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Our Mission Statement Since 1988 when we first started using financial software, and was amazed at how unusable it all was, our mission was to be the industry-leader in helping people control their financial future. This is best done by offering the most functional and affordable financial planning tools, that anyone can use. We offer financial planning software that's accurate, works like things do in the Real World, isn't full of bugs, doesn't have ongoing costs, will always work and will never crash your computer because it's based on MS Excel and Word. Also as an alternative to high-cost, high-risk, and low-return investment portfolios, we offer turnkey-systems for investing consumers to manage their own money, and for professional money managers to manage investments for their clients. We also strive to have the best customer service and try to implement everything people want their financial plan software to do. Our Target Markets ◦ Consumers and investors that want to invest their own money and/or develop their own financial plans. ◦ Financial planners and investment managers that have already graduated to the fee-only or fee-based way of doing business (whether being independent or not). ◦ Financial planners and investment managers that want to give up being tied to a Broker Dealer and FINRA, and graduate to the RIA fee-only or fee-based way of doing business (whether being independent or not). ◦ Independent financial planners and investment managers doing business in a variety of ways. ◦ Financial planners and investment managers with a Broker Dealer that lets their reps do business in ways that are best for clients. ◦ Life insurance brokers that are out to do the best things for their clients. ◦ Consumers and investors that want alternatives to life insurance company products, and American Funds. The main themes of the site and the financial plan software are: ◦ Being able to account for everything that happens to real people in the Real World. This is the only suite of financial plan software that allows you to input and account for ALL of life's details. The devil is in the details, and so this is the only way to beat him. ◦ Being able to control every dollar in every year. This is how you get financial plans that track with what will actually happen many years in the future. ◦ Being transparent enough to enable tracing of all mysteries back their input. When you can't figure out why you obtained a particular result in every other vendor's financial plan software, you're stuck with a mystery and there's nothing you can do about it (even if you call and talk with an expert). ◦ Having total control over the way the "presentation pages" look and feel. These are the results pages that a financial planner would present to their clients. If someone doesn't like they way things look as they are, they can make any change they want. Graphs and text can be resized or moved anywhere, columns and rows can be easily sized/deleted/inserted/hidden, and images or boilerplate text can be copied into it. ◦ We're the only investment software vendor that has a turnkey system for managing money along with a long-term track record of historical returns. No other financial plan software vendor has a system that will create and implement suitable investment portfolios all the way down to recommending actual investments to buy. ◦ We have dozens more of the little tools to do all of the oddball jobs people want and need done. ◦ We also strive to get the facts and truth out about how the industry really works, and how to avoid common traps, abuses, conflicts of interest, and the self-enrichment schemes of the major players. We come down hard on the state of the investment and financial planning industry, the competition, and the status quo. This isn't because we're trying to make more money, but because we're trying to get the information out there in order to be a positive influence to help change things for the better. Most everyone knows things are in terrible shape, and humanity has a lot of work to do to fix the problems in this business. If all of the problems were to be magically fixed, all the corruption and lies were to end, there were no conflicts of interest, everyone was doing business with the clients' best interest at heart, investment recommendations were all made with client suitability in mind instead of what makes the most short-term money; then investors would get the investment portfolio performance they want, need, and expect. Then more people would have confidence in our financial systems, then more people would save and invest, more capital would flow to the most productive places, the country would be stronger and more competitive, interest rates and inflation would be lower, people would have more real jobs, tax revenue would be higher, there would be lower federal budget deficits, people would have more money for education, health care, and retirement, equity markets would be 50% higher; then everyone in this business would be making so much honest money, that there would be no need to do all of the "bad" things people do, have been doing, and will continue to do. This is an insurmountable task, but at least we're trying to help instead of making things worse. MS Works, Macs, PDAs, and Handheld PCs: If you have a Mac, and you can open a demo Word document or Excel spreadsheet, then all of the financial plan software on this site will work on your Mac. There are problems loading these files onto PDAs because of some Microsoft bug when uploading spreadsheets that have protected sheets. If you can download a spreadsheet and look at all of the sheets, then you can use these financial planning calculators. If you tried to download a demo, and it complains about passwords, then you probably don't have MS Excel installed on your computer. If all you have is MS Works, then it won't work. More information about using these Excel-based financial tools is here. Security When Ordering