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 Golden Years Review, Evaluation, and Comparison

Generic Description: Integrated (but not comprehensive) financial planning software, but just for the distribution phase (AKA retirement, not the accumulation phase).

Market: BD Reps wanting to do something better for their older clients than 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: $650 or 40%.

Tools For Money is only 72%.

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

Money Tree Golden Years is a code-driven, integrated financial planning software suite only for the distribution (retirement) phase of life.

It's better than Easy Money, which has major malfunctions in its calculations. Golden Years doesn't have these problems, because it uses the correct overall methodology - it's "cash flow-based." Everything in financial planning revolves around cash flow, so this is the one and only correct way to do things.

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.

They didn't make a sample plan to evaluate for Easy Money. What they did was put all of their reports into one PDF. So it's very hard to tell what's going on. Now on to their reports:
http://www.moneytree.com/Content/SampleReport/GoldenYearsSampleReports2011.pdf

First, why does "Real Estate" show at the top of every page? I can't think of a reason, so I'm calling this an "error."

Then the footer of one page is always at the top of the next page where the header should be, so that appears to be a major malfunction in their report generator. If this is how their software prints out, and you have no control, then thereyago.

Golden Years 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.

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

Pages 1 -6 are just text you have done better in Word.

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

Pages 8 &9: Financial Statement: This is a more detailed current net worth statement. 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 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 easily hidden or deleted those blank lines to not show.

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? Is this an investment account that produces ordinary income? If so then their terminology is wrong, because investments only produce, interest, dividends, and capital gains. So until I figure out how and why their including income as an asset, I'm saying this is another 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.

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

The whole rate of return section makes little-to-no sense to me, 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.

Pages 13 - 17 are text pages about what the Samples have that you could have done better in Word.

Page 18 is about their Audit Trail function. This provides some way to verify their numbers, but most are still hidden inside code.

Page 19 & 20 are text pages about cash flow you could have made better yourself in Word, and is similar to our reports explanation.

Pages 21 - 23 are good cash flow graphs that we have on our Cash Flow Projectors, and much more.

Page 24 is s chart showing the basic concepts of cash flow surpluses and deficits. So in Golden Years, it's actually accounting for things correctly, unlike Easy Money. But there's no accounting for replacement costs, it looks like you can only direct them into four asset buckets, but then only once and then it's like that in every year. This is okay, and better than most all other financial planning software.

But, the IFP allows total control over which of any asset they flow in and out of, and then you can change this in every year before retirement.

Another way Golden Years (and Easy Money) gets it wrong is that in the Real World, pre-retirement surpluses or deficits have to either go somewhere or come out of somewhere. So not accounting for that (in Easy Money) is a major error.

Then during retirement, if there's a deficit and nowhere to take it from, you just don't eat. Surpluses mean that money is just not withdrawn from assets.

So they have it backwards in both programs (by making them come in and out of assets). Also, if they used our methodology of paying out income from assets in the way the Real World works (what we call the Flexible payout method), then there would first be no surpluses at all, and deficits would be real, meaning no money is available to spend, period.

So they're using some kind of unknown hybrid Flexible payout method that isn't how life works in the Real World. I haven't figured out how it's done yet, but however it's done, it's probably incorrect and will make the plan not match what's going to happen in the Real World by a huge margin.

So they made a fuss about Golden Years doing things right (compared to Easy Money), then they screwed up the payouts, making it almost as wrong as Easy Money. So you can't win either way with Money Tree (more than likely, even if you buy TOTAL too, because that compounds these two major errors).

Pages 25 - 32 are all about detailed cash flow reports. The thing is, information is duplicated and shown in so many different ways that it's confusing, and rarely answers basic questions. Whereas our Cash Flow Projectors are much more easy to understand. There's a little chart information our CFPs don't have, but all of the data is there, so if you have the IFP, you can easily make these charts in Excel too.

Pages 33 - 36: Now for more confusion. They say Easy Money is the program to get if you want to plan for future goals, then Golden Years is only for retirement. Then this page is not only about saving for future goals, but it has college education planning for children. So which is it?

Pages 34 - 36: Education Funding.

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 just a little better than what you can use for free online.

