Have a look at my Excel project...the "Retireator"

[Celly]

Greetings!


So I'm a software engineer by trade and have been working on building my own retirement simulator. I was frustrated by the inflexibility and limitations of the available free tools I could find, so clearly it made sense to build my own totally from scratch rather than shell out for a paid one. So enter the Retireator. This started off as my personal financial planner, and evolved into a fairly sophisticated platform. I decided to release it as free software GPL'd under GNU Affero v3.0. It is hosted as a public open source project on GitHub just for fun. So I've been working on it in my spare time for about two years and launched a basic website for it in September of this year. Downloads are hosted there now. The first "annuitized" version was released today (v2016.1127). There are numerous links from the Retireator to online documentation on my website.


Architecturally, the Retireator is two simulations: an "outer" simulation from 1954 to 80 years from now, and an "inner" simulation from any start date to the configured life expectancy. The outer simulation mostly calculates Social Security earnings, while the inner simulation calculates everything else. Both simulations are written entirely using Excel formulas, without any dependency on VBA. I feel this design gives the best stability, portability, and performance.


VBA is required, however, to complete the Setup process and bring the simulation online. VBA is also required for the Dashboard to operate. However, once the Setup process has been completed, the xlsx file can be used in Excel Online with quite a bit of functionality intact if desired. So the full version of Excel with macros enabled must be used the first time it is opened (and does continue to provide the best overall experience).


The Retireator does not take a desired income as a parameter as it is based entirely off of expenses. It makes heavy use of iterative calculations to run Federal income tax bracket calculations in reverse and solve for the required income each year. It can also solve for the target retirement date through the "Retireate" feature (accessible through the Dashboard). The simulation works on an annualized basis, but with extensive prorating where appropriate.


The tool is intended for American retirees. The Mr. Excel forum has been a great resource for getting past roadblocks on this project, and I look forward to any feedback from the community. I plan to keep the tool completely free moving forward and hope there will be some interest in it.

Retireator.org – Retireate Away!

 

[Celly]

The January release is up and has been tested on 64-bit Excel. Also the tax tables, SS indexes, and CPI data are up-to-date. Any interest in the U.S.A.?

 

[Sense-A]

Thank you for sharing this! This is awesome!

1. I want to learn how to make a dashboard like that. It looks like a floating window. I wish I could minimize it and then bring it back up. But otherwise it is cool.

2. For Social Security, I would like it to suggest an age I should file for social security benefits based on my life expectancy, and provide me a break even point (what age I must live to in order to break even for the lost income from waiting to file for benefits). I was actually looking for this feature which is how I stumbled upon your workbook. I've considered developing a social security analysis workbook to help people make an informed decision when they should begin collecting social security. See here: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/an...alculate-my-social-security-breakeven-age.asp

 

[Celly]

Cool thanks. Since you've got the dashboard running, I assume you figured out the "Retireate" button. So make adjustments to your simulation parameters, "Retireate", then observe the change in the Dashboard log window. You can see the effect on your overall retirement plan, and with a bit of trial and error work out "break even" dates. Social Security benefits are designed to be a wash based on the actuarial life tables. But, taking benefits earlier or later can interact with other retirement income sources and the resulting taxes in complex ways. So it's better to model everything together, which the tool excels at (no pun intended).