An Overall Product Classification, Generic Review, Evaluation of Their Functions, and Detailed Comparisons with Tools For Money
(see the chart at the bottom)

We're trying to do a fair and balanced review, so if you dispute any of this, just send an e-mail and we'll look at it and if you're right, then we'll edit that and give you a freebie to thank you

Money Tree Easy Money Review, Evaluation, and Comparison

Generic Description: Integrated (but not comprehensive) financial planning software, just for the accumulation phase (no retirement planning module).

Market: BD Reps wanting to do something better for their clients than Money Tree Silver, and are out hunting for both rabbits and elephants.

Review Date: June '14.

Other Names or Sites They Go By: N/A.

What Module on Tools For Money it Competes With, and is the Best to Compare To: Integrated Financial Planner

Platform: Code-driven, but they don't say what language.

Read why Excel-based financial plan software is superior to code-driven software.

Price: $900.

For $1,000 you can buy everything on this site, which provides much more value than just financial planning software.

Annual Update Prices: $350 or 40%.

Finra Reviewed: No, because it has a Monte Carlo simulator.

Monte Carlo Simulator: Yes.

Buying Caveats: You'll have to input your e-mail address to get their free downloads or trials, so they may spam you. So far I didn't get anything but salesy follow-ups until I unsubscribed, then it all stopped, which is fine.

Tools For Money doesn't make you give any of your information away just to get demos and samples. We also don't make you agree to anything when you buy anything.

Printing: Code-based platform where you click print, and it spits out pre-programmed reports that cannot be altered by the user (but they have made progress on exporting to PDF over the last year). You can edit things to make them look how you like if you export a report and reinvent the wheel in Excel and/or use PDF exporting.

With all Tools For Money software, you have total control over all printing.

Delivery Methods: After online downloading, they'll give you an activation key to make it work for the rest of the year after paying.

With all Tools For Money software, programs are e-mailed after ordering (after that, you'll never have to go online or need an Internet connection for anything). No waiting for an activation code is required, because there is no key code at all.

Number of Computers the Program Will Run On: One at a time.

With all Tools For Money software, you can use anything for anything on an unlimited numbers of computers. They're just spreadsheets, so you can work on a case at home in the middle of the night, then e-mail to yourself or copy it to a flash drive and resume work on a different computer when you get to the office. With this type of code-driven software that only works on one computer at a time, you'd only be able to work on that case when you're at work (unless you installed it on a laptop, of course).

Integration and/or Online Downloading: No integration with other programs and not able to download client holding data from online custodians.

Comments, Opinions, and Observations

According to most online reports (which some are just hype done by the MoneyTree people themselves), they're the #1 financial planning software vendor. This is also something NaviPlan claims, so one of them is "wrong." See this for an example: success.moneytree.com/blog/bid/117378/FPA-Review-Fee-Charged-Time-Spent-for-Financial-Planning-Services

Then they claim to be "The most trusted name in financial planning software."

Money Tree Easy Money is an "easy-to-use" code-driven, integrated financial planning software suite.

They say, "Easy Money is a comprehensive plan, broad in scope."

But it's missing way too much to be considered comprehensive. It doesn't even have a retirement planning module. Just the fact that it ignores replacements and annual cash flow surpluses and deficits before retirement tells you that it's not accounting adequately. So it doesn't even have a cash flow projection module. So it's neither broad in scope, nor is it comprehensive because of this.

Integrated just means all of the modules talk to each other. Comprehensive means it does most everything. So it's integrated, but far from being comprehensive.

If you'd delete the mostly-useless estate planning module and the program's ability to attempt to calculate first year's taxes (like actual tax planning software like TurboTax) then there are no features or functions Easy Money will perform that the IFP won't. In other words, everything Easy Money can do, you can do the same thing, and most of the time much better using the Integrated Financial Planner (IFP).

It does not display Current plan vs. Proposed plan, like the IFP, so you'd need to change input and run everything again to see these critical differences.

It's much better than Silver, but almost twice the price, which doesn't even attempt to "do things right," but it's still seriously lacking in too many areas to be considered comprehensive financial planning software.

For example, Easy Money is only for the "accumulation phase." So it falls down during the distribution phase (retirement). So you'd need to buy their retirement Module for that - Golden Years. When you have both, then it's called TOTAL. Their stuff says that the two can't be integrated because "Easy Money is goal-based" and "Golden Years is cash flow-based," but then they married the two anyway. So everything is discombobulated when these two different worlds collide.

Easy Money has a disability income and LTC module that actually does something, in contrast to Silver. But it's still "rudimentary" because all you can do is input a percentage reduction in expenses and stop incomes when disabled.

With the IFP, you can have total control over all expenses and all incomes in every year. So you can model detailed disability and LTC scenarios just like Easy Money Does, or you can have total control over all of this for a much more accurate financial plan.

So the bottom line when it comes to both calculating the need for DI and LTC, is that Money Tree doesn't do well, because it barely accounts for and calculated it. It doesn't even do budget, cash flow, or net worth projections, so therefore it's impossible to calculate these actual needs.

The IFP will dial these needs down to the dollar for both DI and LTC needs, so you can recommend the exact amount of benefits needed. It's more work (and not "Easy"), but you can't even do most of this work properly with Easy Money.

It has a built-in tax calculating module, so it's attempting to "do the client's taxes" like TurboTax. This is one of the modules that makes it more expensive.