So after evaluating several vendors so far, it's clear that if you want a college planner that actually does things of value, then you're stuck with ours, because there's not enough money in it to make it worthwhile from the vendors' point of view. So nobody had anything better before, has anything better now, or will create anything better in the future (because they know they won't be making enough money from it). Our college planning module is part of the IFP.

Saving For College: Just a page of text.

Page 37 is a page showing that you can sell your primary residence and use the money for retirement. You can do that with all and any assets with the IFP (and All of the stand-alone retirement modules too).

Pages 38 - 39 are pages that just show how much life insurance cash value and how much in premiums they're paying. Another page you could have made better in Word.

Pages 40 - 42 show simplified debt schedules. The IFP does all of that too.

Page 43: This page lists the annual surpluses and deficits, and where they flow. This would be a nice page if the whole concept wasn't totally wrong to being with, as explained above. And then in the Proposed version, you wouldn't have deficits if you set assets up to pay out like life does in the Real World, until you're totally out.

Pages 44 & 45 are just text pages about investment assets, and how they erroneously group investments into a few major categories (that probably can't be changed).

Page 46: 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.

Page 47 is about the same as 43 but in chart form.

Page 48 is the Account Summary page that shows similar information as the IFP. It's different because they're grouping asset together, whereas in the IFP you can see them all.

Page 49 only shows "Working Assets" which is something of little use that I've never seen, so they just made it up. This term is valid for businesses, but not for families. I didn't see a definition in any of their directions.

Pages 50 & 51 show some data about their assets lumped together by category.

Page 52 is a table page that says it's for showing capital gains. I don't see the value of this, so clients won't either, and the chances of any of this matching reality where assets are actually tapped are slim to none. I think the function this is trying to perform, is the same thing as what's on our Net Worth Projector modules, on the Tax Presentation sheet (it wasn't made for the sample financial plan because few care). So it's taking capital gains taxes into account when selling assets? That's a good thing, but it's hard to make sense out of.

Page 53 is similar to 53 but it's trying to estimate capital gains in the future, and I doubt that will match reality very well either.

Pages 54 - 59 are the same as above but for the other asset categories.

Page 60 says it's a retirement plan summary, but it looks like it's only for a 401k plan.

The only comment is that if you want to more accurately forecast anything to do with 401(k) plans, then the tool for that is our 401k calculator. Then there's a sheet there for integrating it into the IFP.

Pages 61 - 64: Stock Option reports. This is something people cared about in the mid- to late-90's, but all of that died out. I started making a fuss about making the best one, then it became clear that nobody cared, so it was abandoned (you can see this lame almost non-functional stock market calculator the TVM Financial Tools demo).

So remembering how hard that was to make work correctly leads me to type that if you or I did the math on theirs, it probably wouldn't work right either. But it might, and I don't care, because it's a mostly-useless feature that few people care about anymore (because stock options stopped being the cool fad back in the last century). Who gets rewarded by being a good employee with lucrative stock options anymore? Few if anyone, and I haven't heard a peep from anyone requesting that function since '03.

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).

So it's my stupid little opinion that Money Tree software may look like it's doing the right things when it comes to taxes, estate planning, and stock options, but based on everything I've seen, I give it less than 10% chance that if audited, their numbers would be correct. It's probably in the ballpark, and that may be good enough for BD Reps, but it's not good enough for my users - which are sophisticated RIAs and do-it-yourself high-net-worth investors.

In Jan '13, tax rates changed. With all of the financial planning software on this site, you could have made the update to the new rates with one input. With most all other vendors, like MasterPlan and most of the MoneyWhatevers, you'll have to wait weeks, if not months, for them to update their code. Then hope that it's correctly done and then deal with all of the bugs, delays, and subsequent bug fix patch updates caused by that.

The only major vendors that allow you to bypass this waiting is MoneyGuidePro and NaviPlan (which costs $2,100 a year and requires a two-year contract commitment). So even though you can bypass it, you're still going to have to wait for them to update their code to the new rates if you're buying it mostly because it estimates taxes in the first year (which is what users most always say).

Then as you can read here, if you've been using other vendors' software, everything you've done in the past regarding tax, cash flow, and retirement projections is now wrong, and needs to be redone. So unless you can get your clients to pay you again for enduring this annoyance, you're stuck working more for free, just because you like and think you need financial plan software to perform this function.

