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

NaviPlan Review, Evaluation, and Comparison

All of the basic information is here now

NaviPlan Comparison Conclusions; Comments, Opinions, and Observations

NaviPlan fixed the cash flow calculation error that made it look like money will last several years more than it really would in late 2013.

NaviPlan is integrated and comprehensive financial planning software. The IFP is not comprehensive, because it doesn't have a tax, business, stock option, or an estate planning module.

Other vendors that say their financial plan software is comprehensive are fibbing, because there's usually at least one major module (tax) that's either missing, or so lame that it doesn't count.

NaviPlan Select handles retirement planning, education funding, insurance analysis, tax analysis, employee stock options, business planning, estate planning, and GST calculations. It includes both goal-based and cash flow-based financial planning. It is only available in the clouds.

They say their market share is more than the next three competitors combined, but everything I've ever seen says MoneyGuidePro sells more. According to most online reports (which some are just hype done by the MoneyTree people themselves), MGP is the #1 financial planning software vendor.

The only reason why "dummy advisors with adult attention span deficit disorder" (AKA ADHD) use MoneyGuidePro and MoneyTree (which are incapable of calculating numbers correctly, it's main function), and not NaviPlan, is because NaviPlan is "real actual financial planning software." Real financial software is "hard to use" and "fake" financial plan software is "easy to use."

NaviPlan Select (and the IFP) doesn't claim to be easy to use, because it's actually accounts for critical things, and lets you can control things, which means there are actual controls; and the more controls there are, the less easy to use it is.

Whoever is in charge of writing their text, isn't up on basic stuff. They say (here: http://www.eisi.com/_assets/pdf/client_reports/annotated/NaviPlan/asset_allocation_assessment.pdf):

"What is Asset Allocation? Asset allocation is the process of aligning your risk tolerances, financial objectives, and investment time horizon to your investment portfolio. Selecting different asset types (commonly known as asset classes) may reduce the risk of your overall investment portfolio."

WRONG!!! That's close, but no cigar, to being the definition of a Model Portfolio.

Everything you ever wanted to know about asset allocation and much more is here, and is correct. Here's the definition from there: Asset Allocation: The art and science of how money gets divided up between different asset classes to lower risk and increase returns. This is also known as optimizing an investment portfolio, making it more efficient. Asset classes are how different types of investments are categorized to distinguish them from one another. For example, CDs, bonds, stocks, gold, and real estate are different in terms of risk, reward, taxation, and income.

NaviPlan is the most popular financial planner used by "tax managers" (they like to get people in the door by telling them they can reduce taxes, then they "let the tax tail wave the investment management dog"). That may seem like a sound business strategy, but the long-term results of actual investment portfolios in the Real World don't add up. In other words, an investment portfolio created using sound asset allocation techniques will greatly outperform (with less risk) a similar portfolio constructed with saving taxes as its primary objective (even after accounting for the tax savings). So this is where this old industry expression came from.

News flash: You never ever want to let the tail of anything, especially ETFs, wag the whole investment planning dog. Also, after watching the long-term health of several financial planners that operate like this, it's not such a sound strategy after all. Because of the low tax rates in the first dozen years of the 21^st century, not one of them that I've kept track of has done well. Just the opposite, they've ALL imploded, every single one of them (mostly because they were big into estate planning, which dried up in 2010). So the old tried and true 20^th century Waddell & Reed-like commission-based business model of getting the first appointment by using this old hat prospecting script failed in the 21^st century, "C'mon on in to my office and I'll share ideas with you about SAVING TAXES, making more money, and changing and transforming your life for the better!"

It's overpriced, you'll have to buy it for two years, you'll have no choice but to assume the risks of cloud computing, and then their reports are very weak.

About the calculation error they fixed in 2013: In addition to the many minors "errors" experienced, there are also some major ones too. For example, the way assets internally account for their cash flows.

The IFP does it like this: Withdrawals happen first, then contributions, then the growth rate is applied to the balance.

As you know, in the financial world, these tiny numbers compound annually. So even though they may seem insignificant, they add up and grow to be life-eating monsters over time.

This methodology is sometimes a personal preference, but here's all there is to type using logic, facts, and math:

• The bottom line results are that it makes the retirement plan run out of money about two years later than the IFP. I worked with an actual user and spent all day on this once. We ran several scenarios, and every time, the NaviPlan had an extra two years.

• So the way the IFP does it is more conservative and matches the Real World much better. NaviPlan paints a much more rosy scenario. This is not only more dangerous, but it shows less of a need to invest. One should always choose the more conservative path in the biz, for both the best interest of the clients, and to stay out of real trouble.

• The way the IFP does it is like withdrawing all of the year's income need out all at once at the beginning of the year, then putting it all into a checking account that does not accrue interest, and then taking what's needed out of that to spend monthly. This is not far from what people actually do in the Real World.