But it only attempts to calculate taxes due in the first year. Then it just "estimates" taxes thereafter (just like the IFP does). Here's what they say about years after the first: "After first year - the marginal rate is applied to taxable income unless the user selects an optional rate for ordinary items and for equity accounts."

First, that makes little sense - what's an "ordinary item" and what are they calling "equity accounts?" A lot of Money Tree's lexicon in their software, reports, and documentation is just technically incorrect. This probably comes from hiring code programmers with little-to-no education or experience working in the financial industry. This was one of the first tip-offs that when it comes to Money Tree, "The emperor has no clothes."

This is also as wrong as you can get, and is a serious error in their programming. Nobody pays marginal rates on all of their money. The rate most correct to use is called the "average" or "effective" tax rate. This is explained on this page about accounting for taxes in financial plans.

Then in their reports, they show an average tax rate not even 1% less than marginal, which is almost not possible. So there are major errors in their tax module.

Then it's going to assume that your investment accounts have 100% portfolio turnover every year, which generates a huge pile of taxes that wouldn't be due in the Real World. They say, "The program assumes the portfolio is turned over each year. Interest will is taxed at the ordinary rate."

Again, and as usual, does that even make any sense? "Interest will is taxed" and "After first year"-is that even English?

Then it's supposed to be dividends, not interest. A lot of their text appears to have been written by someone that uses "English as a second language." Is this what you're paying up for when you buy Money Tree? You'd think they'd at least hire an outside professional proofreader to correct all of their many typos and grammatical errors.

So if you're an "intermediate-level-user" of financial plan software, then their tax module is one of the main justifications for spending up for Easy Money. But the more you know about this stuff, the more you know that's not the best way to go, for several reasons. So having a built-in tax module is an advantage for Easy Money.

On the other hand, you're spending several times more annually than what TurboTax costs, for much less tax accuracy (~$50). So if you care about accuracy, then you'd just buy both TurboTax and the IFP and then integrate them together.

It also falls down when you want to input non-asset incomes. Whereas you can easily account for those using the IFP's Cash Flow Projectors,

Easy Money is not easy at all. If you can do what you want at all, then you'll have to play some tricks to get it to account correctly. Here's their blurb on that, "Although Easy Money does not apply pre-retirement cash flow shortages and surpluses to asset balances, items entered in Other Income/Expenses do affect assets. If you are using Easy Money and enter pre-retirement income items that are being spent instead of added to assets, you will need to show the corresponding expenses as Other Expense to offset the income." Did this make any sense to you? Probably not, better call for support and hope they speak better English than they write hahaha!

It has a lot of inputs for different types of insurance, but little-to-no calculations are made from most of this. It's mostly just text that gets plopped inside a PDF report. So everything to do with most all insurance input, you can get better results just by making a template Word docx and then typing these numbers into it. So you're paying for this function thinking it will actually do something inside the plan, when most of the time, it does not.

They didn't make a sample plan to evaluate for Easy Money. What they did was put all of their reports into a PDF here:
http://www.moneytree.com/Content/SampleReport/EasyMoneySampleReports2011.pdf

So it's hard to tell what's going on. Now on to their reports:

First, why does "Retirement at 65, sell rental property at 75" show at the top of every page? I can't think of a reason, so I'm calling this an "error."

General: 5% generic text and 95% blank white space. Compare to ours - Confidential Report - Financial Plan Cover Page.

Personal Statistics: Half blank white space. We don't include these types of pages in financial plans anymore, because it's just telling people things about themselves that they already know. Everyone in the family knows everyone else's names, birthdates, and where they work, etc. (then it's a magnet for robbers wanting to steal people's identities).

Introduction: Generic text with half badly formatted blank white space. See our page for that - Personal financial plan introduction and disclaimer.

Easy Money doesn't come with a canned table of contents page, so you'd need to make your own, just like ours - Financial plan table of contents.

Goal Based Planning: This is huge difference in the way Easy Money works compared to other financial plan software.

So it's up to you whether you think this is better or not when it comes to selling commission-based products. It is NOT better in any way when it comes to having a financial plan match what's going to happen in the future in the Real World. You'll need to do what they call "cash flow analysis" to make it better.

Here's their blurb on that: "Goal based planning is designed to identify certain goals, then determine if what you are now doing may enable you to accomplish your goals. This differs from a "cash flow" analysis which is used to measure all your cash inflows and outflows, then integrate these items with your assets and a careful analysis of your income tax burden each year. Goal based planning uses a more conservative "worst case" scenario approach. ... We also make the assumption that any anticipated appreciation on invested assets is taxed each year as if you turned over your investment portfolio and paid capital gains tax on the realized appreciation. Again, this is illustrating the "worst case" approach to see if you might reach your goals under this type of scenario."

First, Goal Based Planning DOES NOT provide a worst case scenario analysis. It provides a fake analysis of whole sets of data after the first year that are so far from reality that just saying it's not right or incorrect is the understatement of the year.

When it comes to making financial plans with the goal of trying to predict what may happen in the future, EVERYTHING stems from pre-retirement cash flows / replacements / and surpluses or deficits.

One of the main points and reasons for creating a financial plan is to determine how much more they'll need to invest to reach their goals. YOU CANNOT DO THAT WITH ANY MONEY TREE SOFTWARE (especially Easy Money)! Their programs are incapable of performing that basic function, because of many "errors" in the overall methodology they use to calculate numbers.