Then, most of these vendors are barely surviving as it is. So they'll have to spend resources paying their uber-expensive code programmers overtime to update their code. The problem with that is they're not happy campers in this environment, and think they're underpaid as it is. Now because they're probably on salary, and don't get overtime pay, this makes them even more unhappy because they're working much harder, longer, and faster for free too. Unhappy tech campers tend to bail and move on to industries with much greener pastures. So that drains non-existent resources from everything else, causes a whole chain of event problems, which is never any good in any way for you. So look for them to be significantly raising their prices after their next few rounds of "updates," because this is the only way they can pass the buck onto you to keep their deals profitable.

Pages 65 - 67 are about asset allocation.

There's tables and two pie charts and text that is a lame version of our Comprehensive Asset Allocation Software's Asset Allocator sheet - see 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, there's only three labels, so what happened to the other two? Probably a code error.

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.

So with the way their code is hard-wired, they're not advocating using actual Asset allocation techniques to reduce risk via diversification, but instead just trying to make it easy for Reps to sell load funds that pay the most today (like American Funds). So the usual pitch is, "According to your financial plan, you need to invest much more today into Income and Growth. Would you rather have American Funds Washington Mutual, Investment Company of America, Income Fund of America, Fundamental Investors, or American Mutual? All of these are as American as apple pie, hot dogs, baseball and Mom. Just sign here write a huge check and we'll get you going today on a path to financial security!"

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 Money Tree 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.

Page 68 is just a text page about risk you could make better in Word.

Pages 69 & 70: Liquidity Analysis: This is fine, but not many people care about their liquidity (it's not a business).

Pages 71 & 74 are rental real estate analysis reports. 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 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 75 - 78 are text pages about income taxes better done in Word.

Pages 79 - 95 are all about the program calculating taxes. I didn't evaluate it compared to TurboTax or any actual tax programs, so no comments on how accurate it is.

If you really cared about taxes, then you'd just buy TurboTax to do the taxes, then get a bottom-line average rate. Then just input that into the IFP. That's going to not only save you hundreds in software, but then you'll get a whole range of valuable things too. So the several hundred spent on Golden Years is mostly going to pay for their tax module. TurboTax is less than $100. Then because of the glaring major errors in their Easy Money tax calculations, I wouldn't trust their numbers at all. Read why this whole way of doing things is just not optimal when it comes to making financial plans.

The estate section (up to page 129) 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. So 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.
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).

Page 130 is a summary page with the same information the IFP has.

Pages 131 & 132 are finally retirement reports. That's it? There's not much there and what's there is all on the IFP.

Pages 133 - 135 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.

News flash, clients either don't care and/or they don't understand Monte Carlo in the first place. If you don't believe it, then just try this: Take an average good client that you can play well with. Take as much time as you want to explaining Monte Carlo in as much detail as you want. Have them read all about it. Then ask them if they get it. Keep at it until they say they get it. Then wait an hour and then get them to explain it to you as best they can. Then you'll get that they both don't understand don't care at all. Then you'll see clear as a bell why it has little-to-no value in the Real World. If your paying customers don't understand nor care about something that you're spending resources on, they why should you?

Read why the whole Monte Carlo simulation thing is just a marketing crock and is best ignored here.

Pages 138 & 139 are about withdrawal rates, and it makes no sense.

The rest of the 159 pages of sample reports is about their rental properties.

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.

But 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.

That's it, the rest are just their Fact Finders.

As far as What-if analysis goes, I didn't even see that it performs scenario analyses or What-ifs at all, so it probably doesn't, so you'd need their other programs for that.

The IFP, and most all Excel-based financial software, is automatically capable of performing most any and all true What-ifs, because it has a built-in math function called Goal Seek. It only takes about five clicks to perform this too.

Here's examples of actual What-if scenarios: What if only one of my assets only got 1% instead of 6%, could I still retire at 60? What if I spent $20,000 on a world cruise in 2030, could I still retire at 60? What if Social Security changed and for the next twenty years, the annual COLA is limited to 0.5%, could I still retire at 60? So on an so forth. These are all basic What-if scenarios that all of our retirement software will easily perform, and Money Tree can't.

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.

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

Golden Years Comparison Conclusions

The emperor has no clothes!

The following Golden Years 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, and it doesn't have a decent asset allocator 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 useless.