Online: Secure means whatever information you type into the secure web page cannot be transferred to anyone else. This is because it's encrypted. In general, you will know when a web page is secure when the URL shows https:// and not just http:// The "s" stands for secure page. Also, when the page is secure, a padlock icon will be displayed at the bottom of your browser. This is sort of "the law" and there's no way to fake it or get around it. This site is as secure as it gets for doing credit cards online (and PayPal). The bank wouldn't process orders until security met their standards. The bank doesn't even give out your credit card number or information to us. In general, as long as the form you fill out is secure, you can trust using your credit card to buy things from websites. If people complain to MasterCard and Visa about improper use of their card, they'll just yank the merchant out of the system. They're very serious about it, so if an online-merchant takes credit cards online, then it's the same as buying something with your card over the phone. It's even more secure because you're telling someone your information over the phone. Security of your information sent through this application is secure and uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). SSL technology secretly encodes information that is being sent over the Internet between your computer and the bank, helping to ensure that the information remains confidential. After you have submitted your information online, we recommend that you end your browser session before leaving your computer. The use of SSL requires that you have an SSL compatible browser. Currently, Netscape 3.0 or higher, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 or higher, or the latest version of AOL. Privacy Policy Statement: Tools For Money is committed to protecting the security and privacy of your private information. Tools For Money only receives names and e-mail addresses when they are personally sent to one of our e-mail addresses. The information submitted enables us to respond to users inquiries and obtain a measure of user's needs, interests, and ideas for future web site development. Tools For Money respects the privacy of users and visitors and does not share any personally identifiable information with any third parties, does not send unsolicited e-mails, nor any direct marketing materials This site and its investing calculators are 100% clean - meaning it won't put web shortcut icons all over your desktop/browser, alter your computer/favorites/browser, bog down your browser with banner ads/pop-ups, leave cookies/applets on your computer, run any Java/asp/Active-X/cgi scripts, drive you to internet marking sites, or put you on spam lists. It's all just simple MS FrontPage html files, and does not collect information about you in any way. We don't even put your phone number in our database. The only time e-mail is sent is if it has something to do with your order (you'll get an e-mail receipt from the bank and another one fulfilling your order). There's no spam, lists, your data is not sold to others, etc. Everything you do here is totally confidential. Nobody is going to call you or send you postal junk mail either. Refund policy: There are no refunds on anything, sorry. This is because our prices are too low. Next, the programs are modular and comprehensive and integrated. This means people would able to download just the one module they're interested in, and then in minutes be able to get the answers they wanted. Then with hardly any time or work, they'd be all set, and wouldn't need to buy. This is in contrast to comprehensive and integrated financial plan software. The difference is that comprehensive and integrated financial planner software takes ten times more time to learn how to use it, and then you'd have to input ALL of the data to do a comprehensive and integrated financial plan. This could take days just to get a ballpark answer on retirement planning. So this huge investment in time is a barrier for people to hurdle across just to get a simple free answer. Because this is all clearly stated here, both PayPal and credit card companies will not honor your request for a refund or chargeback once delivery of the software has been made either via e-mail or once it's in the postal mail. So it's best to study the product pages, demos, and instruction pages, and then to ask questions, before buying. Programs that offer free trials also make you jump through hoops, like making you give them your contact information, so they can have a salesperson "follow up" and spam you. Then there's a dangerous installation procedure that probably overwrites Windows system files to take over your computer. Then it will do things like add shortcuts to your favorites list and several other things to drive you to their website. Then because it's not modular, it could take days to learn how to get going. Then someone is going to be calling or e-mailing you about buying it (for a lot more money than ours). When you add up all of that time, and then multiply it by what you time is worth, you're going to end up spending more than what our programs cost (and still not get very good answers). This is assuming that you "qualify" for their free demo. Just because they say on their website that you can get a free demo that will be functional during a trial period, doesn't mean that you will qualify to get one. Contact NaviPlan and ask for their free demo with a 30-day fully functional trial period, and see what they say. So there's a trade-off. Nothing is really free. Between the product information page, the directions, and the demos, everything you need to make a decision is on the site. If there is text on the product page that says a program will perform a certain function, then we guarantee that it will perform that function. Between the directions and the demo, you can verify most all functions listed on the product page yourself before you buy. If you want more details on how to