• The way NaviPlan does it is like taking out an interest-free loan for the whole year's income need at the beginning of the year. Then every month when income is needed to spend, it's just magically there to spend. So not having to pay any interest on it, and the fact that it's still inside the account growing and compounding - makes it like free money appearing like magic out of nowhere. Then it's all paid back at the end of the year when the withdrawal comes out of the account. If you know where to get a deal like this in the Real World, I really need to know that, because I'll take that deal just to get the interest on the spread! In other words, it's a total fantasy and does not exist anywhere in the business world (this is the basis behind the whole banking industry).

Then after receiving this annual chunk of interest-free money to spend at the first of the year, it ignores the fact that if the markets or interest rates go down, most people's incomes go down too. So with NaviPlan, not only do you get a huge interest-free loan at the beginning of the year, with the money remaining inside accounts free to grow and compound at the average growth rate inputted, this chunk of free money is the same regardless of how the financial markets behave during the whole rest of the year.

So the way NaviPlan does it is like "having your cake and eating it too," which is incorrect. Every way this methodology is evaluated is wrong. There's nothing right about any of it. The way the IFP does it is correct, and much more closely matches what actually happens in the Real World. So it's obvious which way is better for clients.

This rosy scenario is also responsible for the result of their Monte Carlo simulation being 5% to 10% higher than it should be. So if you're seeing a 30% probability number, then if this bug was fixed, it would reduce to around 23%.

So if you're a consumer / investor working from a NaviPlan, you need to know that in the Real World, your retirement savings will probably run out about two years before your retirement plan says it will. This is HUGE deal that you need to pay attention to!

Then another enormous problem is when it's married to a database of historical returns, which allows you to select a prior time frame's rolling ten-year return data. When you can go way way way back in time like this, to a period so foreign to our current reality that it's like being on another planet, this increases the end probability number by 5% to 10%.

So you're telling people their plan has X% probability of success, when in reality, it's up to less than half as much. This is because if you just let it use Ibbotson stock market return data going back to 1926, it's going to be using rates of return that are almost twice as high as you'll actually see these days. So if you do that, then it will be iterating annual average annual rates of around 9% to 12%, when you know the probable band of 10-year average rolling returns nowadays have been permanently lowered to around 6% to 9%.

So this is an example of a Monte Carlo simulator being allowed to run amok like a wild animal, just like a portfolio optimizer. You think you're doing the "right thing" for people by using the very longest averages possible, but it turns out that this is moving your plan from reality into fantasy land, and this is not serving anyone well. Just the opposite - you're setting people up for a major life failure, which again and as usual, this major ERROR is NOT covered by your E&O insurance (especially after you've just read and then ignored all of this. So as soon as you've read this, NaviPlan's "negligence" is now passed onto you).

When a very simple sample financial plan was input in the IFP, and the same data input into NaviPlan - the IFP's Monte Carlo number was 17% and NaviPlan's was 31%. So let's say that their number is 5% too high just because of using dangerously optimistic returns, then 2% of the difference is from NaviPlan not iterating inflation, and 2% from not iterating taxes, 2% is from the egregious errors in the way their assets accounts for cash flows, then the rest is just from the combination of all of these rosy scenarios compounding upon each other.

So that's why NaviPlan's bottom line Monte Carlos probability numbers are so rosy sky high. So it tells people their chances of plan success are twice as high as they really are, on top of it projecting their plan will last two years more than it probably will (because of the egregious errors in the way their assets account for cash flows).

Their net worth projections graph is good, and is about the same as our IFP. But it's very primitive-looking. That's it? Yes it is, now check out all of the cool stuff on the IFP's Net Worth Projector modules (see the Projected Net Worth Tables sheet) that you can easily customize, add more of, choose to ignore, etc.

When modeling a disability or long-term care analysis, you can only model one person receiving benefits (not both). This is a typical code limitation, and you can accurately model anything you want to in this area with the IFP (because there's zero "code limitations" because the heavy lifting of writing uber-complex code was done by a little company called Microsoft).

Then if you're not using a high plan level, and aren't paying attention, then LTC benefits may start only at age 80, then the client may be automatically killed off at age 84. So you'll have to manually edit both of these to match reality.

All of the details of a disability or LTC policy paying out can easily be done much better and more realistically using the Cash Flow Projectors with just a little more manual input than with NaviPlan.

Their asset snapshots table is primitive-looking, and are missing dollar and percent signs on everything. The same page of our IFP and RWR are much better, and shows much more valuable information. See the Asset & Misc. Summaries and Assumptions & Additional Need sheets of the Financial Planner module (or RWR or Dual RWR - same but better for several times less money).

They call Client and Spouse, Client and Co-client.

They call Personal Assets, Lifestyle Assets.

They call Investment Assets, Accounts.

What we call "income goals" they call "core expenses," so nothing new.

Life insurance premiums automatically stop being an expense at age 65, so that's another error. The program just assumes you're going to stop paying premiums at 65.