A bottom line here is that we don't think a software vendor should be making any "assumptions" whatsoever about anything. Especially if the user can't change them. Easy Money's goal-based planner is all about making (mostly unrealistic) worst case assumptions that can only be altered a little bit.

They definitely should not be playing shenanigans with the numbers just to make it look like it's way harder to reach financial goals than it really is. What a financial planner should do is use software that accounts for how life works in the Real World. The planner and client should also work together to both come up with reasonable assumptions and the parameters that should go into all worst case scenarios.

Then if they need to do more to reach their goals in worst case scenarios, then being able to accurately show that is how the financial planner earns their money. Truth in numbers in the best way to go, and that's what the IFP was made for. Creating financial plans that forecast realistically into the future is how you develop long-term profitable relationships. This is the RIA business model. The BD model is mostly just about realizing as many short-term transactions as possible ASAP.

Objectives: This page is just text that's best just typed into a Word docx template.

Personal Financial Summary: Another text page that's best done in Word.

This one has some important numbers in it. The retirement section's numbers can't be correct because of the problems listed above. Then the format makes little-to-no sense - what's a "working asset?" They just made this wording up.

The income tax sections shows the mostly-meaningless marginal rate, when the most relevant number is the effective / average tax rate, which is not there.

The estate section is mostly irrelevant because of the 2013 law changes. So these numbers are not only very incorrect, but mostly just gone after 2010. This whole section should have just been deleted in Jan '11, but the people working there may not even be keeping up on such things, so they probably didn't even know (they didn't read this page). The estate reports in the Silver sample plan still shows pre-2010 law, so these numbers probably are too.
http://www.moneytree.com/Content/SampleReport/SilverSampleReports2010.pdf

In case you didn't know, this module is responsible for about a quarter to a third of the software's cost. This is an extreme programming Nightmare, constantly changing, tedious with millions of gotchas, and very expensive to maintain because the code programmers have to work closely with someone that actually knows how all that works, so there's at least two expensive people on their payroll working on code, that since 2010, has little-to-no value to anyone in the Real World anymore. So if you're wondering why Easy Money costs more than twice what it should, it's mostly because of this. So you're paying up for software that you'll never use (and no you can't delete just their estate planner to save money).

Retirement Summary: Okay so, Easy Money does not even have a retirement planning module, but then it's showing a whole page of retirement forecasts?

The effective tax bracket is off by almost half (it's impossible to pay a 29.38% average rate unless you're making a billion a year and have no deductions, and Susan & David Example are making the low six-figures in this sample plan). So this is a huge and obvious calculation error sticking out like a sore thumb.

So most all of these numbers are wrong, and then they're just text that's better typed into a Word docx template anyway, as it's data taken from the Fact Finders.

One of these days when I have more time, I'll input John & Mary's data into financial plan software that excels in accurate numbers just to prove how bad all of their five programs really are at financial projections. Then we'll see who is "The most trusted name in financial planning software."

Financial Life Cycle report: This is just a fluff text page with half blank white space. The thing is, I was using the exact same life cycle chart in my sales presentations since 1988! The colors, the chart, and every word is the same as what's in my ancient W&R sales presentation binder. Reason #176 that they probably just copied a ton a stuff from us many years ago (the same with calling their fictitious sample plan clients Susan & David Example - they used to call them John & Mary Sample, like ours, until it was whined about here).

Net Worth: Something is very wrong here, as they're showing this: "Ordinary income accounts $148,100." Why would you put income into a Net worth report? So until I figure out how and why their including income as an asset, I'm saying this is another major malfunction in their calculations.

Maybe they just made up a new term or something as nobody has ever said the words "Ordinary income account" in the two decades plus I've been doing this work. I tried to figure out where this number is coming from using the next page that give more detail, but couldn't. Also, their asset total is shown above the line, when it should be below the line.

Financial Statement: This is a more detailed current net worth statement snapshot. This looks okay, but since it's in code, if you don't have any assets under a certain category, then that category still displays, causing confusion during the presentation. So there's nothing under these asset categories: Corporate bonds or funds, Commodities, options, Inherited IRA, Mortgages and notes, Partnerships, Unit investment trust, and Exchange traded funds, Personal and Investment Loans. This is just how code-driven software works, so it's not a malfunction. The point is that you don't want to have things in a financial plan that's distracting, because it's going to put you off track when they ask about it. If this was done in Excel, you could have hidden or deleted those blank lines to not show in a second.

Asset Detail: This is okay, but it has problems too. Under Monthly Additions, it doesn't say why there's two numbers, then everything is missing dollar signs.

The whole rate of return section makes little-to-no sense and is at the second decimal place and is missing the percentage signs.

Then the last five columns either show duplicate redundant information and/or it's only useful to the user, not the client. This whole page is just a huge question mark that's going to do nothing but get you off track with non-relevant questions. I looked for directions, but couldn't find anything.

Personal Property and Liabilities Reports: This is okay other than the lopsided too much white space and blank rows.

Life Insurance and Other Insurance Reports: This is just text showing a list of life and other policies that's best done in Word so you can format it to look decent. I didn't see where the program takes any of this into account for anything, but I may be wrong, maybe it does actually do something - couldn't tell because of the lack of detailed instructions.

Asset Summary: A good page showing assets grouped into categories and then listed different ways.

Liquidity Analysis: These two pages are fine too, but not many people care about their liquidity (it's not a business).