If their code programmers are "too lame" to make the critical calculations of accounting for replacements and annual pre-retirement cash flow surpluses and Deficits (in Easy Money, with average tax rates that are not possible), then how can you trust it to "do your clients' taxes?"

You're paying around $100 to $200 a year for their tax module, and I doubt very much that if you input the same data into TurboTax you'd get similar results.

So then you'll have to ask which program has the better tax numbers? A program that's dedicated to calculating taxes enough that many people actually use it to do their taxes, or a program that just barely gets you into the ballpark, programmed by people that can't even program something as critical as accounting for replacements and annual pre-retirement cash flow surpluses and deficits.

How can they be "The most trusted name in financial planning software" when it does little-to-nothing of actual value for more money? So it appears that Money Tree Golden Years, 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.

Instead of putting resources into making good software, they spent it on marketing, advertising, networking, schmoozing to get everyone else to join the Paris Hilton hey look at us we're so hot and trusted bandwagon.

Here's how they get most of their sales - I know because I get a call weekly from rookie Reps saying the same thing: "Yeah I'm a brand new Rep with X BD and I'm shopping for financial plan software. I "stumbled" across your site, and am wondering what you have. Everyone in our BD keeps saying, "Just use Money Tree, it's what everyone else does, we give you a huge group discount for being with X BD, and it's approved." So I was thinking about doing that."

If they're lucky - some BDs only "approve" of a small list of vendors. Then some only approve of Money Tree, so you're stuck with only being able to use that.

Since the newbie Rep is more than overwhelmed with being a newbie Rep, there's no time or attention span to do any actual research. Since this is their first rodeo, they don't even know where to start. So they just default to what their BD wants them to do, and another Money Tree sale is made.

Take a look at all of the BDs and connections they have on their site. There's a million images of firms that someone had to go out in-person and schmooze to. There's only so much resources, so when you spend it all on marketing, there's not much left for the actual products.

They spent the big resources on advertising, marketing, networking, and schmoozing to make it so Money Tree would be a household brand name (the American Funds biz model). But when you look at their software in the cold light of logic, "the emperor has no clothes." There's really not much there - just fluff, lots of white space, and little red meat in their plans. Just like American Funds.

Here's how to tell if a financial software vendor is "Broker Dealer software" or not: If the vendor's website has little-to-no About their software, then it's BD software. Why? Because when you're "paying the BDs kickback money" or are "stuck in a partnership" to get it BD approved, this creates a captive market.

So if you Ask your BD which software to use, they're just going to say, Money Tree or Profiles or NaviPlan, etc. They didn't do an evaluation, they're just defaulting to this choice because it's what everyone else does. When everyone else does something, then it's just easier to go along with the herd. What's hard, and consumes non-existent resources, is actually doing research and getting to the bottom of how things actually work. BDs don't have the resources to do that anymore.

So BD software vendors won't have any useful information on their websites other than some scant marketing fluff, contact info, then here's our software download the demo or buy now. That's it, little-to-no useful information. This is because they don't have to provide any information to entice users to buy it. Take a look at the Money Tree or the NaviPlan websites - there's little-to-nothing there at all, because it's not needed.

Users (Reps) are "forced" into buying it just because of the BD partnerships. So when you have the market locked up, there's no need to advertise on the Internet or care about how web searchers view your deals when seeking information. You're making more than enough money as it is, so why do all of that hard work? It's more trouble than it's worth, so they don't.

Comments from their Users (click to send a comment)

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Financial Planning Software Modules For Sale
(are listed below)