Their DI & LTC input screens are good, and cover everything relevant, but you can do all of this with more precision and control using the IFP's Cash Flow Projectors with just a little more work.

The "How am I doing button" gives the same number that shows in the IFP's cell L6 of the Annual Summary Numbers sheet of the Financial Planner module. So you don't have to click on anything to see it, because it's always there.

The IFP has the same thing as NaviPlan's "What are my options" feature. See cell B36 of the Assumptions and Addition Need sheet of the Financial Planner module. So this is always there too and there's No need to click on anything to see it.

The only thing else NaviPlan has in this area, is that it automatically displays how many years retirement would have to be delayed to make this number go to 100%. You'd have to lower this age manually with the IFP and then go back there to see if it did the job or not. Actually, all you'd need to do is change the retirement age, then look at the graph at the top of the Master Input sheet. That shows the plan's bottom-line for quick and simple answers.

It looks like "Lifestyle Assets" are hard-wired to grow only at 2%? This is a program limitation, because you'll need to be able to set them to what they usually are in the Real World, which is -5% for most "stuff," -15% for vehicles, etc.

The titles on all of their reports say "NaviPlan" on them, so all of that would have to be deleted if I were making plans for clients, because I don't like being distracted in plan presentations with non-relevant questions like, "What does NaviPlan mean?"

A feature is the ability to click a button and a plan is duplicated (so you can make a new version with one click and a rename). This is great considering it's code-based, but in Excel, all you'd need to do is copy the IFP files to another location and the same end result happens. Then with the IFP, you can do this an unlimited amount of times, and I think you can only do that in NaviPlan a few times.

Liabilities look like you just input Pmt, I, & PV, so you can't tinker with anything? Then you'll need to do an extra step when inputting a liability, or it won't "link" to the asset. With the IFP, you input an asset's liability directly into that asset's input area, so there's no extra step needed.

In general, even though it has all of the best calculation engine, detailed modules, great interfaces, plenty of control, good integration, and all of that - no matter how you look at it - their reports are severely lacking in all areas. Most of their reports use the same lame two-bar or two-pie chart with the same table.

I expected to see a diverse set of tables and charts, like the IFP (with over 800), but it's mostly the same few to a dozen charts, tables, and graphs, just with different numbers in them (so they're mostly "recycled"). So even though it has good text in them, this is a severe limitation. So they made reports go to PDF and then you can export them to Word, using cumbersome mail merge procedures. So most planners export the whole plan into Word, then use that combined with Excel, to make much better charts and graphs (also, this is where you can edit their text). So in order to get the same control over printing needed to convey critical information to clients, you'll need to "reinvent the printing wheel" with NaviPlan. You'll need to print from code, and then use other programs to get what you want. With the IFP, you'll get what you want directly.

The percent and dollar signs are missing all over the place, and there's just not much information that's both understandable or useable when the rubber meets the road. So this is about the only thing to "whine about" (other than their calculation malfunctions, having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to printing, and many other usability limitations). So if you want to convey important information to clients, you're back to spending time converting PDF to Word, then copying that into Excel to make better charts and graphs, then it's back to customizing, formatting, and printing the final reports in Word.

Here's the total charts, tables, and graphs of the IFP that you can just print directly:

Financial Planner Module: 81 charts & graphs, 15 tables
Cash Flow Projectors: 58 graphs, 38 tables
Net Worth Projectors: 342 graphs, 78 tables
College Planners: 324 graphs, 56 tables
Asset Allocator: 21 graphs, 29 tables
And if that's not enough, you can add as many more as you like, because ALL of the raw data is there somewhere, which is all totally hidden with code-based programs. Plus you have complete control over most all existing graphs and tables. Just a little different, huh? For a dozen times less money too.

I didn't do a review to evaluate the benefits of their business planning module. That's a module the IFP does not have, and is unique to NaviPlan. So you'd need to compare that to stand-alone programs that specialize in just very small-based businesses.

You're able to bypass calculating detailed taxes and can use just a global average tax rate, like the IFP does (the way things should be). So this is huge advantage of NaviPlan over most of the MoneyWhatevers' fake financial plan software.

Clients provide answers to the Ibbotson asset-allocation questionnaire, and based on the resulting risk / reward score, one of five portfolios is recommended. In their samples, they range from an aggressive portfolio (with an expected return of 11.09% and an expected standard deviation of 18.70%) to a conservative portfolio (with an expected return of 5.86% and a standard deviation of 6.60%).

At least it has something in this area that actually works, but it's nothing compared to our Comprehensive Asset Allocation module that comes with the IFP.

If you don't buy the Ibbotson asset allocation module, then it doesn't come with their investment fact finder, so you'd need to get that from somewhere else.

NaviPlan, with the Ibbotson module, so far appears to be the only Investment software (other than ours) that actually helps in making asset allocation decisions. Morningstar doesn't even perform this basic function. Then, like ours, if you don't like the recommended mix, you can easily ignore it and use whatever you want. So this is a huge advantage with NaviPlan Select, compared to all other vendors in this market (except the IFP of course, which does this better than anyone else).