perform a certain function, just ask and you'll get a more detailed answer. A new CD will be sent, or another copy e-mailed if something went wrong with the software you bought during delivery. Because people have tried to use glue to reseal CD packages (to copy the files onto their PC and then say they changed their mind while it was in the mail - in order to get what's on the CD for free), once a CD is put in the mail, the purchase has been made (even if it "hasn't been opened"). Warranty and Limitation of Liability: Toolsformoney.com’s sole obligation under any of the warranties set forth shall be to repair or replace any defective operations of the program. In no event will Toolsformoney.com be liable to such customer for any representations or warranties made by other than those stated within. Other than as expressly stated herein, Toolsformoney.com makes no other warranties, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular use. The foregoing shall be the extent of Toolsformoney.com’s liability under this Agreement, regardless of the form in which any legal or equitable action may be brought against Toolsformoney.com and the foregoing shall constitute Licensee’s sole remedies. The foregoing constitutes the entire liability of Toolsformoney.com and sole remedy of licensee with respect to any claim or action based in whole or in part upon patent or copyright infringement. Disclaimer: This financial plan software is designed to allow financial planners, investment managers, other financial services professionals, and investors, to demonstrate and evaluate various financial strategies in order to help achieve their clients', or their own financial goals. There are no guarantees that any of the software will perform this function. The investment choices and services on this site are provided as general information only, and are not intended to provide investment, tax, legal, financial planning, or other advice. This site is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, which may be referred herein. Mutual fund recommendations made are suggestions only, and customers should evaluate the suitability of each fund for their own holdings on their own or seek professional advice. Consult with your financial, legal, or tax advisor with regard to your individual situation. Toolsformoney.com is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, tax, or other professional advice. In no event shall Toolsformoney.com be liable to customers for any damages whatsoever, including lost profits or savings, missed gains, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use, or inability to use, any of the software or information obtained from this website. Financial estimates are generated by using many assumptions made by the program, clients, and the user. No person or software program can predict the future with any degree of certainty. No warranty as to correctness is given and no liability is accepted for any error, or omission, or any loss which may arise from relying upon data generated from reports produced by this program. In no event shall Toolsformoney.com be liable to you or any other party, for any special, consequential or incidental damages suffered by you or such other party as a result of any problems that may arise because of the installation or improper use of this software or presentation of reports produced by this software. All reports generated by this financial software are only rough estimates of many possible future scenarios. Password Protected Sheets: Most of these Excel spreadsheets have input sheets (the middle group of sheets), calculation sheets (far right group of sheets), and presentations sheets (far left group of sheets, that financial planners print and give to clients). On most financial plan calculators, only the presentation sheets are unprotected. Input sheets and calculation sheets are protected to both prevent reverse engineering, and to prevent users from inadvertently overwriting formulas in cells and destroying the program. These will not be unprotected and the passwords will not be given out to anyone for any reason. However, if you need it, some workbooks can be unprotected and sent back to you with unprotected sheets, so you can make new graphs and all that. If you tell us why you want a sheet protected, we'll try to accommodate you if it's a valid request about something a user would want to do. Pre-Sale Referrals: Some people want to talk with current users before they decide to buy. Sorry, but we don't do that. The only time you'll get a software company to give out referrals is when the financial software costs over $1,000. Nobody's going to do that with prices as low as ours. Also, the consulting side of this business is totally confidential. Nobody will ever know who uses us for anything. Licensing / Renewal Updates: Most of these tools are updated constantly as they are used every day in the Real World. Spreadsheet licenses are for one year. After that, it expires, and then updates are available for 50% of the original price. Demos / Downloads: There is a non-functional demo for all Excel spreadsheets except for the Asset Allocation Models, Fact Finders, Client Contract, Marketing Brochures, and the IPS. There are no demos for these because the valuable content is too easy to copy and steal. The demos are non-functional because people would use the programs for an hour to get the answers to their questions, then wouldn't need to buy anything. Qualified financial advisors may be able to get a working program for a limited time if they qualify. If you're using AOL, you may not be able to download things, or get delivery via e-mail. Who knows why. Call AOL and have them walk you through how to do it. That's what you're paying (too much) for. AOL has told people to go to http://winzip.com before to use winzip to decompress the zipped files sent as e-mail attachments. Support: To allow people the most flexibility and choice, there are three prices for most financial planning