Cash Flow: These tables seem fine, but just show the first year's numbers. It would be better if you could sort them by size or name though, buy you can't because of the code (and you easily can in Excel).

Income Management: Their Put, Keep, Take, and Spend chart is a clever presentation piece to show how much there is to invest. The problem is that it doesn't say how much they're doing of this now. Is this chart Current or Proposed? Are there directions, not that I found, better call for support. Also, this is a piece you could do better in Word in a few minutes.

Financial Goals: This is just text and then a couple of goals with numbers you could have done yourself in a minute using a financial calculator.

Saving For College: Just a page of text.

Education Funding (pages 26 -31): This chart either makes no sense or the numbers are wrong. This is a chart you could have made in Excel using gross numbers. So their college planners are probably just a little better than what you can use for free online.

Investment Planning: Pages 32 - 38 is just text you could have make better yourself in Word.

Page 35 is the same money pyramid Waddell & Reed has been using since the 80's (although they got it wrong, or are just trying to be different). You can see a much better explanation of all of this in our Financial Seminar product (I thought it was too lame and didn't provide enough red meat to put into the Money eBook over a decade ago).

Page 36 could be made if the Sample's filled out our Investment Fact Finder and then you copy and pasted it into Word docx.

Pages 39 and 40 are two pie charts and text that is a lame version of our Comprehensive Asset Allocation Software's Asset Allocator sheet - the Source and Application of Funds section. It's lame because not only does the pie only have five asset classes, and they aren't even asset classes - they're mutual fund objective names. Then there's only three labels, so what happened to the other two? This is code error more than likely.

About asset inputting: They have all of this set up in a mode to help BD Reps sell loaded mutual funds. So the asset classes are mostly fund objectives like: Cash, Income, Income & Growth, Aggressive Growth, Growth, Balanced, Conservative, Very Conservative, Miscellaneous, and Other.

But you can also input several custom asset class names to get around this(?).

What Easy Money does not do, is allow you to model what's called, the "bucket approach." This is where you either set up investment accounts according to their asset class, and deplete one before others. It's also for depleting non-qualified assets before qualified assets. Money Tree doesn't let you do any of this.

That's it? Yup, even Silver seemed to have a better asset allocation module. So the bottom line is that Easy Money pretty much doesn't even have a viable Investment planning module! So again, and as usual, if you want the right tool to do that job, it's either us, or vendors like Morningstar for ~$700 a year.

Investment Returns: This page is just text and a chart of market returns you could have made yourself in Excel and Word in a few minutes.

Pages 42 to 45: Stock Option reports. This is something people cared about in the mid- to late-90's, but most of that died out long ago. I started making a fuss about making the best one, then it became clear way too few cared, so it was abandoned (you can see this lame almost non-functional stock market calculator the TVM Financial Tools demo).

So if you like and can get some use from this, then you can either buy Easy Money, use NaviPlan (which appears to do all of that correctly), or search for stock option software from inexpensive vendors that have concentrated only on that niche market, and thus worked out all of the bugs and are up on current with laws. Also why I abandoned it was because other people already are doing that, and not making money at it - just like all of the tax software vendors that went under trying to compete with TurboTax (and Leimberg's Number Cruncher for estate planning).

Details - All Properties: This is just a text page that lists their real estate (owner, payments, incomes, and gross values - not even equity). It's just showing people what they told you and what they already know.

Considering that there's no way to paid from analyzing rental properties for clients when you're in commission-mode, this is okay for BD Reps.

Pages 47 - 49: Rental real estate analysis report. It's my stupid little opinion that, knowing how hard it was to program our rental real estate software that the chances of their tables of numbers being correct are slim to none, and Slim left town long ago. Accounting for rental real estate is very hard, and Money Tree can't seem to even do basic bread and butter financial calculations correctly.

So some of these basic numbers (like just subtracting 5% from rents to account for average vacancies) are good, but the complex math when it comes to accounting for depreciation, basis, actual principal payments, recaptures, etc., just can't be correct. Maybe one of their programmers was an expert in rental real estate investing before they joined Money Tree, and they did a great job. But looking at their rental reports, there's just way too much left out of the equations to calculate accurate numbers here. So beware of using that module.

If you can find a way to actually get paid for doing financial planning, then you'd want to either use our rental real estate analysis software, or spend up to buy real beef software that specializes in this purpose. NaviPlan also appears to have a decent module for account for rental properties, as it excel's in calculating current year's taxes on everything and because they probably have spent several time more resources on it than any other financial plan software vendor. But that's very expensive, for something you can buy from someone that specializes in this market for under $200 (even ours is lame compared to "real" rental analysis software).

Pages 50 & 51 are just generic text pages about retirement.

Pages 52 - 60 are retirement reports from their retirement module that they say Easy Money doesn't even have. The reports are in a strange format I've never seen before, and make little sense. Then the way they group investment accounts for retirement makes little sense to me too.

Pages 61 - 65 are all about using Monte Carlo simulations on their non-existent retirement planning module. So I have no idea what the deal with that is, so not even going there either.

Pages 66 & 67 are just text pages about income taxes you can do in Word.

Pages 66 - 71 are numbers page for taxes. Again, I would not trust any of these numbers. Page 68 shows an average / effective rate of 29.38% and that is just sort of not possible. Read all about why we don't think doing a detailed tax analysis in financial plans is pragmatic.

