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 Silver Review, Evaluation, and Comparison

Generic Description: Easy to use, simplified, integrated (but not comprehensive) financial planning software

Market: Financial advisors hunting for "rabbits" mostly working in Broker Dealer mode.

They say, "Silver is designed for the advisor who needs an uncomplicated, yet powerful tool..."

Every financial software program is complicated, so they chose to dumb things down to the BD Rep level (and then it's still just as complex as everything else).

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 with Asset Allocation Module.

Platform: Code-driven but they don't say what language. Their cloud version is . not ISO / IEC 27001:2005 cloud security certified.

Read why you should not be working in the clouds when it comes to financial planning software.

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

Price: $500 to $1,000.

For $1,000 you can buy everything on this site, which provides much more value than just a lite version of our IFP without the asset allocation module.

Annual Update Prices: Their $500 cloud-based program is $371 to renew, or 75%. The non-cloud version is $200 to renew, or 40%.

Tools For Money is only 50%.

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

Monte Carlo Simulator: Yes.

Buying Caveats: You 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 a salesy follow-up, which is fine.

I tried to download their Silver financial planner program, after having to input way too much personal information so their marketing department can contact me to get my money, and it didn't work. It just sat there and said "downloading" forever and nothing happened.

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 if you export to and then reinvent the wheel using Excel and/or use PDF exporting.

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

Delivery Methods: After online downloading (which didn't work), 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, unless you get the cloud version.

Read why you should not be working in the clouds when it comes to financial planning software.

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, or take the risks of working in the clouds, 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 Silver is a code-driven, simplified dumbed-down lite version of our IFP. So it's not as "hard to use" but only displays basic summaries of what the IFP shows.

It's integrated, but not comprehensive, because several modules don't do much more than a free online financial calculator (e.g., budget & cash flow, college planning, and life insurance needs modules).

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 software) then there are no features or functions Silver will perform that the IFP won't. In other words, everything Silver can do, you can do the same thing, but most of the time much better using the IFP.

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.

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.

Their left-hand menu is nice and simple (simple because the whole planner doesn't do very much, so no complex controls are needed). Then the Next and Previous buttons and being able to Press F1 and use their automatic help functions are nice too. Then having the directions inside the program could be nice if you like that (I'd much rather print out a user manual in paper and read it while the software is on the screen though as it's much less cumbersome).

All of this makes it much easier to use then the IFP, where you'd have to know what you're doing and why, where you're going and why, then find the right workbook, then click on the right sheet tab to either input or see something. These are advantages of using code, but the disadvantages outweigh them.

Download our sample financial plan from the sample financial plan page, then compare to their Dec '12 66-page Silver sample plan:
http://www.moneytree.com/Content/SampleReport/SilverSampleReports2010.pdf

Silver 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.

Their page 1 is just a lame version of our free cover page here: Confidential Report - Financial Plan Cover Page. You can only input your firm name on it, whereas ours is a Word docx you can customize.

Page 2 is just a lame version of our piece here: Personal financial plan introduction and disclaimer. You can't do anything with it and ours is a Word docx you can customize.

Page 3 is just a lame version of our piece here: A summary of discovery interview notes, objectives, and concerns. You can't do anything with it and ours is a Word docx you can customize.

Page 4 is just a lame version of our interview notes from the link above.

Page 5 is a simplified current net worth statement snapshot that can't be customized. Ours on the IFP is way better, and can be customized. See it on the sample financial plan PDF or the demo here.

Page 6 is just a lame version of the Asset & Misc. Summaries sheet on the IFP. Similar information and format, but less, not as good, and can't be customized, whereas ours can be.

Page 7 is also a similar page taken right from our Comprehensive Asset Allocation Software's Asset Allocator sheet - the Source and Application of Funds section.

Page 8: This page has information that's the same, again and as usual just not as good, as the Assumptions & Additional Need and Asset & Misc. Summaries sheets of the Financial Planner module of the IFP.

Page 9 is pretty much the same as the Asset & Misc. Summaries sheet of the Financial Planner module of the IFP.

Page 10 is the same chart, just missing the purple income goal data, as what's been on the IFP Financial Planner module's Graph sheet, and also in our RP program since '95, then the Graphs sheet of RWR since '99.

Then it has some recommended plans of action, just like our piece (Financial plan implementation checklist).

