Big ERN (Karsten Jeske, PhD, CFA – EarlyRetirementNow.com) Reading the in-depth discussions on Big ERN blog with approximately monthly articles full of graphs and solid economic modeling which many times lead to concrete actions or reaffirming what we already have in place. The discussion by readers that follow each blog article is fascinating with great questions to ERN and his clear replies. Useful for dedicated personal finance optimizers and those that get pleasure out of this kind of a hobby.
MaxiFi app. Using Prof. Kotlikoff’s MaxiFi software to model out all kinds of tax savings strategies like the ones mentioned below from other contributors. (And ACA subsidy enhancing strategies.) This lets me quickly quantify any ideas I get by reading to see if the effort is worthwhile for the corresponding savings. MaxiFi is inexpensive, easy to use, and very accurate and complete.
PortfolioVisualizer.com. I use it to backtest asset classes side-by-side and to see what specific investments did in prior years. I’ve been using it to see how ETFs performed before 2020. In my opinion, the market will revert to the mean eventually and won’t continue to act like it has between 2020-2023, so I exclude the last four years of performance.
I find Empower (formerly Personal Capital) to be especially useful. It tracks spending and allows you to budget. It also provides net worth, asset allocation, and investment return information. The best part is that it is free.
Excel is my friend but it’s a lot of work to keep it up. And I use Turbo tax to test various scenarios. I have not found a good app to use as a Roth conversion calculator. I have tried several and found them lacking. What I currently do is use Turbotax and plug in different conversion amounts to see where my federal and state taxes go, then check cut offs for Medicare. Since taxes change every year, it is work to keep up with and I wait until late in the year to make decisions due to 4th quarter distributions from brokerage accounts being released in late Nov. and the possibility of needing to re-balance. Once my RMD’s kick in I will likely find it will not work for me anyway, but I still have a couple of years to go until that starts.
Big ERN (Karsten Jeske, PhD, CFA – EarlyRetirementNow.com) Reading the in-depth discussions on Big ERN blog with approximately monthly articles full of graphs and solid economic modeling which many times lead to concrete actions or reaffirming what we already have in place. The discussion by readers that follow each blog article is fascinating with great questions to ERN and his clear replies. Useful for dedicated personal finance optimizers and those that get pleasure out of this kind of a hobby.
MaxiFi app. Using Prof. Kotlikoff’s MaxiFi software to model out all kinds of tax savings strategies like the ones mentioned below from other contributors. (And ACA subsidy enhancing strategies.) This lets me quickly quantify any ideas I get by reading to see if the effort is worthwhile for the corresponding savings. MaxiFi is inexpensive, easy to use, and very accurate and complete.
PortfolioVisualizer.com. I use it to backtest asset classes side-by-side and to see what specific investments did in prior years. I’ve been using it to see how ETFs performed before 2020. In my opinion, the market will revert to the mean eventually and won’t continue to act like it has between 2020-2023, so I exclude the last four years of performance.
I find Empower (formerly Personal Capital) to be especially useful. It tracks spending and allows you to budget. It also provides net worth, asset allocation, and investment return information. The best part is that it is free.
Excel is my friend but it’s a lot of work to keep it up. And I use Turbo tax to test various scenarios. I have not found a good app to use as a Roth conversion calculator. I have tried several and found them lacking. What I currently do is use Turbotax and plug in different conversion amounts to see where my federal and state taxes go, then check cut offs for Medicare. Since taxes change every year, it is work to keep up with and I wait until late in the year to make decisions due to 4th quarter distributions from brokerage accounts being released in late Nov. and the possibility of needing to re-balance. Once my RMD’s kick in I will likely find it will not work for me anyway, but I still have a couple of years to go until that starts.