Pages 72 - 98 are all about an obsolete module that's full of outdated numbers. Yes they're still including an estate planning module in Easy Money even though 99% of clients will rarely have any use for it anymore.

Pages 99 & 100 are just text pages about life insurance that you could have made in Word in a few minutes.

Page 101 has a nice graph that our comprehensive life insurance calculator does not have, so that's an advantage. But then it also shows future needs for life insurance, and this page is so wrong that it's not believable. You can read why this cannot even be in the ballpark by clicking the link in the sentence above and then reading about how ours is still the only life insurance needs calculator that properly accounts for and displays life insurance needs far into the future. Once you read the basic concepts, then all you'll have to do is glance at this graph for a second, and you'll know it can't possibly be correct.

So this chart should be showing needs declining dramatically. But instead they only decline a little bit (from ~$1.6M at age 75 to ~$1.3M). If these numbers were ran through our life module, and everything was accounted for correctly, their $1.3M need would probably really be under $500k.

Pages 102 to 107 are more life insurance reports that just make me wanna puke. I didn't go through any of the numbers, because I don't wanna puke, plus few of them make any sense to anyone. But you can bet they're "incorrect" and heavily skewed toward selling the most face value as possible today. If they aren't then it would be the first time that happened, I'd be shocked, and their overlords may find out and stop approving of it, oooooh nooooo! There's no directions to help figure this out.

Page 108 is a disability report that both is mostly text you could have made better in Word, then a chart that doesn't make sense, that you could have made better in Excel (and then pasted into Word).

The DI numbers in the table on page 109 are better than the chart, and can be more easily understood. But I doubt they're accurate. Then the report shows no DI need! This would be the first time that happened in the Real World.

So the way the IFP combined with the Cash Flow Projectors calculates annual disability income needs is vastly superior, as it will calculate the actual needs down to the dollar in every year. So it's a night and day difference as theirs appears to barely function.

Page 110 is just a text page you can make in Word about P&C insurance in a minute.

Page 111 is a text page with a chart about LTC you could have made in Word.

Page 112 is the LTC numbers page. It appears that nothing input into the plan has anything to do with these numbers. They're all just generic text that you could have made in Word showing three daily benefit amounts. So Easy Money pretty much doesn't even do anything much of value when it comes to determining the need for LTC insurance. I thought that's what it was for?

The rest of the 175-page list of reports are mostly text, and variations on the above reports. But here's some that are more reports:

There's a page showing incomes and other numbers un-inflated. That's interesting to financial geeks, but rarely do clients care about that.

There's reports about pensions and similar things, but the Financial Planner module of the IFP has much better reports showing the same information.

There's a page showing RMDs. The IFP will show this too if an asset is paying out using this method, so this is something it has too.

As far as What-if analysis goes, Easy Money performs more scenario analyses than most other planners. First, as far as what it can do in the What-if world, all it does if perform a Monte Carlo simulation based on several scenarios, which are: Rate of return, inflation, then you can set the number of years earlier or later retirement starts (up to five), then it iterates between three difference sets of income goals.

They realized the limitations on their report printing, and so they made an export feature. So if you don't like what the canned code spits out, you can export it to PDF, Word, or Excel. Then you can have the total control over printing that the IFP gives you for free. But on the other hand, you're paying for its internal printing function, so if you do this, then you're not only wasting time going through all of those extra exporting steps (and then you'll have to learn how to print in Excel just as if you bought the IFP), but money too.

They call client "1" and spouse "2" to be different. We just call them client and spouse.

That's about it. Most of their other reports in the appendix section (starting page 114) are either barely understandable to me, or provide little-to-no value (like a list of all insurance premiums on one page of mostly blank white space).

There's many more tax, estate plan, loans, retirement reports from the non-existent retirement module, and "miscellaneous fluff pages." They're all in the appendix because they aren't very useful and are not used much in my opinion.

Then page 168 - 175 is just a copy of their fact finder.

So that's it, that's all there is to Money Tree Easy Money.

The following Easy Money modules are so "lame" that you could do just as well, or better, by using the results of free online financial calculators and then inputting the numbers into Word docxs:

Retirement Planning
Asset Allocation
College Planning
Disability Planning
Long-term Care Planning
Budgeting & Cash Flow
Rental real estate analysis
Life insurance needs

As you can see using the sample reports, there's dozens of times more actual financial plan beef you can use with the IFP, compared to MoneyTree.

It doesn't even show Current vs. Proposed, it doesn't have an asset allocator nor a decent college funding, DI, or LTC module.

It still has an expensive-to-maintain estate planning module even though THE WHOLE ESTATE PLANNING INDUSTRY DIED OFF IN 2010. So this whole module and the report section of almost a dozen pages is mostly useless.

Then they don't dispute that their software is using "hugely fake numbers." They even say, "Easy Money will generally show a lower amount of capital available for retirement.... Money will run out sooner."

So they're admitting that their numbers are wrong, and skewed towards the Rep recommending they invest much more than they need to, or can afford.

The whole way Easy Money calculates its numbers is just a huge "error" that creates a big fat chicken always wanting to come back to your home to roost.

They call all of this "Worst Case" analysis. So if you buy that, then buy it.

I just think if you want to show a worst case scenario, then you should be doing much more than just ignoring replacements, deficits, and surpluses. With the IFP you'd just do that in the Current version and show how you're going to deal with it in the Proposed version. And then run a Monte Carlo simulation on those scenarios. This is not only a much better way of doing it, but it will show more of a "worst case need" than Money Tree's malfunctioning worst case scenario calculations.

