After months of effort, I have been able to recreate most of the software previously available on this site. The new direction for the company is to offer not just the Model Portfolios, Asset Management and Retirement Income Strategies to Do-It-Yourselfers and Advisors alike, but to make the software available once again.

One challenge facing us was how to edit this site and its massive content. That process will take some time. In the meantime, I am available to answer questions and provide feedback by email at support@toolsformoney.com.

Additionally, if you stumble across a link that isn't working or provides conflicting data, or you see other issues with the site please send and email to support@toolsformoney.com. Your input is much appreciated.

I invite you to explore this site and its content. There is a massive amount of Real World information contained in these pages. Many of our customers find answers and gain insight into their own situations simply by reading the pages here. Michael had always shared his experience willingly and I will do everything I can to allow his words of wisdom to continue on.

Please do not order or pay for anything on this site without FIRST contacting me directly at support@toolsformoney.com.

Please visit our What's New page where I will provide updates, a new price list and new information as it become available.

Thank you,

Stephen Bossio

For Advisors:

First learn about the financial services industry,

• then decide what type of financial advisor you want to be,

• then learn how to become an adequate salesperson,

• then how to find people to talk to, and get them to come into your office,

• then what to say and do when they're open to your products and services,

• then how to Fact Find to both "get to know your client" and gather the data needed for input into financial plan software,

• then how to make robust financial plans,

• then how to present their financial planning reports to them,

• then how to logically and efficiently manage their money to both minimize risk while maintaining returns,

• and then how to analyze investment portfolios to see if they're actually behaving like they should.

• With almost everything in between too (AKA practice management).

Non-advisors:

Consumers and Investors can also use this information to "Do It Themselves" (AKA DIY), so they won't have to go through all of the above, while saving all of the time, work, risk, and money financial advisors charge.

So it's best to think about the financial jobs you need done and explore the information here, then contact an advisor for clarrification and assistance where needed. There are also links to free software and information skattered throught-out the site. Links to much of those are in the left hand column of this page.

Professional financial planners and investment managers working with individual clients: This site offers a large part of the software your financial planning practice needs. These money tools were created by folks that actually live and work in your world, not by folks living in an academic ivory tower that have never met and listened to an actual paying client in person. We've personally made financial plans and managed money for thousands of people in the Real World, so we know what you want, need, and we feel all of your ever-changing daily frustrations. See samples of what you'd get by downloading the free sample financial plan. The point of selling these financial tools, is for you to run financial plan and investment reports for your prospects and clients.

Consumers and do-it-yourself investors: Do it all yourself, and make better financial plans than you'd get by hiring a sophisticated and expensive financial planner. Also you can create your own custom investment portfolios, for a fraction of the cost. There are detailed instructions for all financial planning software, so anyone with basic Microsoft Excel experience can use them.

Because the financial software is Excel-based, you can use its built-in Goal Seek function to perform all What-if scenarios that all other financial plan software can do, plus much more.

If the site is hard to navigate, then you're probably trying to find a page meant for another audience. If so, then it's easiest to use the site map.

You can also press Control-F on any page, and then input the text you're interested in (e.g., retirement), and it may go to that page's link. Also, using a search engine like this helps too - input with the quotes: toolsformoney.com "what you are searching for"

This is the Tools for Money home page
"Control-D" adds it into your Favorites

What's New and Coming Next?

Brief Financial Planning Software Descriptions

Featuring Our Flagship Product:

Fully-Integrated Suite of Financial Planning Software: The Dual RWR retirement software, budget & cash flow projector, net worth projector, multiple-student college planner, life insurance needs software, and comprehensive asset allocation software are all hard-wired together for complete integration, just like the major competitors.

This allows the creation of full-blown financial plans with minimal duplication of input, similar user-friendliness, and complete control of most everything, including draw-downs, what-ifs, and printing reports. The IFP excels in functionality, power, control, flexibility, accuracy, logic, transparency, reports, and asset draw-down analysis calculators.

