OT: Retirement accounts, annuity vs. dynamic income fund

[Louis]

Originally Posted by MikeD

Basically, long term, you can't beat the S&P.

Agreed, as long as you can live with the short-term volatility. (Which for me means don't put 100% of your money in SPX.)

[Louis]

Originally Posted by NHAero

I've built an excel spreadsheet with income streams and expense streams and need to integrate taxes into it, to calculate cash flow and net assets. But it won't be as sophisticated as one that one of the financial services companies use, so I'd like to see if there is one online for free I can use, if only to see if the one I built is giving robust results. I can vary inflation, Social Security COLA, ROI on my assets to see the results.

I think my answer would be "If you understand finance (and Excel) well enough to do this yourself, then a DIY spreadsheet (assuming it doesn't have any fat-fingered cell reference mistakes or fundamentally bad assumptions) will get you 98% of the way to what a financial adviser would offer, if not better."

A few years ago I went down this rabbit hole, and created an Excel spreadsheet that seemed reasonable. My next step was to decide if I wanted to put in some Monte Carlo simulation, but I got bored with it and stopped. It's so cumbersome to do "real" programing in Excel, there are plenty limitations there too.

Finally, have you seen the Firecalc tool? That's relatively simple, but interesting just the same, and you could use it as a sanity-check on your own calculations.

https://firecalc.com/

[Mr. Pink]

Originally Posted by MikeD

Not all index funds are good. It depends on the index. S&P 500 and Total Stock Market funds are good (probably the best as far as index funds go). Others not so much. I had a lot of money in a Vanguard Value Index Fund (VVIAX) because my Fidelity Rep said to put money in value funds vs. growth funds. the 1 yr return was S&P 500 24%, VVIAX 9.5%. I don't think the Russell fund indices are very good for returns either. Bond index funds were disappointing for me as well. Basically, long term, you can't beat the S&P. I think I could have doubled my money over decades of investing if I just invested in an S&P 500 fund vs. spreading my money out over others which did not return as well. YMMV

I have to be careful here. A real life example comes from a simple study of a certain famous celebrity who inherited a little over 300 million from his real estate owning father around 1980. The famous celebrity son used that money to build a real estate, casino, and airline empire. He proceeded to screw it up so bad that he filed six bankruptcies over the years, finding final success in celebrity branding, ironically casting himself as a successful businessman. Anyway, this study just took that 300 million and put it into the S&P and other index funds for those forty years, and he would have come out way ahead, without the noise and turmoil.

[Spaghetti Legs]

Originally Posted by NHAero

What is a good online retirement calculator?

I use these two and like them a lot. Maybe cause if I tweak the numbers right they tell me everything’s gonna be OK.

https://ficalc.app/

https://firecalc.com/

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by Louis

https://firecalc.com/

Originally Posted by Spaghetti Legs

https://firecalc.com/

Coincidentally, it was running FireCalc that finally convinced me to dive into this whole mess and pursure retirement sooner rather than later. I like them odds.

[makoti]

Originally Posted by Spaghetti Legs

I use these two and like them a lot. Maybe cause if I tweak the numbers right they tell me everything’s gonna be OK.

That's the good thing about the calc's. If you put in the right numbers, it's all ok.