How can they be "the most trusted name in financial planning software" when it does little-to-nothing of actual value for much more money? So it appears that Money Tree Easy Money, like American Funds, is just the "Paris Hilton" of financial planning software. They're famous just for being famous, without actually doing anything other than paying people to keep saying how cool, trusted, approved, and famous they are.

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Investment Software for Comparing the 27 Most Popular Methods of Investing

Rental Real Estate Investing Software

Net Worth Calculator (Balance Sheet Maker) and 75-year Net Worth Projector

College Savings Calculator

Financial Seminar Covering Retirement Planning and Investment Management

Sales Tools for Financial Adviser Marketing

Personal Budget Software and 75-year Cash Flow Projector

TVM Financial Tools and Financial Calculators

Our Unique Financial Services
(are listed below)

We're Fee-only Money Managers: So you can hire us to manage your money, and/or financial advisers can hire us to manage client money, using our Model Portfolios and/or Asset Allocation Systems

Consulting Services: Hire Us to Make Your Financial Plan, Retirement Plan, Benchmarking Report, Whatever

Buy or Sell a Financial Planning Practice

Miscellaneous Pages of Interest
(are listed below)

Primer Tutorial to Learn the Basics of Financial Planning Software

About the Department of Labor's New Fiduciary Rules

Using Asset Allocation to Manage Money

Download Brokerage Data into Spreadsheets

How to Integrate Financial Planning Software Modules to Share Data

CRM and Portfolio Management Software

About Monte Carlo Simulators

About Efficient Frontier Portfolio Optimizers

Calculating Your Investment Risk Tolerance

About Discount Brokers for DIY Money Management

About 401(k) Plan Management

Financial Planning Software Features and Functions	IFP: $500	Easy Money: $900
Annual Update Prices	$135	$350
Lifetime Subscriptions Available	Yes	No
Do You Have to Buy it for a Whole Year?	No, you can pay a whole $2 to use it for one day	Yes, you have to pay their whole annual cost to use it, even if you only need it for a week
Asset Allocator Module	Yes, and comprehensive	Yes, but very primitive
Number of Asset Classes their Asset Allocation Software Uses	Unlimited	? only five mutual fund objectives shown in their reports
Deals with Pre-retirement Annual Cash Flow Surpluses and Deficits (the very heart of the financial plan)	Yes, with total control over which assets they flow in and out of annually	No, "Easy Money does not reinvest cash flow surpluses or deficits generated by ordinary income and expenses until retirement age"
Integration with Other Financial Software and/or Ability to Download Account Holdings from Online Custodians	Yes to both	No, but it will download current share prices for some investments, so in some cases, current account values may be updated
Ability to Get Detailed Annual Expenses, Incomes, and Income Goals at Retirement from other Software (like our Personal Budget & Cash Flow Projector)	Yes	No
Built-in Budgeting and Cash Flow Modules	Yes, and comprehensive	Yes, but not much control
Accounts for Budgeting of Replacement Costs	Yes, total control	No
Built-in College Planner Module	Yes, and comprehensive	Yes, but it doesn't do much more than a free online college calculator would do
Database of College Costs	No, it's best to either look current costs up online, or call the college because of stale data	Yes
Life Insurance Calculator Module Included	Yes	Yes, but very primitive, no better than a free online insurance calculator
Ability to Project Life Insurance Needs into the Future	Yes	Yes, but their sample plan numbers don't look anywhere near what's "correct"
Life Insurance Needs Module: Ability to Account for Replacing ALL Incomes, Set the Number of Years for it to be Replaced, the Percentage of it to be Replaced, then have a Unique Discount Rate Input for All Incomes Individually. Next, Ability to Choose Between Inputting Needs and Available Resources via Manual Input or Automatically (where numbers are internally generated from inside the financial plan)	Yes to All	No to All
Life Insurance Needs Module: Ability to have the Same Features and Functionality for Calculating the Client's Capital Needs if the Spouse Passes in Every Year	Yes	No
Ability to Easily Stop Life Insurance Policies (paying for premiums and face values), and/or Change Face Amounts (or premiums) in Any Year	Yes	No, once you input a life policy, everything runs amok forever, even after retirement
Number of Versions	Unlimited, and you can see two at a time	Unlimited, but you have to make and save a separate plan for each
Ability to Easily Make a Proposed Plan from Current Plan Data	Yes	Yes
Ability to See ALL Inputted Data on One Page	Yes	No
Total Control Over Printing	Yes	No
Ability to Perform Any and All Advanced "What-if" and Scenario Functions	Yes	No
Built-in Portfolio Optimizer	No, but you can calculate the usual portfolio statistics of interest (correlation coefficients, Beta, Alpha, R-squared, Treynor and Sharpe ratios)	No
Monte Carlo Simulator	Yes	Yes
Monte Carlo Simulator on the College Planning Modules	Yes	No
Ability to Designate a Financial Plan as the Current or Proposed Version with One Click	Yes	No
Ability to See Both Current or Proposed Versions at the Same Time	Yes	No
Input Spouse's Data Separately	Yes	Yes
Designate an Asset Account as Belonging to Client or Spouse	Yes	Yes
Designate an Asset Account as Jointly Owned	Yes	Yes
Ability to Have Client and Spouse Retire in Different Years	Yes	No retirement module
Total Control Over Social Security Between the Two People Separately	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Change Social Security Income for Each Person Separately, AND in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Control the Social Security Tax Inclusion Rate in Every Year	Yes, you can choose between 0%, 50%, or 85% in each year	No retirement module
