Here's a calculator I built to visualize retirement income from recurring purchases of deferred income annuities:
Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
41–50 of 218 posts
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#42I'd like to know what aggressive/conservative means, and also be able change it, aggressive in the US might be different than in other countries.
>>> "What do Aggressive and Conservative mean? The Investment Calculator uses two investment strategies that typically produce two different retirement scenarios. Aggressive investing indicates a higher financial risk with a higher potential reward, while conservative investing offers a lower financial risk with a more moderate potential reward.
Aggressive investing typically means that you will invest in more stocks than in bonds. This type of investment strategy is smart when you have a longer amount of time before your retirement. A longer amount of time can also, in theory, withstand all the volatility of the stock market. The other good news is that more time passing will compound your interest, resulting in significantly larger retirement savings.
Conservative investing is a more balanced strategy in which you invest in stocks as well as bonds. The return, or the amount that your money grows, is not as large as it can be when aggressively investing but the risk is lower. Conservative investing is best when your retirement date is nearby. Vanguard published a great article about these types of scenarios, showing the historic risks and rewards in quantitative form. These table graphs will show the different strategies in terms of being “growth” or “balanced” oriented and displays the assumptions behind each retirement strategy."
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pay off a modest $100k house in a low cost of living area and you should be able to survive on Social Security alone. Save more if you can though.
Social Security, in my retirement? That's a laugh.
While it is fashionable to doubt that Social Security will be around for the Gen X or Millenial retirements, the reality is that it's simply a matter of political will.
If people like Social Security (and they generally do), then all they have to do is vote for politicians who will protect it, and harass politicians when it looks like they won't.
Of course it's fine to plan for a retirement without Social Security... having too much money in retirement is not generally considered a problem.
But if you're feeling despair over Social Security, know that there is something you can do about it: political organizing.
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#44Looks really nice and polished, thanks for sharing! Sorry for asking, but what exactly does the icon of the bag with money in the diagram indicate?
I'm curious too -- I didn't notice it until I started trying out different scenarios. Is that an optimum number? Is that when your retirement income per month matches your current income?
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#45Someone should make a debt calculator that shows when debt will be paid off.
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#46This is a really good interface but the assumptions backing the results seem weak. The growth rate on conservative and aggressive portfolios are high. The recommended amounts of saving should be as % of income. Recommending someone that makes 100k save 100 dollars a month is not great. It's also sad that the maximum amount saved per month is 1k where even just maximizing 401k is 1.5k a month.
Yeah, the return rate, even for conservative is WAY too high.
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#47I think `$1.25m - $45k = $880k` should be `$1.25m - $45k = $1.205m`. $45k is $45,000 and not $450,000.
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#48It should be possible to click on or hover over "aggressive" and "conservative" and see what the assumptions are. And the simulations must be account for volatility to be useful. Otherwise, everyone should just invest aggressively and put all their money in stocks, since they have higher average returns than bonds.
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#49Looks really nice and polished, thanks for sharing! Sorry for asking, but what exactly does the icon of the bag with money in the diagram indicate?
It appears to represent the point at which your net worth would surpass $1MM for a given projection.
Re: Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
#50You can save money by decreasing your savings every month instead of contributing a fixed amount. I've never seen an investment calculator or vehicle that allows for such a plan.
Do you mean "frontloading" the year? As in 1000 jan, 900 feb, etc? Or was it a typo and you meant decreasing your spending?
Smoothly decreasing every month for the entire savings period. Maybe it isn't popular because income tends to increase over the course of a career?