobe is one of those corporations that think once you install and use their software, they own your computer. So it's going to take over your computer, put their files and folders in hundreds of places on your hard drive, it installs an automatic update program that's always stealing your bandwidth by going online to their website for updates (Updater5), and who knows what else. We found all of this to be way too annoying deal with.

Plus, when we tried to download the free trial version of Adobe 7 in 2006 to evaluate it for purchase, it not only took over the computer, but it locked it up so bad that the reset button had to be pushed. So we do a little as possible with anything from Adobe anymore.

After much tedious and dead-end searching for a simple free PDF file maker, we used BroadGun PDF. It works with minimal annoyance, and didn't try to take over the computer.

Just be aware that when you search for free PDF makers, a lot of scam sites will say they have a free program; but their program won't work, will load Spyware onto your computer, then they'll be sending you spam, and who knows what else. The majority of sites will do everything they can, except allow you to download a program that actually works.

· The next method is to insert screen prints into a Word document.

In Excel, with the program up and ready to go, get the finished results to display on your monitor. Then press the Print Screen key. This copies what's on your monitor to the Windows Clipboard. Then you go to a new blank document in MS Word, and paste (Control V).

We like to first format the doc without margins and in landscape. This works a lot better if you do it before the first paste.

What's on your monitor pastes as an image into the Word doc.

Then go to Insert, Break, Page Break so the images don't pile up on one another, and repeat until all of the results are in one document,. Then you e-mail the document to the client.

This works great, but the image has what's on your monitor, which includes the frame of Excel. Try it and see.

· The next thing to do is to make a new spreadsheet and paste all of the results into it, then send that.

When you have the finished version of the program all done, go to cell A1.

Then open up a new spreadsheet (Control N). Go to cell A1. Name it something relevant to the client, like Smith's Retirement Plan.

Then go back to the program, and the sheet with the results you want to send.

Press Control A, to select the whole sheet. Then press Control C to copy everything to the clipboard. Then go to the new workbook. Don't paste here! You'll need to use the Paste Special function. So either right click in the blank sheet and then choose Paste Special, then click on Values, then OK. Or go to the Edit menu and do the same.

After you paste just the values, you'll also have to repeat the process, but this time choose, Formats.

The point is that you want to Paste Special, Values only so just the results paste, and not the formulas. If you paste formulas, then they won't work on the client's computer (because the formulas will be referencing the program's spreadsheet, which is on your computer).

Just the results will paste, so then you can e-mail the spreadsheet.

· This next method strips all of the guts out of the program, so you can just send the results. It's similar to the method above, but some find it to be more work.

When you have your work done, save the spreadsheet. Now save it again using a different file name so you won't alter the working version.

Go to the results sheet(s) you want to send. Go to cell A1.

Press Control A, to select the whole sheet. Then press Control C to copy everything to the clipboard.

Use the Paste Special function. Right click in the sheet and then choose Paste Special, then click on Values, then OK. Or go to the Edit menu and do the same. This deleted all of the formulas and replaced them with just the results.

Do that for all of the result sheets you want to send.

Now right click on the sheet tabs one at a time, for all of the input, calculation, and result sheets you don't want to send. Click Delete. This will delete the whole sheet from the workbook.

If you did it right, then all of the working parts of the programs have been deleted, and the result sheets didn't change because they don't have any formulas that refer to the deleted sheets.

Save and e-mail.

Preparing to Prepare to Create and Present a Financial Plan

I've seen dozens of financial planners fail and leave the business just because they failed to grasp the basic concept of this one tip:

This is a good point to mention the tip that makes reading this page all worth it. If you're making financial plans and/or similar reports for clients, or employ a case writer that does, then make a sign and hang up over your phone that says: "Never ever call to make an appointment with a client to come into the office to get their plan/report until AFTER ALL of the work is done, and has been checked (preferably by someone else) more than once!" Also, put the same sign in the office you have client meetings in - this is because this blunder occurs most of the time at the end of a client meeting.

Sales managers are always saying, "Don't end an appointment unless you have the next one booked." Never ever do that. How hard is it to call someone for an appointment that's expecting you to call anyway? Sales managers are just afraid that you suck so bad that the client will back out if you don't "seal the deal now" and/or ABC (always be closing). In reality, if you suck, then the client will blow you off regardless of when you set appointments. Whether you have an appointment set now, or plan to call for one in a few days AFTER you've made the plan, is irrelevant to when the client will blow you off. So, telling people you want to make sure the plan is good before you make the appointment will actually help not to get blown off, because it makes you look more responsible (especially to old seasoned investors that have experienced planners that can't even control their own workloads and schedules in the past. They know instant replay when they hear it).