Then the text at the bottom "Increase your annual savings by $2,200/year ($183 month)." is the same additional monthly savings needed to reach your goal feature that's been on all of our retirement planners since '97.

Page 11 is just an explanation of Monte Carlo. Read why it matters not that their simulator performs 10,000 iterations by clicking the link above. Also read why our methodology is superior, because like most all other financial software, theirs only iterates two things, the investment rate of return and inflation. Ours also iterates the average tax rate, so it paints a more realistic picture of what may happen. This is why our probability numbers are much lower than theirs. Actually Money Tree's Monte Carlo simulator is better than most, because most only iterate the investment rates of return (like NaviPlan).

Page 12 is a "tornado" graph showing each result of the Monte Carlo simulation. It's just the same graph they copied as stated in "Page 10" above, then it shows a line for each of the outcomes. It's cool to look at, but has little-to-no Real World value to clients, so that's why we didn't make that chart on our retirement or college planners.

If I can't figure out what this section means at first glance (Retirement Capital Analysis Results, at Life Expectancy, of 10,000 Monte Carlo Simulations:), then no client will ever get it no matter how hard they try, which is why we don't have such things on our reports.

Pages 13 - 16 is just text and a few charts explaining their unique invention, that to me has little-to-no value. The whole "Dynamic Behavioral Analysis" deal is just something that says people will retire later and cut back on spending when needed. All of the ways to reach retirement goals if you don't have enough money, and how to input them to solve for goals, is explained in our user manuals. If this feature was explained better so it could be understood by dummies, then it would have value. I read it several times, and if I was dumbfounded by it, then your average financial planner and/or consumer / investor isn't going to have a clue. So to me, pages 13 - 16 are mostly useless.

On page 13, like many others, half the page is just blank. If you add up all of the blank white space, and just explanation text, their 66-page Silver sample plan would condense down to only about 15 pages of actual beef.

Page 17: Goal Evaluation. In the IFP, you don't guess about "essential expenses" like replacing the roof. You actually budget for it (using the Replacements sheet of Cash Flow Projector), then the pro-rata annual chunks it takes to buy it are accounted for.

Money Tree just says that there's a 44% chance that you're going to have to replace your roof over the long-run. This is bunk because it's going to be 100%. So it's best to actually account for it instead of not. So this is a difference between the way our IFP and Silver works. So you'll have to decide for yourself which way is best.

Then about the European Vacation shown on their sample plan: You'd account for this in the IFP this way: With the IFP, you can see both Current and Proposed versions at the same time. Money Tree Silver DOES NOT even perform this basic required financial planning function. So in the Current version, you do not input the vacation. Then in the Proposed version, you do. Then see the difference. Or you can do it vice-versa.

So with the IFP you can see the night and day difference in the whole plan by inputting a huge expense like this. I still barely get what the deal is with their deal, their text just confused me more, and if I don't, then both planners and their clients won't either. So which way is better is up to you.

Page 18: It took reading this a few times before I got it, but I don't get why anyone would care. So if I have to read their explanation a few times to just begin to understand, then again, clients are just going to glaze over it as another useless page that has no value to them.

I don't think this graph has any value in the Real World, which is why it wasn't made long ago. But if you want to know that, then you can see these annual numbers on the Summing & Input sheet of the Financial Planner module of the IFP (column BP). Then since this data is already there, you can make the same graph as theirs in a few minutes.

Remember that because the IFP is Excel-based, you can make all of the new charts and graphs you want, then format them to look just like any other software you're used to. With Money Tree, it's just going to spit out what it spits out when you click print, and there's nothing you can do about it, so you're totally stuck with its reports the way they are (unless you export them to Excel and then spend time reinventing that wheel).

Our graphs, which we have much more of and they're all more understandable, don't show things that normal people or dummies can't understand, so that's a big difference. So this time Silver appears to have a feature we don't, but with a minute's work, you can just add it and save it as your template so it will be there for all future plans made.

Page 19: This cash flow graph is very similar to ours, so nothing new here. You can see it in cell M394 on the Graphs sheet of the Financial Planner module of the IFP.