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

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

Retirement Planner Feature / Function	IFP: $500	Golden Years: $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
Asset Account Draw-Down Analysis Tools	Very Limited	Comprehensive
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	Yes, but probably not correctly
Integration with Other Financial Software and/or Ability to Download Account Holdings from Online Custodians	Yes to both	No
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(?)
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, a little better than Silver's
Ability to Project Life Insurance Needs into the Future	Yes	No, it only shows current needs
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	No
Monte Carlo Simulator on the College Planning Modules	Yes	Yes
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	Yes?
Total Control Over Social Security Between the Two People Separately	Yes	No? It looks like 65 is the earliest, not 60 or 62 like in the Real World
Ability to Change Social Security Income for Each Person Separately, AND in Every Year	Yes	No, it estimates SS, which is wrong because only the SSA can do that, so it's best to go online and get the actual numbers and then input them into the plan
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, not only that, SS is either taxed at ordinary income rates, or not at all, not 0%, 50% or 85% like in the Real World
Ability to Set the Age Social Security Starts for Both People Separately	Yes	Yes?
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	Yes
Ability to Include Any and All Sources of Annual Miscellaneous Incomes	Yes	Yes
Ability to Control Withdrawals Using IRS Age 70½ Required Minimum Distributions	Yes	Yes
Ability to Control Withdrawals Using IRS 72t Distributions	Yes, all three methods	Yes(?)
Investment Account Payout Methods	9	3
Ability to Change Asset Payout Methods Midstream	Yes	No
Ability to Start and Stop Asset Withdrawals at Any Year	Yes	Yes(?)
Ability to Start Asset Withdrawals After Retirement Has Begun	Yes	Yes?
Ability to Start a New Asset at Any Year (even after retirement has started for anyone)	Yes	Only when selling personal residence(?)
Ability to Set Asset Account Rate of Returns to be Whatever You Want in Any Year	Yes	Yes
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	Yes, somewhat
Ability to Simulate Roth IRAs and Conversions	Yes	Yes(?)
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	Yes(?)
Ability to See and Print All Miscellaneous Incomes and Expenses in Every Year	Yes	Yes
Displays the Present Value of Additional Capital Needed to Fund the Combined Income Goal Deficits in Every Year	Yes	No
Displays All Basic and Advanced Pertinent Retirement Planning Information	Yes, much more relevant data displays than any other retirement planner	No
Calculates and Displays How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal as Monthly Payments Until Retirement	Yes	Yes
Calculates and Displays How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal as a Current Lump Sum	Yes	Yes
Calculates and Displays How Much More Money is Needed to Reach the Retirement Goal as a Current Lump Sum in All Years	Yes	No
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
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	No
Lists All Non-Asset Incomes with Annual Amounts, Ages When They Start, COLA Inflation rates, and if it's Taxable or Not	Yes	Yes
Everything Everywhere Displays Year, Both Ages, and Year Numbers for Quick and Better Understanding	Yes	No
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
Control Over Pensions Between the Two People Separately	Yes	Yes
Ability to Set a Survivor's Pension to Pay Out Reduced Benefit After Death	Yes, with total control over annual amounts too	Yes
Ability to Set an Annual COLA Rate for Fixed Assets Like Defined Benefit Pension Plans and Annuitized Annuities	Yes	Yes
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 confusing
Displays When You'll Probably Run Out of Money (AKA "Gap funding")	Yes	Yes
Displays Annual Percent of Annual Income Goal Being Met	Yes	Somewhat
Displays Balance of Available Capital in Every Year With Percentage Increase or Decrease from the Previous Year	Yes	No
Displays the Average Weighted Rate of Return on All Investment Assets Combined in Every Year	Yes	No
Displays the Present Value of Additional Capital Needed at Retirement in Every Year	Yes	No
Displays the Present Value of Additional Capital Needed at Retirement in the Current Year	Yes	No
Number of Informative Charts and Graphs You can See While Working Already Set Up	Over 800	1 at a time
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	Yes(?)
Layers of Annual Inflation of Income Goals	5	1
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
Displays the Total Current Value of Assets and Total Current Annual Contributions	Yes	Yes, but not on the same report
Displays All Sources of Income and Tells Where They're Coming from in Every Year	Yes	Yes, but not on the same report
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 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	No(?)
Displays Detailed About How Much Retirement Income is Being Withdrawn from Each Asset Individually	Yes	Yes, but not on the same report
Has "Flexible Assets" that Pay Out Retirement Income Like Life Does in the Real World (AKA "as needed")	Yes	No, don't know how it works, but probably not "correctly" like the IFP's Flexible asset payout
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
Ability to Calculate Detailed Needs for Both Disability and Long Term Care Insurance	Yes	No
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	No
Ability to Turn Assets Providing Retirement Incomes On and Off Individually	Yes	Yes
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
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)	Yes, inside the program
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	Yes
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	No
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	Okay to bad, asset's don't seem to payout in a controlled fashion
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