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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.
From Quicken, all else follows.
MaxiFi and MaximizeMySocialSecurity by Economic Security Planning.
Ditto for me, just excellent tools and inexpensive also ($120 per year).
Am using Pralana Gold for retirement planning – very detailed Excel model and very flexible and I can follow the numbers better than in the web based apps (might be personal preference). For websites it’s Bogleheads.org and Morningstar.com
Love Pralana Gold!
I’ve been using Quicken since sometime in the early 90s; unless it was a bit sooner. Best all around for tracking spending and logging my portfolio transactions. As someone else mentioned it can be frustrating, but I haven’t found anything comparable.
Morningstar is a good basic research tool. Many others, but these are my two main go-to’s.
I have used Quicken Premier for many many years now. I have to admit that I am frustrated with it at times but I think it’s the best financial software program ever.
My favorite financial websites are dripinvesting.org, finviz.com, simplysafedividends.com, theoxfordclub.com, wealthyretirement.com.
My favorite apps are betterment.com and nerdwallet.com
finviz.com was amazing! fun! about 1 lifetime of learning there
I’ve started using PayPal and Venmo for occasional payments to family, friends, and a few contractors. We’ve been doing online banking and bill paying for a while, but are looking at automating some of our bills as we anticipate more travel in retirement (and post-Covid). I still depend heavily in Excel, and self-aggregate my accounts for yearly balance sheets.
I prefer Zelle because it uses bank to bank transactions and is embedded in my bank’s app. However, I recently started using Venmo after finding out that it can be linked with my Amex card without a fee which means that I don’t have to give Venmo my bank account info.
When young, my dad’s example was what I followed… use a spreadsheet to track spending and to plan for upcoming bills.
When I started investing, I got damned frustrated because that spreadsheet couldn’t update itself as market values updated. That frustration led me to the Quicken app.
I’m still using it for three basic functions:
I use good ole excel for most personal finance tracking. Boring, I concede.
There are some cool sites though – obliviousinvestor has a great Social Security calculator, BofA/Merrill has awesome free research & charts, Fidelity Investments has a simple Solo 401k calculator, The Points Guy is ideal for credit card rewards, The Finance Buff has excellent takes on tax & retirement account issues.
I’m not big on the finance app scene – many times those can be information overload! Keeping it simple has its virtues.
I also love the Finance Buff (Harry Sit) blog and web site.
Me too Mike. Since I build my own spreadsheets I know what goes into the assumptions and I can play my own “what if” scenarios. You don’t know what’s behind the math in most published tools. I cringe when I see that they use the infallible “montecarlo simulation” – what did they use for the possibilities? As I’m comfortable with math I can build my own model and play with the assumptions myself.
Stuff like net worth tracking will in the long run be easier also as you can avoid mandatory inputs that don’t apply to your circumstances.
Most cannot do that I concede, but if you do have the ability, do your own math. It gives me a better comfort level than using unknown assumptions I can’t see.
Tiller Money is a relatively new tool for tracking expenses. It downloads data into a Google Sheet. It’s not nearly as polished as something like Mint, but in exchange for the rough edges, it’s very flexible.
I use “Personal Capital” as my financial aggregator. It keeps track of my expenses, investment accounts and mortgage. It also has a very good retirement feature projecting my pensions, annuities, medical expenses projected investment returns. The service is free-although I’m sure they prefer you to use their investment products.
I have been using “Mint” for about two years now. It’s a simple way to keep track of my various accounts and their balances.