Page 20: This table is similar to the Annual Summary Numbers sheet of the Financial Planner module of the IFP. It doesn't look as nice, nor does it have as much information, but it's a lame version of the same things, just shown in a slightly different way. For example, all asset are lumped together in two columns (Retire / Roth Accounts & Investment Accounts), whereas ours just show these two combined in the Combined Annual Asset Income column J.

Then it's missing several columns of basic data people want and need to know compared to the IFP. If you want to show it this way on the IFP, then you can easily do that with a few minutes work.

Page 21: This text explanation of budgeting is similar to what we have here.

Page 22: Total Capital Assets graph. This page has a stacked graph breaking down qualified and non-qualified assets on one chart. They call all of your assets "Capital Assets" to be different (I don't like the way that sounds, they just made it up, so others probably won't either). This is something the IFP does not have, but again and as usual, you can make this graph yourself in a few minutes if you cared because the raw data is already there.

If the data is there, which it ALL is on the IFP because it's Excel-based, then you can make any and all of the new tables, charts, and graphs you want to.

Page 23: This table is similar to the Annual Summary Numbers sheet of the Financial Planner module of the IFP, but not as good.

Page 24: This page is unique for a change. The problem is that it's too confusing for dummies. At this point I have no idea how and why they can say, "Silver is designed for the advisor who needs an uncomplicated, yet powerful tool..." This page is the opposite of that, as are many others, so that's just telling dummy planners what they want to hear (they want to hear how they're going to make money without spending any time and doing hardly any work, which is just hype).

Contributions to investments are shown in table form on row 216 of the Results sheet of the Cash Flow Projectors, so this data is already on the IFP, so you won't have to make a new table if you want to show this information.

"Income Tax on Account" is already shown on the Taxes sheet of the Financial Planner module of the IFP.

There's no verbose explanations on this page like others, so there's all kinds of things that I have no idea what's going on. Maybe it's in the directions or you have to buy and attend a training class in the middle of Oregon or something. But one thing is for sure, if I don't get it, then dummy planners and their clients are not going to understand this page either. I'm the opposite of dummy, so if I don't get it, then 99% of everyone else won't either. So to me, it's another mostly useless page.

Page 25: This is a text page just showing annuities. I guess this is one reason why Broker Dealers "approve of it." In the RIA or DIY consumer / investor world, this page would have little-to-no value.

Page 26: This page is a table with basic About just the qualified assets (they call them Tax-Deferred Retirement Accounts, which is technically incorrect, the correct term is tax-qualified). This is a little interesting, and the IFP doesn't have it, other than all qualified assets being listed on the Net Worth Projectors. But after thinking about it, I don't see why many people would care. It provides little-to-no value in my opinion.

Page 27: This page is the same concept and table as page 26, but for non-qualified assets (which they incorrectly label as Tax-Free Accounts). The same blurbs apply as above.

Pages 28 - 36: These show the same graph of total investment assets as before, with the bottom line probability number from the Monte Carlo simulation. More than half of these page are just blank white space.

What they're doing here is showing the results of the simulation assuming that you're going to do things like reduce your income goal and/or retire one-year earlier (their dynamic stuff again).

This is something that the IFP displays in one cell - see G38 or S38 on the Assumptions & Additional Need sheet of the Financial Planner module.

All you'd need to do to get the same thing is change the income goal and/or reduce the year of retirement (both take about two seconds) and then run the simulation again. You can actually run real What-ifs using Excel's built-in Goal Seek function with the IFP, which you cannot do with Money Tree .

So they spent eleven or so pages (or ~15% of their sample plan) on tinkering with Monte Carlo simulations. You're going to have to decide yourself if this has any value or not. 15% of a financial plan devoted to something of little-to-no value seems like a huge waste to me, because I look at things from the client's point of view (news flash, they 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 a good smart 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 37 - 41: Page 37 is a mostly useless and mostly blank white space page showing how much life insurance they have.

Pages 40 and 41 show Susan & David Example both receiving Social Security retirement benefits when they're in their 40's. 60 is the earliest age you can collect retirement benefits, and that's only when you're a survivor. You can collect disability benefits before 60, but these numbers are on their life insurance needs report. So I have no idea what's going on here and unless someone tells me, I'm typing that this is a major bug in their software.