software. For people that feel they can figure everything out themselves with the directions, the unsupported price will save money. For people that want to be able to call someone for help, there's the full phone and e-mail support. There's also a price for a middle of the road option, which is paying a little more for being able to send questions via e-mail. Please note that support basically means help trying to figure things out that are not already in the directions. Everyone at any level of support is encouraged to report things they feel are not working right with any personal finance software program. Support does not expire. You can tack on more support for the listed price difference. What you can't do is cancel a higher level of support (and get that part refunded). Delivery Times: It takes about three to seven working days to get money tools shipped by regular postal mail. Orders are checked and financial plan software e-mailed out usually the same day. About the (Key)Word Mixing: If you see something like this on the IPS page, "Investment Policy Statements" and then below it "Statement of Investment Policy," it's to have text that search engines can read, so the site will come up when people type in keywords. Rewards for finding mistakes on this site: I f you find any mistakes (dead links, misspelled words, typos, things that are not right, don't make sense, etc.) then you get $5 off of purchases for every one we fix. Consulting Services: Financial planners and investing consumers can get financial plans made with this software, or custom work, done. Read about financial software integration and how to integrate these financial planning software modules. Read about financial planning software FINRA and Broker Dealer compliance. Money calculator software testimonials from customers. The Financial Plan Software Industry: How We Got Here Website, Software, and Developer History We've been doing most of this since February 1988. The site was first published in February 1998 as a curiosity experiment. Other people we knew started selling stuff online in '96, so going with the crowd seemed like the thing to do during the new internet frenzy. The only software product at the time was the RP retirement Planner, which was created in 1995. People bought it, so more products that already existed, like the fact finders and asset allocation software, were added. People bought them; so more products were developed and added. RP evolved into RWR in 1999. In 1978 the software developer, Mike rFulford, enlisted into the Air Force right out of high school and did four years as a B-52/RF-4C avionics computer technician.In 1982, he used his free Air Force Honorable-discharge move, and went to Silicon Valley. He was a technician for the world's second biggest computer maker (at the time the only competition was IBM), repairing enormous mainframes all over the Stanford University campus. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) then went out of business because they didn't see the PC revolution coming (and he warned them in '86 when the 286 came out. They were too slow and late to the game, and never made a popular PC because they were behind the curve at every step). The founder and president, Ken Olson, even said in 1977 , "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." Compaq later bought them, and they basically disappeared. He was right in the middle of the beginning of the PC wars between Microsoft's Bill Gates and Apple's Steve Jobs/Wozniac, drove by buildings daily where everything was happening, knew dozens of people that were on the front-lines of the war, listened to all of the gossip, followed the lawsuits and power struggles, repaired mainframes at Intel that were being used to create the first 286 and 386 chips, and kept up with the daily progress of these historic battles that transformed the world more than sliced bread. There's a great movie with a summary of this fascinating history called "'Pirates of Silicon Valley." He also worked for Microsoft for a few months at the main Redmond, WA campus ten years later. 1983: Advent Professional Portfolio was introduced and was the first portfolio management software to run on PCs. 1985: Morningstar was launched. Originally it was only in hard copy and was intended for the investing public via public libraries. That failed because people weren't willing to pay for it. Then it was marketed to advisors. They started prospering when they offered monthly updates in the mail, which consisted of 10 - 20 floppy disks. It took half an hour to load it onto a 486, but it was the only game in town, so it was worth it. In 1985, he left mainframe field-service and joined a GaAs IC chip lab with the same company. He was the lab tech and helped with chip layout. He worked in the same building as Gene Amdahl's Trilogy project (WSI - wafer-scale integration, where all of the different chips on a computer were to be put on one massive silicon wafer to make it faster by eliminating motherboards). That was great for a while until the whole company started to go under in the late '80s. Because of the recession and the trend toward hiring foreign degreed people over Americans with experience was just getting started, the only jobs for non-degreed electronic engineers in Silicon Valley was doing things like assembling printers for HP. So all of that, coupled with being bored working in what looked like a submarine with no windows or people, made it time for a move. 1986: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 wiped out tax shelters, and the market changed from selling limited partnerships to mutual funds. The world of easy high-commissions for financial planners crumbled. With the lower commissions on mutual funds the only way to get paid, the new world of fee-based services began. 