If you're been around the block as many times as we have, then you know about all of the dozens of things that come up to completely ruin meetings when financial plans are not done, have mistakes in them, you don't have all of the client data needed (taking notes on a yellow pad and lack of using proper Fact Finders is usually the culprit here), or you don't know what the hey the plan is telling you (so you can't explain it well), you just bought the needed personal finance software yesterday and haven't even read the directions yet, etc. etc. etc.

If it wasn't for the severity of the consequences, it was comical to watch planners running around like a chicken with their heads cut off because of their inability to plan even their own schedules (and you want to charge me what to make a financial plan when you can't even plan your own day out right!?). But it's not comical if you're a case writer in an office full of these kinds of planners. Your case writers hate you because of this, so this is your wake up call to change. You'll see much higher quality work from your staff, and much less tension and ill will, and less turnover, once you've started to behave yourself when it comes to appointment setting. This brings up an old saying, "Lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Doing it the bad way creates an environment of constant crisis.

All of that "dead time" you fear is best used to review the plan, do more research, read the financial software's directions (or do a better job shopping if you don't already have something), ensure you don't need to ask the client if anymore data is needed, having a partner look the plan over to see if it's correct, learn how to present the plan, looking over all of the details and preparing answers to questions and objections, and then arranging all of the paperwork just in case the plan goes well and you have to engage/sell product. Once you've done this a few times, you'll see that just the amount of this kind of work is probably enough to have to reschedule as it is (and then you haven't even done the work yet? And you haven't even bought the software tools to do the job yet either!?).

If you misbehave by scheduling the appointment before the work is done (or even worse, even before you have a clue about what financial software to buy to do the job), then you'll be spending 200% of this time scrambling just to have anything ready by the time they come in. Then the plan will probably suck because of all of this. Even if the plan doesn't suck, all you have to do is appear to be fumbling when you present it to make someone want to "think about it" rather than executing. If you don't practice, then you're going to fumble. Then you'll lose the client, and all of the work, time, and money you put into it is wasted.

Usually, one's lack of preparation leads to working all night to get a report done before a meeting. Then the deal will be lost because you'll sound half asleep, and the clients may assume you're a broken alcoholic or something. All it takes is one little thing like this, and the client will think you're incompetent and will not hire you. We've seen every cause and effect combination and permutation with this, so take this advice to heart.

We get calls and sales every week from planners scrambling to get a report done before meetings the next day. To make a very long story very short, just never do this. The way to never ever fall into this fatal trap is to just follow one simple rule: "Never ever call to make an appointment with a client to come into the office to get their plan/report until AFTER ALL of the work is done, and has been checked (preferably by someone else) more than once!"

The correct way to do this is very simple: You collect the needed data in the meeting, and then you say that you'll call to schedule the appointment AFTER you've input the data into the financial software, and then looked it over to ensure it's correct. Once you're 100% sure it's all good to go, THEN you'll call to set up the appointment to present it. As you'll see, even then there are dozens of other snags that only practice will eliminate.

Even when things go the way they should like this, you'll find that most of the time, something will change enough to have to redo the plan again anyway. Usually this happens over what appears to be a minor detail - until you ask the client about it, and then it turns out you've just opened a whole new can of worms - making a plan redo necessary. So this rework will just be added to your 3AM scramble when you misbehave.

It may seem like a bad or counter-intuitive thing to do at the moment, but following this one rule could literally save your life. Doing things the other way could lead to the one fatal mistake that could put a whole series of events into motion, eventually ending your career in the biz (we've seen this about five times so far, so that's why all this is here).

Here's out motto on this for Star Trek fans: Take Scotty. If a job takes an hour, he'll tell the Captain it will take two hours. Then, if there are no snags and it's done in an hour, then he's a miracle worker. If there's a snag, and it takes two hours to do it, then Kirk got what he expected. On the other hand, and this is what most everyone does, if Scotty told the Captain it's only going to take 45 minutes, then there's only a small chance the job will be done on time, earning the Wrath of Kirk. The motto is that it's better to under-promise and over-deliver, than to over-promise and under-deliver. In this business, this goes double. End of rant.

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