Silver has an okay life insurance module. Here's how it works when it comes to selling life insurance: Most of the charts and tables are not even close to being understandable by the client. So they'll see all of this and think, "Wow they did a great job at figuring out how much life insurance I need! Look at all of those numbers that I have absolutely no clue what any of them mean. I better just go along with the bottom line recommendation and buy what this agent is proposing or I'm going to look like a fool!" So instead of having to endure more talk about meaningless numbers that are impossible to understand, it's way easier just to fill out an application and write a check, hahaha!

Also, looking at the numbers, I bet if I got my calculator out, I'd find tons of flaws in their math too. And of course these "mistakes" will most always mean more face value is recommended than what's really needed, that's just the way things work in BD world.

Our life insurance module is able to do this type of work much better than Money Tree, which just has a very primitive life calculator, just a little better than free insurance calculators you can use online.

Page 42: Disability income needs report. You must be kidding me! The "most trusted source of financial planning software," and the best they can do is just take someone's "income" (they don't even indicate if it's gross or net) and then multiply it by 65% and that's their disability need? It didn't even attempt to calculate anything from actual cash flows. You can't get any lamer than that. And this is what BDs think will help their Reps sell DI?

So Silver's DI report is just text you could have done yourself in Word in a minute.

For Long Term Care, all you can do is input three levels of daily benefit, and that's what displays on their text page. There's little-to-no actual calculations using both the DI or the LTC inputs in the plan. So what you input basically just shows up in a field on a text page, and that's about it. You can do this in Word.

Here's how the IFP does it: See detailed differences between being disabled and not earning money with escalating expenses and not getting disability benefits in the Current version; with not earning money with escalating expenses and getting disability benefits in the Proposed version. Then you'd input increasing benefit levels in the Proposed version until they can reach their retirement and other financial goals. You can't do any of this valuable work at all with Silver, so it's mostly useless when it comes to their disability insurance needs module.

The same can be illustrated showing the catastrophic expenses of going into a nursing home. You'd input going into a nursing home without long term care insurance in the Current version, and then the same thing with LTC insurance benefits in the Proposed version.

Here are two retirement planning demos made using Dual RWR (the same thing as the Financial Planner module of the IFP) that show these two scenarios here and here. Note that you don't have to input any of your personal information into a form to get anything from us!

So the bottom line when it comes to both calculating the need for DI and LTC, is that Silver falls flat on its face, because it doesn't even calculate it. It doesn't even do a budget and cash flow projection, so it's impossible to calculate these actual needs. On the other hand, the IFP will dial these needs down to the dollar for both DI and LTC, so you can recommend the exact amount of benefits needed to purchase. It's work, and not "easy," but you can't do it at all using Silver.

Pages 43 - 45 are just generic text about long-term care that you can make yourself in a Word doc in a minute. Nothing stemming from input was used to generate anything on these pages.

Page 46: Just generic text about estate planning.

Pages 47 - 54: These are just pages showing more estate planning. Since THE WHOLE ESTATE PLANNING INDUSTRY DIED OFF IN 2010, this whole section of nine pages is totally useless. It looks like they didn't get the memo!

Then I looked at the date on their Silver sample financial plan - Aug 2010! The most trusted name in financial planning software can't even maintain mundane things like their sample plans! What does that say about their software?

Then since our software was out many years before theirs, it looks like they just copied a lot of it, and/or used our retirement planners as a starting point to build theirs. For example a lot of the reports way are too similar and have some of the same (used to be unique) features.

Like setting a life expectancy age to be different than the IRS calculated age (we had that in '96), we've been calling the people input into the example financial plan "Susan & David Example" years before they even existed ('92), and the hypothetical client in their interview PDFs is Mike which is my name. There's just way too many minor coincidences to note here.

Page 55: One whole page dedicated to college funding. The bottom line is that it's good that Silver even has a college planner when most BD financial plan software does not, but it's just a notch above having lame free online college calculators. So their DI, LTC, and college modules are all mostly useless.

The college planning modules of the IFP are the most comprehensive.

Pages 55 - 58 are just text about investing. Nothing that was input into the plan ends up here. So you could have just went online and copy some charts and graphs about portfolio optimizing and market returns and got all of the value of this part of Silver for free.

Then all of this text makes it look like Silver has a built-in portfolio optimizer, but it does not. It doesn't even have rudimentary asset allocation software, which the IFP again and as usual has the best of.

Pages 59 - 66 are just generic text about debts and half of it is blank white space.