1987: SchwabLink by Schwab's Financial Advisor Services was born. Because of the stock market crash, individual investors started turning to professional advisors for advice. The fee-based model was now a viable alternative, because investment management fees could be deducted directly from client accounts for the first time. In 1988 he left the high-tech chip industry in Silicon Valley, and started in the financial planning business with Waddell & Reed - hard selling mutual funds and insurance (with no money, support, software, help, or tools of any kind). He entered the biz based on the standard "lie," that anyone with ambition could easily make six-figures. Two Waddell & Reed sales managers, the Morales brothers, put ads in the newspaper showing a picture of a smiling single-mom rep saying, "I made $190,000 and I only work part time and six months out of the year!" They were able to recruit several flocks of gullible young people using these techniques. Most immediately "flunked out," either by not being able to pass FINRA Series 6 exam, insurance license, or not being able to make a dime. Some of the first flock (which Mike was a part of) sued the Morales brothers for false advertising, after they quit their day jobs, spent hundreds of hours and thousands dollars getting licensed and taking exams, and then were not able to make a dime. Mike didn't know about the lawsuit for months after it was over, as they kept it all secret from reps that stayed with the program (and were making money). Soon after that came the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which mostly destroyed Santa Cruz, where he was living. Then came the first Iraq war and recession. Then came the S&L driven great Californian real estate crash. So between the quake, outrageous cost of living, everyone in CA thinking that real estate was the ONLY way in the universe to make money, having to spend most of his time making basic financial planning tools like Fact Finders, instead of making phone calls because W&R had NO tools, and being more of a computer nerd than a people-person, Mike didn't make it in sales. So he turned around and used his computer skills to do work for those that wanted to keep trying to survive in the financial planning business. Soon after Mike left Waddell & Reed sales, the Morales brothers were convicted of lying, using false advertising, and other deceptive practices, to recruit reps. They had to pay reparations to the plaintiffs in the amounts totaling what they paid out of pocket to become a FINRA rep. Then FINRA banned them both from the business forever. Shortly after that, FINRA used the case to make standard regulations on banning the use of deceptive practices to recruit new reps. The days of seeing ads in the papers about how easy it is to make six-figures in this biz as a loaded mutual fund and life insurance salesperson were history. So he did financial planner's computer work so they could concentrate on what they do best - manage relationships (sell). He was very disappointed with the state of financial planning software, so he started to make his own. He got hired and fired dozens of times, mostly because of the pathetic state of financial planning software (and computers in general). As he developed more tools for money that worked right, he got hired more and fired less. He liked it, so in 1988 he took the CFP course to learn financial planning. 1990: Morningstar Principia was introduced on CD (back when few people had CD ROM drives on their PC). In 1995 he took the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) program so he could manage investment portfolios. The asset allocation software and investment models were created in 1995, after exposure to the CFA Level I curriculum. In the early '90s, Mike worked for a dozen financial planners using comprehensive and integrated financial plan software called ProPlan (same as the dog food). Even though it was an ancient mid-80s BASIC buggy DOS program, and would be considered primitive and unusable by today's standards, at the time it was far superior than anything else on the market when it came to forecasting people's futures (at the time Financial Profiles was the leader and Morningstar was just being born). So when Ed Morrow's new Text Library and Tracking and Marketing products started selling way more than ProPlan, he decided to abandon ProPlan (instead of moving it from DOS to a Windows platform). This created a vacuum for financial planners that needed comprehensive and integrated financial plan software to forecast people's financial futures. A group of Canadians saw the hole and created NaviPlan. A lot of resources were put into it, and early in the 21st century it was much better than Financial Profiles. 1993: Fidelity entered the RIA market. The NAPFA database was created. In 1995, a firm that wanted to take existing financial planners and put them inside credit unions bought the firm Mike was working for. They thought they could make the big bucks by doing financial planning for their existing credit union members. So the firm was disbanded, and most of the planners went to the credit unions. It turned out most of the credit union members didn't have any money to invest, and just ended wasting all of the planners' time with basic personal finance questions that had nothing to do with making money. The whole thing was so poorly mismanaged, that they ended up failing big time, and so they ended up rarely using Mike's consulting services. Everyone ended up either starting their own fee-based money management practices, or leaving the business. So Mike got a job working for Successful Money Management Seminars (SMMS) as a Research Analyst. He verified numbers used in the seminars, and similar things. They asked him to be the person to beta test the results of their Life Goals financial planning software. So they ran some reports and Mike would comment on everything that was right and wrong. His list of things that were wrong and needed to be changed was so long, that they fired him as soon as they saw where it was going. If they would have listened, they would have had a successful product, and they wouldn't have needed to sell the company (and