Ibbotson's investment fact finder has always been "lame," just like all of their software in general. I got stuck using their full suite with their best portfolio optimizer in '97 and it was so terrible that we had to buy Wilson's too, so all of that money was wasted. Then in 2001, the sales guy lied about it having a "screening funnel" similar to Morningstar (that has the patent on that), so we had to buy Morningstar again too. Then there was a war about getting a refund, so we could buy Morningstar (which was sad because I was hoping I could finally fire them once and for all!). I can't remember even one thing Ibbotson's program had that was of any value whatsoever compared to the competition in the dozens of times I got stuck using it. This is why Wilson, CDA, and Morningstar cleaned their clock to the point that eventually Roger Ibbotson decided to bag it all, and sell out to Morningstar for around $65M in 2006 (http://corporate.morningstar.com/us/asp/subject.aspx?xmlfile=374.xml&filter=508).

You can click the �What Are My Options?� button for "advice." Here, the application will come up with common solutions such as knowing how much of a lump sum is needed to meet the goal, or how much in monthly savings would be required to meet the goal, or it could otherwise postpone retirement until the goal is met. This is a good feature, because you'd have to change inputs with the IFP to see the latter (the first two are always there with the IFP, so you don't have to click on anything to see them).

You can add summaries to most report sections. In addition, you can insert custom objectives, goals, and actions into most reports. But most planners don't do this. They want much more control over printed reports, so most export / mail merge the PDFs into Word and edit everything that way. This kind of custom manual editing (in Word and/or Excel) is the same that you'd be doing with the IFP. So even though Premium has a slightly better engine, and more modules, if falls down flat when it comes to reports. In case you didn't know, all of that "cool and easy to read text" on all of their reports - if you like that so much, then you can just copy and paste that, and/or whatever you want, into the IFP's reports. If you can barely use Word and/or Excel, then you can make much better looking reports with vastly superior relevant information using the IFP.

I didn't see a section to account for replacement costs though, so it looks like if you wanted to do that, then you'd have to do somehow it manually and then make a new cash flow expense for it. So be careful when you use it make long-term assumptions about goal funding, because there could be other things it doesn't do well here too, making future projections unrealistic.

In general, when you leave the world of "cash flow-based" planning and enter the world of "goal-based" planning, reality stops and fantasy starts (and that's not what clients are paying you for - they're paying you as a professional for reality, not easy-to-use fantasy). NaviPlan claims to be able to do both, which is like saying you can drive forwards and backwards at the same time.

Accounting for odd cash flows is cumbersome with NaviPlan. For example, if you want to show an expense being reduced, either permanently or have it go away and come back later, you pretty much "can't do that." All you can really do is set an expense starting year, an annual inflation rate, and then an ending year.

So if you want to model anything different than that, then you'd need to do all of this manually, by making that expense stop, then make a new expense with the new values. So you can do it, but it creates fragments in the plan, and this makes it even less easy-to-use than the IFP. With the IFP, this is all seamless on the Cash Flow Projectors, and you can account for detailed changing annual expenses of the Real World with ease for all expenses in every year.

It has a screen where you can see if adding goal funding will produce deficits or not. This is much better than goal-based programs (like MoneyGuidePro and MoneyTree that being called financial planning software is a joke). But our IFP also does this, because you can just look at the annual cash flow surpluses / deficits row and you can see all of this even better - because you can see all years in the 75-year window all at once. With NaviPlan, you can only see if adding additional savings to fund a goal is causing deficits in one-year (then you have to assume it's only for the current year, as I didn't see a place to choose a year to look at).

The IFP also takes it one step further than NaviPlan, because you can control the growth or shrinkage rate on both annual pre-retirement cash flow surpluses and deficits in every year (and also the pot of money where it all accumulates into too). So the IFP accounts for and control replacements, annual pre-retirement cash flow surpluses and deficits, and the accounts they flow into and out of.

In client reports, for all goals except survivor income, disability income, and long-term care, up to four scenarios for each goal can be included. This is much better than most other planners, but with the IFP you can have an unlimited amount of these scenarios.

But... you CANNOT simulate or illustrate both clients being disabled at the same time (like you can with the IFP). You can only do this for one at a time.

Their main cash flow tables and graphs:
Income, Expenses, Tax, Portfolio Savings and Reinvestment Report
Income, Expenses, Tax, Portfolio Savings and Reinvestment Graph
Are all pretty much the same of one of many of our Cash Flow Projector graphs. And if they're not, you can easily tinker with them to make them exactly the same.

Now on to their sample reports. This is from here (http://www.eisi.com/_assets/pdf/client_reports/annotated/NaviPlan/asset_allocation_assessment.pdf):

Everything up to page 13 is just fluff text.