They have a few financial calculators, like PV and FV, but this is something you can use for free online, then most pros use an HP-12C for that anyway.

What they and others call "gap funding" is just determining how much more money is needed to reach retirement goals. The amount of more money needed is just called the gap. So every retirement planner perform a gap analysis, because that's its primary function.

What Silver 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. None of Silver's planners let you perform this valuable retirement planning function.

About a third of their sample plan is either white space or text. If you got rid of the pages with mostly white space and the text pages, then there's really only a couple dozen pages of actual beef. With the IFP, you not only can get these same pages of beef, but dozens more. Then you can just make all of the same fluff pages you want yourself in Word in minutes.

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

Silver has a unique way of doing dealing with goals. They allow you to prioritize them and then use the Monte Carlo simulator to run versions with and without them. This is a cool feature if you like doing things this way.

The IFP will allow much more control over all of this, and then it displays a much more meaningful bottom-line Monte Carlo probability number. But like anything else, if you want control, there more work involved.

So Silver uses a more simple and dumbed-down way of doing all of this, which is fine for Reps working in Broker Dealer mode. This is because doing a ton of hard work to create a financial plan which may or may not result in getting paid. For example, after doing all of this work, you present the plan. Then if your prospects want to "think about it" and didn't buy loaded American Funds and/or life insurance company products, all of your efforts went for naught because you not only didn't get paid, you worked for free.

An RIA planner that's actually getting paid to do the analysis would rather be able to control all of this to get a much more realistic financial plan. That's why they buy the IFP and not Money Tree. It's just the difference in underlying business models when it comes to getting paid. You tend to be willing to do more of the work people are hiring you for when you know you'll get paid.

Their pension input screen has an automatic feature that the IFP does not - it allows you to have two different rates of returns, one for pre-retirement and one for retirement. The thing is, does anyone know anyone that has a DB pension that works like this? Never seen it. Defined benefit pension plans do not even have a pre-retirement rate of return, then they're annuitized when paying out.

Then it has an input so if you want to model someone dying, the survivor will get a reduced amount (or a lump sum). This is a nice automatic feature. But you can very easily do all of this on the Income sheet of the Cash Flow Projectors module of the IFP. Not only that, you can also control every year's pension income down to the Dollar. Then the way their inputs are when it comes to pensions, and how many each can have, it looks like they just copied it from RWR years ago, as it's too similar (same with the earned income inputs too).

Then they made an expensive investment into gathering college costs from many schools. So it has a built-in database of estimated college costs. So someone at Money Tree has to ether constantly do all of this work manually, or they partnered up with someone that does this work manually, then the end results of that flows into their planners, for the proverbial small fee, of course.

The point is that no matter how the work is done, someone (you the planner) has to pay for it. So this increases the cost (just like Maintaining the expensive estate planning module after estate planning died out). Then this data gets outdated weekly as colleges change their deals.

So the IFP does it a "better way" by not increasing the cost of the software, but it makes you manually input college costs. You get these fresh numbers by either going to the college's website, getting their hard copy paperwork by mail, or calling them on the phone.

Also another problem with doing it "automatically" is that if there's a glitch in the system, you could be inputting annual college costs of $10,000 a year, when that particular college just changed their deal last week and now it's $15,000. That's going to put a big crimp in client's Real World financial plan when that chicken comes home to roost, and guess who's going to hear about that "error" - you.

So think hard about if this function has any value to you, and if it's worth it making the cost of Silver go up by a few dozen bucks. It was decided long ago, before Money Tree even existed and after seeing the errors in other vendors work in this area, that having college costs automatically populate in the college planners was more trouble than it was worth.

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 things like: Cash, Income, Income & Growth, Aggressive Growth, Growth, Balanced, Conservative, Very Conservative, Miscellaneous, and Other.

In case you didn't know, these are not asset classes, they're mutual fund objective categories. 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, "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 on a path to financial security today!"

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

On the Assets: Add or Modify Assets input screen, you can select what type of tax-wrapper, if any, the asset is wrapped up in. So all you have to do is click "Roth" and it's supposed to account for the tax wrapper in the calculations. No idea if it actually does that because their program download didn't work. Then because their program is code-driven, it has no transparency, at all, so there's probably no way to verify any of their numbers. The IFP is totally transparent.