Goals-only Financial Planners: Created to restore sanity, accurate numbers, and truth in financial goals planning. It's the MoneyGuidePro alternative, because it will (eventually) give you all of their features and functions, for 1/100th of their price.

Retirement Planning Software: RWR is very powerful, flexible, and accurate retirement planning software. Create a retirement plan with the power to simulate any Real World scenario. It's the same as doing a "mini-financial plan" because it will take college expenses, unequal cash flows, and everything that happens in the Real World into account.

This retirement savings software is for projecting detailed goals, incomes, expenses, and investment values before and after retirement, to estimate when your money may run out. It works great using the "bucket approach" to set up asset accounts according to how they pay out, so you can deplete one investment bucket before tapping another (e.g., non-qualified before qualified), and perform all of the retirement strategies you're used to.

This is the cost-saving solution if you're frustrated with other vendors' lack of functionality, detail, flexibility, power, control, accuracy, and forecasting ability. With RWR, you'll have total control of every dollar in every year, all of the variables, how everything flows, and printing reports.

Dual RWR is the professional version, and has the most extensive draw-down analysis function available.

Retirement Planner: RP is a basic and inexpensive retirement planning calculator that lets you quickly and easily run retirement projections. Even though RP is simple, it's still capable of performing adequate retirement projections and analyses.

Simple Retirement Planner: SRP is a scaled-down version of RP.

401(k) Calculator: A comprehensive retirement calculator for forecasting 401k, 403b, and similar captive retirement plan accounts in great detail.

This will help you understand many "financial myths" that have been propagating erroneously for decades.

Learn how to choose a financial planner and/or money manager, and then if you should fire them to avoid their high costs and shenanigans. Then you'll learn the basics of how to manage your own money.

If you're new to the financial businesses, or are thinking about getting in, this investment e-book could literally save your life. Learn what these businesses are really all about, from an insider's point of view, so you can make informed decisions about your career and financial future. Learn how the industry is organized, motivated, and how to navigate it to help make it work in your favor.

Comprehensive Asset Allocation Software: Investment software for do-it-yourself investors and financial advisors working with high-net worth clients. Use this turnkey asset allocation software to calculate, compare, and implement, the mix of asset classes / investments you feel is best for yourself or your clients. It treats all of one's investments in one pie, like they should be in the Real World; so you can control, evaluate, discuss, and implement the whole scenario without leaving anything out.

Get total control over asset allocation (and every dollar, and printing) instead of being locked into what a software company thinks you should do. Input contributions / withdrawals, and return assumptions for each investment (or asset class), and then see 75-years of estimated growth for all of the Current vs. Proposed allocation mixes.

Calculate the usual portfolio statistics, like correlation coefficients between two investments, Beta, Alpha (Jensen), R-squared, Treynor Ratio, and Sharpe Ratios.

Investment Model Portfolios: Turnkey money management system for small investors that will help take you from nothing to making trades with mutual fund ticker symbols, just by following the directions. Build and maintain your own long-term, low transaction, easy to understand, reduced risk, well-diversified and allocated investment portfolio that matches your investment risk-tolerance. There is a track record since 1/1/99 accounting for fees, rebalancings, and fund changes.

Financial advisors: This is a basic marketing must if you practice asset allocation, use portfolio models, or want to start. Everything is updated monthly.

Mutual Fund and ETF Picks (Open-end mutual fund screening): These are the actual recommended mutual funds selected for 22 asset classes used with the above-mentioned asset allocator tools. Everything is updated monthly for professional money managers and do-it-yourself investors.

Read enlightening text and get free helpful advice and tips on mutual funds, picking mutual funds, and mutual fund screening.

Free Money eBook: An "uncensored" how-to money e-book to enlighten you about the mysteries of the financial services, financial planning, estate planning, insurance, banking, and investment industries.

Investment Portfolio Benchmarking Software: Now anyone with data can perform their own detailed investment portfolio benchmarking analysis.