Page 14 is the same thing as our Sources and Application of Funds section on the Asset Allocator sheet of the Comprehensive Asset Allocation software. The demo where you can see this is here. Theirs uses thirteen asset classes, whereas ours allows you to use an unlimited number, but the Sources and Application of Funds section only uses eight major asset classes to KISS (keep it simple, stupid).

Starting at page 16, it goes into their built-in portfolio optimizer. I'm not going to critique that totally erroneous and dangerous investing methodology here, because you can read much more than you ever wanted to know about why you should NOT go down this road here. In summary, it's my stupid little opinion that portfolio optimizers should be banned by Finra when it comes to financial advisers building investment portfolios for individual investors (the same with Monte Carlo simulators too).

News flash, clients either don't care and/or they don't understand Monte Carlo (or optimization) 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 you're paying customers don't understand nor care about something that you're spending resources on, they why should you?

So out of the 26 pages of this piece, there's only a few pages of beef, and the rest is just text.

In case you didn't know, the estate planning module is responsible for about a quarter to a third of their 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 a few 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 NaviPlan costs much more than it should, it's mostly because of this (and the detailed tax accounting module). So you're paying up for software that you'll never use, or is wrong after year one (and no you can't delete these two modules to save money).

Cash Flow Report (this is from here http://www.eisi.com/_assets/pdf/client_reports/annotated/NaviPlan/cash_flow_planning.pdf):

Of the 11 pages, there's only two simple charts with beef about cash flow. Both are well done, and so is the fluff text (better than other vendors). The only thing to whine about is the main graph is titled, "Current Plan vs. Current Plan," so that's yet another malfunction in their reports generator that you'll need to fix by reinventing printing.

Financial Needs Assessment Report (this is from here http://www.eisi.com/_assets/pdf/client_reports/annotated/NaviPlan/financial_needs_assessment.pdf):

Of its 23 pages, only ten are text fluff, so that's better than most of their other reports, and other vendors.

Page 4: One of the first things to raise a warning flag is the Goal Achievement graph of the Overview section. How did these percentages get calculated? Monte Carlo? Then the two numbers about how much more needs to be invested are the same as ours. Then their percentage of income goal coverage in this section only shows one-year, whereas ours displays it for every year of retirement.

Page 5: Education funding section. The only numbers here are the same ones that display above, and that are on our college planners (percentage of goal in one-year, then the monthly and lump sum additional needs).

About how NaviPlan uses cash flow: The report says that in the year college starts, there is a cash flow surplus that can be used to fund the college fund deficits. Ours works the same way. In years where there's deficits in college funding, they do not automatically get funded even if there's surpluses in the family budget. So this is good, and is how things actually work. Also with the IFP, you can use a surplus in one student's budget to fund deficits in another's in any year for Real World control.

In general, the whole way the prioritization of goals works is good. The IFP doesn't do any of this "goal based" stuff, because it works differently. With the IFP, all goals are accounted for 100%, and then Monte Carlo is run on the whole plan. So that's another reason why our probability numbers are much lower than other vendors.

With NaviPlan (and others like the MoneyWhatevers), the user prioritizes their goals. Then the plan doesn't fund them if they're not a high priority. More research needs to be done with NaviPlan to determine how this is done to see if the methodology is even valid (it's not with the MoneyWhatevers - they're just making stuff up out of thin air).

Pages 9 & 10: Finally some beef that the IFP doesn't have. Everything up until that, the IFP already has and/or does much better. This is the same recycled two bar charts showing monthly and lump sums needs for retirement at goal age, with the additional needs being shown in red, or missing.

Pages 11 - 13: The same chart and table for college and lump sum spending goals.

Page 14 - 16 are the same text, chart, and formatting as above, but the text and numbers just changed to disability and life insurance. So it's yet to be seen if the program actually calculated these needs based on actual cash flows, or if it was just something the user typed in (like most all other programs but the IFP).

Page 17 is just a summary of all of the other goal pages. So it shows the total more needed investment to reach those goals. It's not clear at this point if this was all done automatically, or if you had to run a different version to do this. Anyway, this is no more special than formatting a page in Excel to make the same chart, then using a free financial calculator to get these differences in present values (this is the sad reality of how all of this "goal-based and goal-focused" fake financial plan software works).

The rest of the report is just text fluff (conclusion, assumptions, and disclaimers).

This is from here (http://www.eisi.com/_assets/pdf/client_reports/annotated/NaviPlan/financial_needs_summary.pdf):

The first four of 13 pages are the same fluff text as in the other reports. Page 5 is a Proposed net worth snapshot. 6 is a Proposed tax snapshot. 7 is a Proposed cash flow snapshot. So there's nothing new or anything the IFP doesn't already cover much better - other than the canned text. We're not big on that, because you can easily add all of that yourself to make it look less canned and more specific to the clients.