On the IFP, you account for the tax wrapper by inputting a tax inclusion rate on each asset's withdrawal income. So you'd just input 0% for a Roth and 100% for a traditional IRA. It's sort of the same input, but the difference is if what you input is actually accounted for at all in Silver? Based on what I've seen so far, there's a good chance that all this does is put a text label next to the asset in the reports.

For example, if you choose Savings and Investments from the Account Taxation menu, then Checking Account from the Asset Type menu, does it actually account for any tax from this yield? If so, then where's the yield input? Couldn't find it. How do you distinguish between yield and unrealized capital gains? I don't see that either. So in my opinion it's not used, therefore hardly any of this is going to be accounted for correctly in the plan.

Because of this, it looks like the only way assets pay out is what we call the "Flexible" way, which is "when needed." So the other eight ways the IFP can be used to withdraw money from assets, can't be modeled with Silver at all. I didn't see a switch to use age 70½ Required Minimum Distributions (but it's probably there), but there's no way to model paying out via 72t.

Setting rates of return on assets: In my opinion, Silver falls flat on its face here too. You set asset rates of return on a category basis. Then you only have two settings, before and after retirement. So when you input an asset, it automatically gets assigned the same rate of return as similar assets. So it looks like if you have a CD from two different banks, one at 1% and one at 2%, then you can't account for that (without doing a lot more not easy work).

With the IFP, inputting asset returns works the way Real World life does. You'd input the generic rate of return into each asset individually, then you can set it to be whatever you want it to be in every year of its life, complete total control. It looks like you can use their Age Tables for that, but it's not clear if Silver can use those or if it's just for Easy Money. Then that makes it "hard to use and not easy."

Contributions to assets: Silver works the way all other financial plan software works, other than the IFP. You input annual additions, the year they start and stop, and that's it. Then it looks like the annual inflation or growth rate of contributions can only be controlled via three set categories. It's unclear whether their Age Tables will allow for more control, or Silver even uses it, so better call for support.

The IFP allows you to have total control over every aspect of contributions down to the dollar every year, both before and after retirement. It looks like you can't contribute to assets after retirement has begun at all with Silver, which is the way most code-driven financial plan software works. This is because it's just way too hard to program all of that using code, whereas Excel just magically does all of work this for you (because Microsoft programmed the code).

There's no "debt module" comparison, because the IFP doesn't do a debt analysis. This is because the IFP's target market are both RIAs working for people with actual money and DIY investors with actual money. They rarely have "debt problems." Nobody has ever asked for that on the IFP. So you'll have to decide if their debt management module is worth it or not yourself.

So this is just a difference between what these financial tools are used for: All of Money Tree's programs are for rabbit hunting in BD mode (trying to get "poor-to-middle-income people" to buy life insurance company products and American Funds), and the IFP is for high-net worth investors that have little-to-no need for life insurance (because estate planning is over), and no need for disability insurance or long-term care insurance (because they usually don't work because they have more than enough money to cover all of this already), and most always have no debt problems. So not having a debt module is just because it's different software for a different market of "consumers."

As far as What-if analysis goes, Silver performs a little 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.

While this is much better than other planners, the bottom line is that it only performs about a dozen What-if scenarios. But then you must realize that these are not actually What-if scenarios. So they're just using the wrong terminology here for sales and marketing purposes (they know the average new BD Rep won't know the difference). What they're actually doing is changing a few inputs and then running a new Monte Carlo simulation. This is not performing What-if analysis, it's completely different.

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.

Their Summary Report: This is a great feature that happens automatically inside the code. But on the other hand, you can just make a Word doc in a few minutes to show exactly what this shows, you can make it look exactly the same if you want to, and you can customize and add new stuff to it all you want. So it's a cool feature that you're paying for, but it's also one of the most important pages, so it's best that you do it yourself and not rely solely on what you're stuck with when the program prints.

It's also good that 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 just to reinvent the printing wheel (and then you'll have to learn how to print in Excel just as if you bought the IFP), but money too.

That's it, believe it or not; that's all there is to Money Tree Silver.

Silver Comparison Conclusions

The emperor has no clothes!

They say, "Silver is designed for the advisor who needs an uncomplicated, yet powerful tool..." Every financial software program is complicated, so they chose to dumb things down to the BD Rep level (and it's still just as complex as everything else in this space).