Financial Planning Fact Finders: These are not for consumers. Just edit, print, and give to clients or prospects, and it comes back filled out so you can know them well, and then manually input their data into financial plan software. If your clients are computer literate, then they can follow simple directions and you can get them back and forth via e-mail.

You can edit them any way you want to fit your practice. They are refined continually to qualify, and get all of the important information needed for basic to advanced financial planning and investment management, and also for input into the highest level of any comprehensive financial planning software.

They're also great for staying out of trouble and keeping BD compliance people happy, because you'll have what they told you they wanted - their life's goals, suitability and risk tolerance all covered, printed, and on record in their files.

Investment Policy Statement Template (IPS): Not for consumers, but a must-have for any investment portfolio manager working with individual clients.

Forget fancy-shmancy, hard-to-use, full of bugs and meaningless details, and way too expensive IPS tools. All you need to do is edit this Word document template, save, and print. It covers most everything other sophisticated programs produce for individual clients, for a fraction of the cost.

Basic Financial Planning Marketing Tools: Not for consumers, but these are something every professional in the Fee-Based investment management business should have. You'll need a marketing / firm fact / bio package to either send to new prospects in the mail, or give them to take home after the first appointment. This page lists what you'll need, has some freebies, and offers some inexpensive tools to help get your initial marketing binder up to speed.

Financial Seminar: Not for consumers. This is a ~200-slide unprotected PowerPoint seminar covering financial planning, the money game, risk management, retirement planning, investment management, asset allocation, portfolio optimization, and more. It contains a script that suggests what to say for some slides. You can make any changes you want to it. Use it as a starting point to help build your own custom marketing seminars, so you can say what you want and not be stuck with canned expensive presentations you can't customize.

Financial planning sales phone scripts and practice management contact letters to help keep your sales funnel full.

Life Insurance Calculator: This life insurance calculator will tell you how much life insurance you and your family really need, by letting you input in detail only what you want to insure for. It calculates both current needs, and how much life insurance is needed every year, up to 75 years into the future.

It also allows you to input exact figures into manual override columns, to account for estimated future changes in incomes, expenses, Social Security, declining debts like mortgages, etc.

Input all lump sum needs (it tells you what these are), and then input data to replace the breadwinner's lost income. It then calculates everything taking into account Social Security benefits and all other sources of survivor's income. You can control every dollar in every year to calculate your exact needs, so you can minimize the expense of maintaining costly life insurance.

Net Worth Calculator (Balance sheet software): It displays a detailed current snapshot of overall net worth by listing everyone's assets and liabilities, with tables, graphs, and pie charts.

Input up to five accounts for each of the following: Client, spouse, jointly held / community property, and children's assets (for a total of 20 separate financial accounts). Each account can then hold up to 25 assets (with one liability).

Calculate current snapshots of assets and liabilities held by everyone; net worth, balance sheet, asset allocations, and after-capital gains tax investment values, using up to 500 assets and 20 liabilities.

75-Year Net Worth Projector: You can control every dollar in every year, and integrate the results with other financial and retirement planners. It takes the data entered into the net worth calculator (above), and then automatically forecasts everything into the future.

Personal Budget Software and 75-Year Cash Flow Projector: This money calculator is used for tracking family expenses in normal times, and can also be used to estimate expenses and income needs during disability and retirement. It has many uses, such as categorizing expenses and calculating how much you're really spending, comparing that to incomes (to show surpluses / deficits); it also calculates gas mileage and average / effective tax brackets.

The cash flow projector then takes each expense in three categories - fixed, variable, and debt service; and then adds the inflation rate you'd input (globally or on each expense). Then it displays the next year's numbers. Then everything is summed up in a logical fashion, so you can use and make sense out of it.

You have total control over every income and expense item in every year, so you can project your household budget 75-years into the future down to the dollar (and then use these future numbers as inputs into your retirement plan).