Ability to Set the Age Social Security Starts for Both People Separately	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Include Any and All Sources of Annual Miscellaneous Expenses, in Addition to the Generic Annual Income Goal	Yes, you can control every dollar in every year	No retirement module
Ability to Include Any and All Sources of Annual Miscellaneous Incomes	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Control Withdrawals Using IRS Age 70½ Required Minimum Distributions	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Control Withdrawals Using IRS 72t Distributions	Yes, all three methods	No retirement module
Investment Account Payout Methods	9	It appears to only pay out using what the IFP calls "Flexible payout," didn't see a place for payout options, then this is for the distribution phase, which Easy Money doesn't account for (no retirement module)
Ability to Change Asset Payout Methods Midstream	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Start and Stop Asset Withdrawals at Any Year	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Start Asset Withdrawals After Retirement Has Begun	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Start a New Asset at Any Year (even after retirement has started for anyone)	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Set Asset Account Rate of Returns to be Whatever You Want in Any Year	Yes	Yes, using their "Age based tables"
Ability to Have Total Control Over How Much Asset Account Contributions are, and When They Start and Stop Annually	Yes	Yes
Ability to Control the Tax Rate in Every Year	Yes	No
Ability to Set a Tax Inclusion Rate on Each Asset Separately	Yes	No
Presentation Page (report) that Shows Each Non-asset and Asset's Estimated Withdrawal Taxes in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Simulate Roth IRAs and Conversions	Yes	Yes, but only a current snapshot
How Many Years the "Window" Is	75	Less than 50 bars show in their charts, so less than 50
Both Client and Spouse Can Have their Own Separate Income Goals, and they can be Whatever You Want in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to See and Print All Miscellaneous Incomes and Expenses in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Displays the Present Value of Additional Capital Needed to Fund the Combined Income Goal Deficits in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Displays All Basic and Advanced Pertinent Retirement Planning Information	Yes, much more relevant data displays than any other retirement planner	No retirement module
Calculates and Displays How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal as Monthly Payments Until Retirement	Yes	No retirement module
Calculates and Displays How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal as a Current Lump Sum	Yes	No retirement module
Calculates and Displays How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal as a Current Lump Sum in All Years	Yes	No retirement module
Allows You to Set a Unique Rate of Return on How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal (AKA discount rate)	Yes	Yes, three, but no retirement module
List All Assets with Pertinent Data (e.g., asset values, percentage this asset is of the whole, age when it becomes effective, contributions, payout ages, payout methods, rate of return assumed, and amount of income subject to taxes)	Yes	Somewhat, but no retirement module
Lists All Non-Asset Incomes with Annual Amounts, Ages When They Start, COLA Inflation rates, and if it's Taxable or Not	Yes	Somewhat, but no retirement module
Everything Everywhere Displays Year, Both Ages, and Year Numbers for Quick and Better Understanding	Yes	Somewhat, but no retirement module
Number of Asset Accounts Available	16 personal assets and 9 joint assets in each Current and Proposed version (for a total of 50 in each plan)	Three groups of five, Accumulation, Retirement, and Later Life, so total of 15?
Ability to Account for Fixed Assets Like Defined Benefit Pension Plans and Annuitized Annuities	Yes	Yes, but no retirement module
Control Over Pensions Between the Two People Separately	Yes	Yes, but no retirement module
Ability to Set a Survivor's Pension to Pay Out Reduced Benefit After Death	Yes, with total control over annual amounts too	Yes, but no retirement module
Ability to Set an Annual COLA Rate for Fixed Assets Like Defined Benefit Pension Plans and Annuitized Annuities	Yes	Yes, but no retirement module
Ability to Have Pensions and Other Assets Pay a Death Benefit to Cash Flow	Yes, with total control over annual amounts too	Yes
Displays the Amount of Annual Deficits When You'll Probably Run Out of Money	Yes	Yes, but no retirement module
Displays When You'll Probably Run Out of Money (AKA "Gap funding")	Yes	Yes, but no retirement module
Displays Annual Percent of Annual Income Goal Being Met	Yes	No retirement module
Displays Balance of Available Capital in Every Year With Percentage Increase or Decrease from the Previous Year	Yes	No retirement module
Displays the Average Weighted Rate of Return on All Investment Assets Combined in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Displays the Present Value of Additional Capital Needed at Retirement in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Displays the Present Value of Additional Capital Needed at Retirement in the Current Year	Yes	No retirement module
Number of Informative Charts and Graphs You can See While Working Already Set Up	Over 800	No retirement module
Ability to Make as Many New Charts and Graphs as You Want	Yes	Some, but only via an arduous exporting to Excel process
Ability to Change Charts and Graphs Any Way You Like	Yes	Some, but only via an arduous exporting to Excel process
Detailed Chart of All Annual Miscellaneous Incomes and Expenses	Yes	Somewhat
Ability to Control Income Goal Inflation Rates Both Automatically and Also Set Them to be Whatever You Want in Every Year	Yes	No retirement module