So they're targeting advisors that are new, low on the food chain pyramid, aren't too bright without time and attention span to do any research on their software, and just want to do a very rudimentary financial plan in hopes of making quick-and-easy commission-based sales of loaded mutual funds and life insurance company products.

If they were targeting "smart advisors," then they wouldn't tout that it's not complicated, and their plans would have much more beef and display much more useful information (less than 20% of their sample plan is actual "beef").

If they were targeting the wealthy (elephant hunting) and the RIA market, like the IFP, then Silver would not even have a module for debt reduction (which is just mostly text and doesn't actually do anything). Why? Because wealthy people don't have problem debts, like credit cards.

So the evidence leads one to believe that Money Tree Silver is for newer BD Reps working with lower- to middle-income people with low- to middle-net worths. This is AKA "rabbit hunting."

Whereas the IFP with the Comprehensive Asset Allocation Software module is for high-net worth clients that pay the advisor enough to make it worth spending the time to create an actual financial plan full of more beef than fluff. The point is that for less money, you can get the IFP and then you can both hunt for rabbits and elephants - it all depends on how much time you spend inputting.

The following Silver 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:

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

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

So much for the "premier source of the most trusted financial planning software." If they can't even get their main downloads to work, their sample plan shows people receiving Social Security benefits when they're in their 40's, all the math on their disability module does is multiply current income by 65%, and their three-year-old sample plan still has an estate planning report based on old tax law, then what does that say about the amount of bugs they have in their actual software? None of what I've seen builds any trust with Me, just the opposite.

It doesn't even show Current vs. Proposed, it doesn't have an asset allocator nor a decent cash flow, college funding, DI, or LTC modules. So most everything you'd expect the "most trusted vendor" to have adequately covered, they just don't have.

Then ~80% of their going on three year-old sample plan is just text you could have made in Word. So there's little beef in their software. Compared to the IFP, there's so little beef that it's a joke (you and your clients are the butt of the joke).

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 totally useless. You'd need over $5M to even have a need for estate planning, and that's 100 times more than the average rabbit has to work with.

It looks like their life and other insurance modules don't actually do anything either. You'd input names and data for life policies, but then all this seems to do is go to a text field in a page of text. I didn't see where you can click anything and see a scenario as if someone actually died in the actual plan. So little-to-none of it goes to pre-retirement cash flow, because it barely accounts for cash flows in the first place (after the first year).

The IFP will allow you to make a separate version showing the long-term financial plan as if someone died, was disabled, and/or went into a nursing home. Then you can use any of these scenarios as the Current plan, and then input the insurance needed to solve that problem in the Proposed plan, and then it actually does the math regarding all of that (accounting for both the premiums and benefits).

What's the cash value of their life policies used for in the calculations? Why can you input a term policy on a different input page than the whole life? What are these numbers used for? Why would you click the button that says, "Use policy death benefit in retirement projection?" Dunno. Maybe they want you to use a viatical settlement, where you sell your life policy to someone? Call for support.

There's text all over their work that doesn't even make any sense, uses technically incorrect wording, and is just wrong. For example, "Interest will is taxed " Is that even English? What banana boat did their programmers come from? Are they in India or what? 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 from the most trusted leader? You'd think they'd at least hire an outside proofreader to correct all of their many typos and grammatical errors.

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 Silver, 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."

Just like AIG used to only approve of NaviPlan before they went both under again - great business model, huh? AIG went under during the meltdown requiring a $182 Billion tax-payer bailout, then EISI "went under" and had to be sold to Advicent, so both Financial Profiles and NaviPlan are owned by Advicent (which is owned by a Midwest life insurance company) now. This should have been a wake-up call for doing biz this way, but instead, most BDs just replaced their default NaviPlan software with Money Tree, schmoozed to get it "approved" then carried on with the same business as usual model.

Since the newbie Rep is more than overwhelmed with being a newbie Rep, there's no time or attention span to do any actual software 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. Isn't life way easier using the good-ol-boy you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours (AKA kickbacks) cartel / cabal quasi-monopoly way of doing business?

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.

So if a vendor is not part of this "BD approved cartel / cabal," then they have to write a lot about their products to provide enough information to both get ranked highly by search engines, and get this non-captive market to make a more intelligent buying decision. So if a vendor, like us, has tons of About financial planning software, then it's because they don't enjoy being part of this monopoly cartel / cabal. They have to duke it out alone in the Real World with other competitors in the same boat.