spin-off Life Goals) at distressed prices. Both SMMS and Life Goals soon slid into oblivion. These days, hardly anybody even remembers them. In 1995, Ed Morrow found out Mike was looking for another job, and asked him to work for him as an unpaid intern. Yeah, right! If he would have came up with enough money to hire him for real, then the history of financial plan software would have been very different. ProPlan would have been so great that it would be the industry's dominant program, instead of today's NaviPlan, which would never have gotten off the ground. Early in the 21st century, a group of life insurance companies fed both NaviPlan and Financial Profiles millions to keep them from going under, with the understanding that in return the software would spit out recommendations much more favorable to the life insurance industry. To this day, old ProPlan users say they wish it had continued to evolve, because it was better than even today's NaviPlan. Because of expensive marketing, kickback deals with Broker Dealers, compliance people being too afraid of their own shadow to approve any financial planner software that their competitors don't approve, and everyone's need to run with the herd, NaviPlan is now what most BDs approve for their reps. In September '06, NaviPlan bought ailing Financial Profiles. In August '07, they made their users upgrade to their new version of Profiles, which costs around $1,200 annually. People that didn't want to upgrade were deliberately abandoned because the old version stopped working, rendering all of the past work of inputting client data useless (so they lost everything with no hope of recovering any data). The anti-trust regulators were again asleep at the wheel or were bought off (just like when Advent Axys bought out TechFy and Blue Streak). The point is that with ProPlan gone, Financial Profiles being so pathetic, and NaviPlan being so expensive and not being able to accurately illustrate people's financial lives or futures (to this day, it still can't even do basic college planning, bond management, real estate, asset allocation, investment management, or retirement plans adequately), there was still a gaping hole in financial plan software. So Tools For Money was started to fill it. Now, it plugs all of these holes better than anything else. But because we pick on Broker Dealer's questionable, illegal, and unethical financial relationships and business practices, they don't want to approve it. So NaviPlan and Financial Profiles is still all that is approved and talked about. Expect that trend to gather steam as they eventually discontinue Financial Profiles. All of these major changes occurred mostly because of just two decisions that just one person made - when Ed Morrow decided to abandon ProPlan in the mid-'90s, and then didn't want to pay Mike even a meager salary to help bring it back to life. If he would have put as much effort into ProPlan as he did into TLS, then today it would be the premier financial planner tools, he'd be way more rich and famous, Financial Profiles would have went under, and NaviPlan and Tools for money would not even have started up. Thanks Ed! Also if SMMS would have promoted Mike into the Life Goals product development team, Life Goals would now be the leading financial planning software system, and again Financial Profiles would have went under, and NaviPlan and Tools for money would not even have started up. Thank you evil Root family! Mike's unique methodology of managing money began in 1995. This was because Morningstar and other vendors started making mutual fund database screening software. After looking at what dozens of other people were doing, it seemed like the most logical way to match investment portfolios to people lives. It was later refined when he took the CFA course. The asset allocation software started in 1996, and the model portfolios started in 1997. It took a few years to realize that the returns were superior to everything everyone else was doing, so the records of past trades were not maintained. In 1998 it became clear that the returns were consistently beating the markets, with lower risk, so the trades began to be recorded. In 1999, everything was in place to link the model portfolio's returns to correctly show historical performance (accounting for past trades and rebalancings). 1996: Merrill Lynch finally caves and offers fee-only relationships to clients. In 1996, Mike did work for a group of financial planners using MasterPlanner software. That was the choice after looking at, and working with, everything on the market since 1988. NaviPlan and Financial Profiles were still too pathetic for this group of detail-oriented CPA planners. MasterPlan's retirement planning module was so pitiful (it couldn't even add up the two main bold retirement plan numbers on the front page right), that just making that one buying decision got him fired in just a couple of months. He should have known because it was still a DOS program (and not even Windows-based) until 2002 (which was five years longer than anyone else). Then in 2008, people say they can't even get their demo to install and work. In 1997 he worked for some Ibbotson Associates Portfolio Strategist software users. It did the job, but was terrible to use. They never fixed their problems even after a decade went by, and so this industry icon sort of went under in early 2006 and had to be bought out by Morningstar. Because that investment software was so hard to do anything financial planners wanted to do for their clients, he got fired again. Around 1998, Mike became a great investment portfolio manager, thanks to asset allocation software he developed, coupled with his unique way of screening mutual funds, what he learned in the CFA program, and a portfolio optimizer program called Wilson's Power Optimizer (which generates the Efficient Frontier). This was fascinating, and led to the refinement of the current Model Portfolios and asset allocation software. After getting it all down, the