Layers of Annual Inflation of Income Goals	5	1 but no retirement module
Ability to Set the Ending Year so Numbers will Stop Showing to Reduce Clutter	Yes	No
Displays Each Person's Life Expectancy Age Using IRS Unisex Mortality Tables	Yes	Yes
Ability to Set a Life Expectancy Age Independently of the Calculated IRS Life Expectancy Age Using IRA Unisex Tables	Yes	Yes
Displays the Difference in Years Between the Inputted Life Expectancy Age and the Calculated IRS Life Expectancy Age	Yes	No
Displays Both the Number of Years and the Percentage of Retirement Years Where There's Both Sufficient and Insufficient Capital	Yes	No retirement module
Displays the Total Current Value of Assets and Total Current Annual Contributions	Yes	Yes
Displays All Sources of Income and Tells Where They're Coming from in Every Year	Yes	No, but better then Silver
Ability to Set the Number of Trailing Zeros on Presentation Pages (so it won't show values down to the dollar if you don't want to see that much detail)	Yes	No
Input Validation and Detailed Error Messages to Tell You what You Did Wrong and How to Fix it	Yes	Somewhat
Accounts for Any and All Types of Investment Assets, Including Rental Real Estate	Yes	Somewhat
Displays Detailed About How Much Retirement Income is Being Withdrawn from Each Asset Individually	Yes	No retirement module
Has "Flexible Assets" that Pay Out Retirement Income Like Life Does in the Real World (AKA "as needed")	Yes	No retirement module
Allows Inputting of Investment Assets Using the "Bucket Approach" (used by asset allocators and retirement planners that want to model scenarios like depleting non-qualified assets before tapping into qualified assets)	Yes	No retirement module
Ability to Calculate Detailed Needs for Both Disability and Long Term Care Insurance	Yes	Yes, a rudimentary way of calculating DI and LTC needs
Asset Account Draw-Down Analysis Tools	Very Limited	Comprehensive
Deals with Technical Details of 401(k)'s - like Catch-Up and Matches	Yes, you can integrate the IFP with the Most Functional 401(k) calculator	Yes, but no retirement module
Ability to Turn Assets Providing Retirement Incomes On and Off Individually	Yes	No retirement module
Displays How Much in Investment Assets are Needed to Fund Annual Income Goals After All Sources of Non-asset Incomes are Accounted For	Yes	No retirement module
Displays Different Colors to Designate Between Client, Spouse, Both, and Data that Does Change With Input, and Not	Yes	No
Comes With a Detailed Fact Finders for Gathering Data From Clients	Yes, comprehensive	Yes
Comes With a Free Effective / Average Tax Bracket Calculator to Help Determine Inputted Tax Rates	Yes	No
Displays All Years of Information Automatically	Yes	No
Complete User's Manual with Detailed Directions on How to Do Everything	Yes, including a list of Real World options if you run out of money too early, and much more valuable retirement planning information)	No, inside the program, and not much there
Phone and/or E-mail Support	Yes, but for more money, but it's rarely needed because there's little-to-no bugs and the directions are more than sufficient - few people e-mail or call for support anymore these days	Yes
Platform	Excel Based (making it extremely stable, inexpensive because uber-expensive code programmers don't need to be employed, bug free, will always work on any computer (Mac or PC) with Excel, any and all operating systems, and rarely needs of any kind of updating)	Code driven (they don't say what language)
Transparency	Total, all data flows logically from left to right as if you were reading, then you can use Excel or a hand calculator to verify all numbers so you easily can trace EVERYTHING back to your input. No secrets, no surprises, no mysteries, just awesome data	Some, via their "Audit Trail" feature, but the in-between numbers still can't be seen
Estimates (payroll) Taxes on 401k-type Contributions	No, but what you do is just integrate the 401(k) calculator into RWR, then you can get the same effect with much better results	Don't know if Easy Money has the same stand-alone financial calculator for that as Silver
Ability to Save Individual Client Files as a Unique File Name (so you can back them up onto your physical computer, so you can access old client input data even years after you let the software expire)	Yes, it's just a spreadsheet, so you have total control over saving client files. Not only that, you'll always have your client input data even when programs expire. Then you can just copy and paste it into the new version if you update, or use it to input into other programs	Yes
Tax Software Included (software that will calculate taxes due, like TurboTax, or in reality, just estimate the current year's taxes due)	No	Yes
Cost Benefit Ratio Feature	Yes, unique to the IFP	No
Number of Computers One "Copy" Will Run On	Unlimited, just spreadsheets you can use on any computer with Excel 2007 or later installed	1
Modular Too	Yes, not only can you just input minimum data to run a simple modular report (e.g., college, life insurance needs, or net worth), but if you buy the IFP and then want just the stand-alone module, then you'll probably just get it for free by asking. For example, all fields with an asterisk need to be input into a NaviPlan before it will work. You could have completed a simple modular plan in the time it takes to do that	No, it's just one big program, so you'll need to buy and input more than what's needed if you want to run a quick simple modular report
Ability to "Go Back in Time" (to input a plan, to see how things worked out in the current or a past year)	No	Yes
Accuracy of Numbers	Extreme, the best you can get anywhere	Bad, ignores annual cash flow surpluses and deficits altogether
Dangerous Installation Procedure that May Wipe Out Windows (DLL) Files if They Screw Up (making a reload of Windows needed, which is more work than having to buy a whole new computer. Yes this kind of thing happens all the time with code - e.g., ExecPlan's free demo in '08!)	No	Yes