Other than their Monte Carlo simulator having a few more not understandable features, an estate planner, and their debt and goal sections, there is NOT ONE function that Silver will perform that the IFP will not. It's IFP lite for dummies that care more about making quick and easy life insurance company product sales than creating a detailed comprehensive financial plan that will accurately project someone's financial life far into the future.

So that's why many BD Reps use Silver and why little-to-no RIAs without a BD do not. I have yet to hear of an RIA without a BD connection, or a DIY investor, buy any Money Tree planners, and I hear people's stories almost daily.

Read all about the basic concepts of why Money Tree is BD approved here.

Silver Online: About why you should not work in the cloud as a financial advisor.

Comments from their Users (click to send a comment)

"I�ve already bought Money Plan Silver for the year, though I probably won�t renew it because its limitations have already driven me crazy." Jerry, Dec '12

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

Financial Planner Features and Functions	IFP: $500	Silver Financial Planner: $500
Annual Update Prices	$135	$200 (the cloud version is $500 to renew)
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	No, it has an Investment Risk Tolerance input, but it's not used for much of anything other than text
Number of Asset Classes their Asset Allocation Software Uses	Unlimited	11 and then a few are customizable
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	Very limited, for example, pre-retirement expenses are withdrawals from assets, when they should just come out of the budget. So this is incorrect for several reasons
Integration with Other Financial Software and/or Ability to Download Account Holdings from Online Custodians	Yes to both	No to both
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 very limited and without control over much
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
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	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	Yes
Monte Carlo Simulator on the College Planning Modules	Yes	No
Ability to Designate a Retirement 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
Ability to Easily Make a Proposed Plan from Current Plan Data	Yes	Yes
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	Yes(?)
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 Set the Age Social Security Starts for Both People Separately	Yes	Yes(?)
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
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
Control Over Pensions Between the Two People Separately	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	No(?)
Investment Account Payout Methods	9	It appears to only pay out using what the IFP calls "Flexible payout," didn't see a place for these options
Ability to Change Asset Payout Methods Midstream	Yes	No
Ability to Start and Stop Asset Withdrawals at Any Year	Yes	No
Ability to Start Asset Withdrawals After Retirement Has Begun	Yes	No
Ability to Start a New Asset at Any Year (even after retirement has started for anyone)	Yes	No
Ability to Set Asset Account Rate of Returns to be Whatever You Want in Any Year	Yes	No(?)
Ability to Have Total Control Over How Much Asset Account Contributions are, and When They Start and Stop Annually	Yes	No(?)
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
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	No
Ability to See and Print All Miscellaneous Incomes and Expenses in Every Year	Yes	No
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	No(?)
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	No
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
Lists All Non-Asset Incomes with Annual Amounts, Ages When They Start, COLA Inflation rates, and if it's Taxable or Not	Yes	Somewhat
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
Ability to Set an Annual COLA Rate for Fixed Assets Like Defined Benefit Pension Plans and Annuitized Annuities	Yes	Yes
Displays When You'll Probably Run Out of Money (AKA "Gap funding")	Yes	Yes
Displays the Amount of Annual Deficits When You'll Probably Run Out of Money	Yes	No
Displays Annual Percent of Annual Income Goal Being Met	Yes	No
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	No
Ability to Control Income Goal Inflation Rates Both Automatically and Also Set Them to be Whatever You Want in Every Year	Yes	No
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
Displays All Sources of Income and Tells Where They're Coming from in Every Year	Yes	Somewhat
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	No
Displays Detailed About How Much Retirement Income is Being Withdrawn from Each Asset Individually	Yes	No
Has "Flexible Assets" that Pay Out Retirement Income Like Life Does in the Real World (AKA "as needed")	Yes	Yes
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
Displays How Much in Investment Assets are Needed to Fund Annual Income Goals After All Sources of Non-asset Incomes are Accounted For	Yes	Yes
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	Rudimentary, only a few pages of basic data
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, but it's 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) then they have a cloud based version of Silver
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	None (not even the "audit trail" that Easy Money has)
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, there's a free stand-alone financial calculator for that, but results don't flow into the program
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
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