Page 8 is an asset allocation report. It just shows three pies (without even basic leader lines to show what slice goes to what text). Then it shows the 13 asset classes it works with. It's still unknown if these 13 are all you can use, and/or if any can be changed. But if it wasn't for a typo bug, this would all be just a cheap imitation of our Source and Applications of Funds section of the Asset Allocator sheet.

The text typo bug are the titles on the middle and far right columns - they both say Assumed Asset Mix, when one should say either Retirement and the other should say Pre-retirement. So which one goes with which pie? Dunno, so you gotta guess, call support, or take a week off of work and travel to attend their training classes.

The pies have it right, other than the missing leaders lines and % information for each slice, other than another error: both of their pre-retirement and retirement pies are the same. Then it shows standard deviation being 41% higher in the Proposed version than in the Current version. So why the person that made this sample plan wants to increase risk, when it's supposed to decrease by this much is not known (so it may just be another calculation and/or report generator malfunction).

Then on page 9, they got the pre-retirement and retirement pies correct. This is just an imitation of our Source and Applications of Funds section of the Asset Allocator sheet, but not as good because it's confusing because they call Assumed what we call Proposed, then the retirement mix is there too, but nothing shows anything being done to it. I don't know why they don't use Proposed all the time. What's the difference between Proposed and Assumed? Dunno, gotta guess again.

Pages 10 is text with an efficient frontier graph. The rant about why financial advisors shouldn't be using portfolio optimizers here is enough, so no text on this page needed.

Page 11 is an overview page of all Current goals. It's still not clear how they can all be unfunded at different levels. Probably because there's an input page where the user sets priorities on each one. Even if it does work like that, why would you even want to go there? I've been pondering this, and have yet to come up with an answer to why client's would care. The answer is probably because they had to, because that's how the MoneyWhatevers all work, and they've been taking huge chunks of market share from NaviPlan, so they probably just copied those bad features to stay competitive?

Page 12 is the same page for Proposed goals - all showing as 100% funded. This is a good feature if you like this goal-based nonsense, and the IFP doesn't work this way. Then nothing in the world of money is 100%, so that's another minor "error."

Page 13 shows a bar chart telling that in the Current version only 72% of their goals can be funded (with a negative $300k net worth at death). Then in the Proposed plan, all they do is retire one-year later and all of their goals are magically funded 100% (with over $2M at death). This is way too huge of a difference that can be made in one-year, so more research is needed as to how this could happen. So at this point, I'm typing that this is the first major calculation error I've seen when looking at their samples (other than how asset cash flows are compounded, which is a huge calculation error).

Also, when you either input Social Security PIA (benefit) values that are too low, wait later than age 62 to start collecting, and/or use an "inputted life expectancy age" of less than 100 in financial plans, then you're misleading people into investing much more than they need to. This example plan shows them passing at age 90, then changing from starting Social Security at 62 in the Current plan to 67 in the Proposed.

Social Security actuaries use age 100 (or more) in calculating how much PIAs are paid in total relative to contributions. So inputting a lower amount than one will actually receive, then starting it at the latest age (because of faulty logic thinking this will "increase payments"), then killing them off before age 100, is like loaning someone money and then saying you only have to pay half of it back.

So the way the IFP works, is that you manually input actual amounts client's tell you, because only they can login into the SSA's website and get their actual numbers (and/or they have actual printed reports postal mailed to them by the SSA). Then you control COLA's and taxation on a year-by-year basis. Then you'd always use age 100 (or more) as the manually-inputted life expectancy age. So the more you know about how the Real World actually works, the more the you'll know the IFP allows you to model financial futures better than anything else - even the overpriced NaviPlan.

NaviPlan Select does not allow you to model Social Security Survivor's benefits (where the survivor is able to start collecting at age 60 instead of 62). In other words, the earliest someone can start collecting is age 62, regardless of what's actually happening in the Real World. So unless they fixed this, it's another "error."

Page 14 shows the differences between these two plans. The $20 a month in new savings, getting 1.7% more investment return, then "New accounts / annuities have been added" is all that's there.

I don't see how that's going to be enough to make these huge differences in the two plans, especially when waiting five years to collect Social Security always makes plans much worse instead of better! So everything that's missing that should be explained with their text, "New accounts/annuities have been added" has to be making these huge differences. The thing is, there's nothing there that explains any of that. So I'm typing that this is another calculation error in their program until proven otherwise.

Pages 15 - 17 shows in chart form, the annual retirement deficits in the current plan.

The IFP shows this better in table form on the Annual Summary numbers sheet. This is a nice page, and the same information is better on the Cash Flow Projectors.

Page 18 is good and the college planners of the IFP do all of this and much more.

Pages 19 - 21 are An imitation of our Source and Applications of Funds section of the Asset Allocator sheet, for the college fund, but not as good.

Page 22 has two charts showing goals being funded and not, after running the Monte Carlo simulation. I still don't know how or why this is done, but the Proposed numbers are still too small, then they break things down into percentiles, which I don't like. Now they're adding statistics to Monte Carlo results? And they seem to be using ancient investment standard deviations too? Where to begin on all of that nonsense?