Rental Real Estate Software: This calculates how a rental property (or a portfolio of up to five properties) has really done over its life; or estimate what it probably will do. With just a few minutes of input, this program will estimate IRR and NPV, for all properties - separately, combined, unweighted and weighted. It considers all cash flows, income taxes, depreciation, basis, purchases, sales, improvements, commissions, will handle one refinancing, it has an underwater rental calculator, and more.

Estimate a property's internal rate of return and net present value both pre- and post-capital gains tax, to see if it's currently over- or under-priced. Control most every dollar in every year for unprecedented control and accuracy.

Investment Comparator: Investment software that accurately compares the long-term details of the 27 most-common methods of investing side-by-side apples-to-apples with each other for simple bottom-line evaluation. For example, it performs buy term and invest the difference comparisons (BTID).

Financial Tools (AKA TVM Calculators): Financial tools for the little jobs that come up when building financial plans. The first seven sheets are a large array of financial calculators that perform most of the usual TVM (time value of money) functions: Present value, future value, interest rate, payments, IRR & NPV, loan amortizers, CD penalty, CPI inflation calculator, renting vs. own a home, underwater house calculator, cost of raising a child, life expectancy, wage breakdowns, final expenses, percentage change, long-term costs of a family-ruining monster, etc. Then it has:

• The financial planning practice valuation calculator covers most of the bases when you want to estimate how much you may be able to sell your financial advisory practice for today.

• 25-year time-weighted rate of return calculator that tells the rate of return each year, and averages for multiple years, considering all of the unequal monthly cash flows that happen with investment portfolios in the Real World: Dividends / capital gains / spent withdrawals and taxes on them, as well as contributions.

• Investment management fee calculator for investment advisors: If you have to calculate fees manually periodically to tell your custodian how much to deduct from clients' cash accounts to pay you, and then this will pay for itself the first time.

• Portfolio Yield Calculator: This calculates the combined average income / dividend yield on your total combined investment portfolios; then estimates how much income, or paycheck, everything will produce over several time frames.

• Age 70½ IRS Required IRA Minimum Distribution Calculator (MDIB / MRD calculators). It also has the same type of money calculator for inherited IRAs.

• All three versions of IRS 72(t) tax-qualified premature distribution calculators. Calculate how to retire as early as age 50 and avoid pre-age 59½ penalties.

• Six Social Security calculators compare and help decide when to start collecting benefits. See the truth instead of what's always touted in the media.

• Inflation Adjusted Income Stream Generator: This unique financial calculator estimates how much money you can withdraw annually, without running out, considering inflation.

• The Golden Handshake calculator will calculate the present value of an employee buyout offer from your employer, so you can see if it's worth it or not.

Bond Calculators: Most everything investors want to know about managing individual bonds can easily be calculated.

College Savings Calculator: Calculate how much money is needed to put one, or up to five students at a time, through college. This will calculate how much money is needed to save, both lump sum, and/or monthly, to reach the goal of putting someone through college - both now, and in the future, while accounting for all of the details.

You have total control over every dollar in every year. It also does a side-by-side comparison of four different scenarios- public vs. private college, and then DIY vs. 529 plan).

FYI, this site can't be made to look modern and cool, because the green side links are needed, and there's way too many links for that to work.

Financial Planning Software that's Fully-Integrated
(the IFP is the NaviPlan alternative for 1/6th the price)

Goals-Only "Financial Planning Software"
(the MoneyGuidePro alternative for 1% of their price)

Retirement Planning Software Menu: Something for Everyone
(the RWRs, RP, and SRP)

Comprehensive Asset Allocation Software

Model Portfolio Allocations with Historical Returns

Monthly-updated ETF and Mutual Fund Picks

DIY Investment Portfolio Benchmarking Program

Financial Planning Fact Finders for Financial Planners Gathering Data from Clients

Investment Policy Statement Software (IPS)

Life Insurance Calculator (AKA Capital Needs Analysis Software)

Bond Calculators for Duration, Convexity, YTM, Accretion, and Amortization