use of portfolio optimizers was no longer needed (as described here). The returns on the pages linked above says it all, as they are better than the vast majority of rich and famous investment managers with annual budgets in the millions, fully staffed with armies of CFA Charterholders. So in order to keep the next job, and because all of other financial planner software was even more pitiful, he had to make tools that worked right from scratch. Things started going so well as an employee, and all of the other financial and investment software vendors remained so pathetic, that he put all of his other inventions online to see if anyone would buy they. They did, so he added programs one at a time for a few years. In 2001, he quit working for financial planners in person locally because all they wanted to do was whine about how the good old days of making easy money in up markets were gone. When their incomes came down, they started hard-selling life insurance company products (mostly annuities) to make up for their reduced investment-based income. They started wanting way too much work for way too little money, so he quit and concentrated on making this a totally web-based business. Instead of staying with the program, the financial planners started getting into anything that would make them quick easy money, like selling phone booths, abusing C & B-shares, and of course, heavily abusing life insurance company products (mostly annuities). After the firm went under (50+ reps was whittled down to ~5), one by one they started to get sued, lose their licenses, get fined more money than they ever come up with by FINRA, and all of that. If they had kept up with the program, they would have been fine. But instead most went under and declared bankruptcy and moved to Florida, sold their overpriced houses at a loss, divorced their wives, etc. The only ones that survived are the ones that stuck with the program (fee-based money management). Their income went down, but they're still alive, out doing their thing, and don't have to worry about all their indiscretions coming back to ruin their lives. During the "in-between-years" (1991 - 2001) he worked in person for around 150 financial planners and investment managers doing everything you can think of. He collected the data, managed the money, made the trades, ran the reports, dealt with FINRA/BD/SEC compliance, closed multi-million dollar deals, and presented financial plans in person to thousands of prospects and clients of all shapes and sizes. Not having to waste time on management, administration, prospecting, and all that, gave him a unique understanding of what financial software was available on the market, what people want and need financial professionals to do for them, and what they're willing to pay for. Working with all of these people (and going on dozens of job interviews) exposed him to just about every harebrained idea that could be concocted to make money in this biz. So he's been there and done that in most every mode of doing things. In 2003 he voluntarily relinquished being a CFP (Certified Financial Planner) because it was mostly useless to the web-based business; was time consuming, expensive, they didn't approve his CE, put him on spam lists, etc. Amount saved so far: $3,500 and 400 hours of time wasted on their Continuing Education requirements. Amount of revenue and business lost so far: $0. We sent them numerous things saying that someone with this much expertise shouldn't have to waste time and money on CE about the basics of retirement planning every two years, but they ignored it all. We could have been a great resource for them, and tried, but all they wanted to do is quote their rules. Someone from the CFP Board pokes us annually wanting free help and stuff, but we always tell them our story, then they always say, "That's not out department," then they go away. Someday they may get it - they can get lots of freebies to "help humanity" when they reinstate Mike without having to take CE. The details are in the financial planning eBook. Mike has worked in person with dozens of planners and hundreds of clients as a case writer, financial analyst, and investment portfolio manager. Online these numbers are in the thousands. Since 1988, he has run these programs for over 1,000 planners, and over 10,000 clients. He's seen and heard what people want to see in their reports and have made the changes. He's done a little bit of just about everything in this business. What you see here are the tools he made to do his jobs. The reasons for the creating the tools are because most everything else on the market is inadequate, too expensive, too hard to use, too many bugs, is too inflexible, doesn't work like things do in the Real World, and just doesn't do the jobs right. If you want something done right, you just have to do it yourself, so he did, and everything has been just fine ever since. Since 2001, people have suggested making all kinds of tools for money. So we did. Now we pretty much have everything that people want and need. In early 2005, we spent a few months looking at EVERYBODY'S website that has anything to do with tools for money. We visited around 1,500 sites and downloaded and evaluated over 750 downloads. So we know what EVERYBODY else is doing, and what their financial plan software does. From late '05 to mid-'06 we made our financial software have most all of the functions that everyone else's does. So now there's no contest who has the most functionality at the lowest cost. We also put most all free online financial calculators here. Now most everything that's available online for free is also integrated into the Financial Planning Tools product, so you don't have to go online anymore to use them. You can read more about the nature of comprehensive and integrated financial plan software here. Everything is fairly mature now, so it's on to marketing. Thanks for visiting Real World Personal Finance Software! |
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