Pages 23 & 24 are about disability income. I still don't see how or if the program does any calculations to determine the need, but the chart is nice if you like it. It would take a lot of time to figure out if the program is making this chart by using actual annual cash flow deficits caused by not being able to work from a disability. So I'm going to guess that it's doing all of this correctly (it better for the uber-high price).

Page 24 is just text.

Pages 25 - 28 are the same chart for life insurance needs. Page 26 is good, and our Life Insurance Calculator has all of this data, and much more. Since the program is in code, there's no way to verify if the "Present Value of Future Inflows" are correct or not. At first glance, I don't think they are, because there's a difference between Current and Proposed Social Security PVs, and there should not be.

On one hand, it's probably correct because of the uber-high-price of the software (they in theory, can afford to pay sufficient attention to these details), but on the other hand, just about everything about the life insurance industry is usually just one huge "deception" used to trick people into buying way too much in unneeded face value. Since NaviPlan has somewhat been, and is now totally controlled by a (life) insurance company, that's all the evidence I need. When things get tough in the financial world, then "shenanigans" are usually the first things used to get by. This is because they know the "government" is way too slow, stupid, and feckless to catch on (in time).

Page 29 is about estate planning. At least they did things right on this page and didn't show a huge fake need to sell their estate planning module, like other vendors (most all of the MoneyWhatevers). So there's nothing much to whine about here (other than you're paying hundreds a year for a Module that's mostly useless after the 2010 and then the 2013 tax law changes).

Pages 30 - 33 are text fluff and telling the Samples About themselves they already know, so there's nothing there.

That's it for picking on their reports. The thing about NaviPlan is that they're pretty much all the same (looking), just with different numbers plopped into them depending on the report. There's only about a dozen charts and graphs, and they're all used over and over again with different module's data plopped into the. They're all good, and much better than the competition, but the total control the IFP gives you, with dozens of times more reports available, make it seem like it's from another planet (it is, and it's called being Excel-based and not code-based).

So the bottom line is that (even with its many unexplained calculation errors), NaviPlan Select is still the best integrated and comprehensive financial planning software (because of all of the modules that function close enough to how things actually work in the Real World, that nobody else has). But it's very overpriced, you'll have to commit to buy it for two years, you'll have no choice but to assume the risks of cloud computing, all of the reports are very weak, and then you'll need to reinvent the wheel every time you want to get reports to print the way you want them to.

