If you could go back in time and give a younger you advice about money management, what would you say? Not Biff from ‘Back To The Future’ advice, on who wins the world series, or a horse race, but advice on real tools and techniques you could use to live better, financially speaking.

Unfortunately we can’t go back in time, and we can’t fix the past. In the here and now, we are the sum total of both our good and bad financial decisions. At Personal Capital, we’re turning our attention away from time travel into the past and instead focusing on predicting the future – your financial future.

Today, we’re announcing the launch of our new Retirement Planner – designed to help you forecast your retirement readiness by assessing your current financial situation, portfolio, spending, savings and retirement goals.

With our tool, you can:

● Set your retirement goals and track your progress over time.

● Enjoy a free, easy-to-use tool that automatically pulls financial data from your Personal Capital dashboard.

● Scenario plan – Planning for college? Saving for a new home? Use Retirement Planner to map out how much money you’ll need to meet your goals.

● Adjust your retirement plan for life milestones and financial events (inheritance, a wedding, rental income, vacations, and more).

● Evaluate how your saving, investing, and spending habits today affect your retirement, seeing the impact of everything from a home remodel to a new car purchase.

● Calculate the monthly spending you can afford in retirement.

● Take advantage of a data-driven retirement plan built on Monte Carlo analysis and robust modeling tools to see the most and least likely financial outcomes.

● Speak with an advisor to learn how Personal Capital’s Advisory Services can help you prepare for retirement.

● Check out the Recommendations page, which will help you get back on track to reaching your retirement goals.

How It Works

To give you an up-to-date forecast of the likelihood of reaching your retirement goals, the Retirement Planner will draw savings, spending, and portfolio account data from your Personal Capital dashboard. If you choose, you can also override with your own numbers. The Retirement Planner then walks you through questions about children, plans for supporting their education, and your social security expectations, to create a holistic forecast.

The Retirement Planner is a retirement calculator like no other, tailored to you and your goals. It works by running 5,000 Monte Carlo simulations, showing you the median and 10% worst outcomes of your retirement planning. Having 1, 2, or 3 million dollars at retirement might seem like a lot now, but as we live longer we need to ensure that our savings last longer too. The Retirement Planner will show you how much monthly spending your portfolio would allow you throughout retirement.

Our tool is a dynamic plan that responds to how you live financially. Within the Retirement Planner, you can edit figures such as retirement age, spending and savings. You’ll also have the option to add additional income goals, such as downsizing your home in retirement or adding pension income.

Once you have entered your additional income events and expense goals, you can see how they impact your retirement plans. The more time you have to plan ahead, the better off you’ll be in achieving the retirement of your dreams. If we think we can help, you might see a ‘How Can I Improve This’ link in your Retirement Planner, which will make suggestions like changing your asset allocation, investing available cash, reducing mutual fund fees, or being more tax efficient.

If you need more advice, you can speak with an Advisor to help you evaluate how much you might spend on your children’s education, or plan for buying a home or a car.

Get Started

The Retirement Planner is the latest tool we offer to help you live a better financial life. It’s not just a useful, living plan – it’s a central part of how we want to enable you to reach your goals. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on how it could be even better in the months to come. Check out the tool here now.