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 Feature / Function	IFP: $500	NaviPlan: $2,100 (with a two-year commitment)
Annual Update Prices	$135	$2,100 for one more year, minimum
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	If you have the Ibbotson module, then yes, but primitive and very limited
Number of Asset Classes their Asset Allocation Software Uses	Unlimited	Never saw more than 13 in their reports, then I didn't see how to change anything
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, because it's 100% "cash flow-based"	Yes, you can also set a surplus growth and deficit discount rate, like you should be able to
Integration with Other Financial Software and/or Ability to Download Account Holdings from Online Custodians	Yes to both	Yes, great integration with Albridge Solutions, dbCams, and Morningstar's Advisor Workstation. But I didn't see how to import brokerage account data into the plan
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, good, but limited control over odd cash flows
Accounts for Budgeting of Replacement Costs	Yes, total control	No, so you'd have to do that manually and input them as a new expense
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	No
Life Insurance Calculator Module Included	Yes	Yes
Ability to Project Life Insurance Needs into the Future	Yes	Somewhat, you can select one future year and it acts like the current year, but you cannot see a list of annual need values
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	Somewhat, more limited than calculating the spouse's needs if the client passes
Ability to Easily Stop Life Insurance Policies (paying for premiums and face values), and/or Change Face Amounts (or premiums) in Any Year	Yes	Somewhat, with a lot more work
Number of Versions	Unlimited, and you can see two at a time	Several without making a new, unlimited if you make new plans
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, but you can mail merge the PDFs into Word (and then Excel) for control
Ability to Perform Any and All Advanced "What-if" and Scenario Functions	Yes	No, better than most, but still very limited
Built-in Portfolio Optimizer	No	Yes
Monte Carlo Simulator	Yes	Yes
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, there all the time, no need to click	Yes, always there so you don't have to click anything to see the Proposed plan (which they sometimes call "Recommended" and/or "Assumed")
Ability to See Both Current or Proposed Versions at the Same Time	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, somewhat, but you can't model survivor's benefits starting at age 60 (62 is the earliest age)
Ability to Change Social Security Income for Each Person Separately, AND in Every Year	Yes	Somewhat, very limited
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 Set the Age Social Security Starts for Both People Separately	Yes	Yes, but you can't model survivor's benefits starting at age 60 (62 is the earliest age)
Ability to Stop Social Security at any Age to Model a Worst-case Scenario	Yes	Somewhat, with limitations
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, but limited
Ability to Set Social Security Inflation to be Different than the Overall Plan's Inflation Rate	Yes, and it can be whatever you want in every year	No, you're stuck using the plan's global inflation rate for Social Security
Ability to Include Any and All Sources of Annual Miscellaneous Incomes	Yes, complete control over everything	Yes, but limited (you can set up earned incomes and the like after retirement, with a COLA and ending year, but there's no controls other than that
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	Maybe, didn't see how to input it, so maybe not
Investment Account Payout Methods	9	Just a few, didn't see much of a selection other than "flexible" and RMD
Ability to Change Asset Payout Methods Midstream	Yes	Yes, but limited
Ability to Start and Stop Asset Withdrawals at Any Year	Yes	Yes, but limited
Ability to Start Asset Withdrawals After Retirement Has Begun	Yes	Yes, but limited
Ability to Start a New Asset at Any Year (even after retirement has started for anyone)	Yes	Yes, but limited
Ability to Set Asset Account Rate of Returns to be Whatever You Want in Any Year	Yes	Yes, but limited
Ability to Have Total Control Over How Much Asset Account Contributions are, and When They Start and Stop Annually	Yes	Yes, but limited
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	Somewhat, limited
Ability to Simulate Roth IRAs and Conversions	Yes	Yes
How Many Years the "Window" Is	75	80
Both Client and Spouse Can Have their Own Separate Income Goals, and they can be Whatever You Want in Every Year	Yes, total complete control over both clients separately	Somewhat, you can add "new goals" to the main income goal, but the main goal amounts cannot be tweaked. In the "Calculate Retirement Expenses" section, you input their combined income goals (not separate), then assign an overall inflation rate, then you can do little-to-nothing to it
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
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	Yes but limited
Lists All Non-Asset Incomes with Annual Amounts, Ages When They Start, COLA Inflation rates, and if it's Taxable or Not	Yes	Yes but limited
Everything Everywhere Displays Year, Both Ages, and Year Numbers for Quick and Better Understanding	Yes	No, and reports usually are missing dollar and percent signs, and chart leader lines
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)	Probably unlimited
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	Somewhat, limited
Displays When You'll Probably Run Out of Money (AKA "Gap funding")	Yes	Yes
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	Around a dozen (that are recycled)
Ability to Make as Many New Charts and Graphs as You Want	Yes	No (only if you mail merge to Word and then do it in Excel, then back to Word)
Ability to Change Charts and Graphs Any Way You Like	Yes	No (only if you mail merge to Word and then do it in Excel, and then go back to editing in Word)
Detailed Chart of All Annual Miscellaneous Incomes and Expenses	Yes	Yes, but limited
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 Accounts to Liquidate at Death	Yes, but you can only set them to not pay out, pay out 100%, immediately, starting at retirement, or at death. Then "Lifestyle" assets and real estate are even more limited. Their text: "...you cannot control the default order in which available accounts and assets are liquidated to cover estate needs."	Yes, you can set any asset to pay out any percentage amount at any year for any reason for total control over all of this
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	Yes
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	Yes, called Planning Assistant
Accounts for Any and All Types of Investment Assets, Including Rental Real Estate	Yes	Yes
Displays Detailed About How Much Retirement Income is Being Withdrawn from Each Asset Individually	Yes	Yes
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, including any and all overlaps	Yes, using their Liquidation Strategies function (but overlapping payouts are only allowed with qualified assets in a very limited way using the "Add Redemption Strategy" feature). But not able to model tapping one asset class within a portfolio before others
Ability to Calculate Detailed Needs for Both Disability and Long Term Care Insurance	Yes	Yes
Ability to Calculate Disability Insurance Needs for Both Clients at the Same Time	Yes	No, you can only do one at a time
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 (maybe, didn't see it)
Ability to Turn Assets Providing Retirement Incomes On and Off Individually	Yes	Yes, using their "Transfers" function (but only in the Proposed version, not Current)
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 (maybe, the report was not done well enough to make it clear what's going on)
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, good and only ours is better. Their Ibbotson Investment Risk Tolerance Calculator seems to only use 13 questions, which is insufficient. The rest of their Fact Finders are okay to good
Comes With a Free Effective / Average Tax Bracket Calculator to Help Determine Inputted Tax Rates	Yes	No
Displays All Years of Information Automatically	Yes	Yes
Complete User's Manual with Detailed Directions on How to Do Everything	Yes, including a list of Real World options if you run out of money too early, and much more valuable retirement planning information)	No, online help screens (Planning Assistant), video tutorials, and big on DIY and formal pay training classes
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)	Cloud-based
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
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	No, it's all cloud-based
Tax Software Included (software that will calculate taxes due, like TurboTax, or in reality, just estimate the current year's taxes due)	No	Yes, the best in the biz, other than stand-alone programs like TurboTax
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 (n/a, cloud-based)
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	Very good, only the IFP is better
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	No (cloud-based)