If you “DIY” your own financial planning, there is a reasonably good chance that you use spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel to do most of your work. It’s also probably true that you know personal financial planning software exists but never felt compelled to make the change because your spreadsheet “does what you need it to do.”
How am I doing so far? The reason I know this is because until recently, I used spreadsheets to manage my financial planning myself. Yes, I had a foray into Mint, Quicken, and even tried Microsoft Money. The problem was that they were constantly trying to upsell me on everything from a zero-percent credit card to term life insurance, and it wasn’t subtle.
The other problem is that the bank connections didn’t all work, so I was constantly having to reconnect, using different techniques and timeout intervals, and “request the software be added to the bank’s approved vendor list” (as if the bank would do that just for me!) because the software wasn’t supported by the bank’s highly vulnerable technology of the day.
So instead of an elegant solution to managing my finances, it became “Franken-software,” a lot of things “bolted on” that didn’t work right, with some switches that needed to be flipped off and on again to make it work.
So I did what you did—I just built it myself. That was okay-ish because there was no better solution outside of hiring a financial planner at 1% of the value of my assets. So I built three spreadsheets: one for my investments, one for my assets, and one for expense planning.
Then, about nine months ago, I spent 40-minutes trying to fix a formula in a cell because I was doing some forecasting, and something looked wrong. A few days later, I pulled up my expense budgeting spreadsheet to update it for the month. I did have to hand-key the individual expenses, but as a CPA who used an adding machine most of my adult life, it didn’t bother me—much.
I knew today’s software had worked out those problems (for the most part), and frankly, as someone who runs a YouTube channel dedicated to retirees and their finances, I felt a bit like the guy who lives in the suburbs and rides his bike everywhere. Yes, I got the exercise, but it took me 30 minutes to get to the grocery store, and in the end, I could only put so much in the basket.
Also, the channel should have a recommendation of the top financial planning software companies out there (and a view of which to stay away from) for what I think the viewers would want. Here was my list:
- Standard and Non-Standard Income: Social Security, annuities, pensions, and income from a job.
- Budgeting: Recurring and one-time purchases.
- Taxes: State, Federal, itemized deductions, tax brackets.
- College: Kids.
- Weddings: Daughters.
- Medical: Health insurance, Medicare, and long-term care.
- Debt: Systematically helping the user bring down the “big three”—student loans, mortgages, and credit cards.
- Roth Conversions: Outcomes of converting $(insert your number here) from a traditional to a Roth.
- “What If” Scenarios: Funding college, moving to another country, taking Social Security at different ages, lump sum vs. annuitized pension, etc.
- Investment Performance Tracking.
- Everything Seamlessly Works Together.
- Factors Inflation into the Plan.
- Not “All or Nothing”: The freedom to do less work and get decent results, or do more work and get more precise results.
- Probability of Success: Determining what a probability of success would look like given all the information above.
So I did quite a bit of research and found that there were several good alternatives that had some or all of these features. These included Boldin (formerly NewRetirement), Personal Capital, and YNAB (You Need a Budget). I eventually chose Boldin because it did everything on my list (+ more), and I loved the user interface—it was simple, elegant, and most importantly, it worked! Nothing like the software of the old days. It was also reasonably priced—$120/year, and saves me dozens of hours of work per year.
I liked the product so much that after several months, I contacted Boldin and asked if we could be an affiliate of theirs. They were our first affiliate relationship and one of only three that we have today (by the way, we get contacted dozens of times a quarter by companies asking us to be an affiliate—most are just not appropriate for our audience).
Is switching from spreadsheets to personal financial planning software right for you? That depends. If your finances are simple, it’s probably not necessary unless you are trying to arrange your life into a future where you will have a lot going on with your money—then good personal financial planning software can act as a guide.
If you already have several of the categories above in your life, then it might be time to check it out.
You can try Boldin free for two weeks using our affiliate link: https://go.boldin.com/Schmidt. After two weeks, it’s $120 per year if you decide to keep it, which most people do.
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Plan Your Retirement With the Best Financial Planning Software I’ve Found
Get a two week FREE trial of Boldin (formerly NewRetirement) personal financial planning software – use our affiliate link* https://go.boldin.com/Schmidt to see if it’s for you.
Center For Retirement Research at Boston College
CRR is one of the best websites if you want in depth retirement data – I use it frequently. You can find it here: https://crr.bc.edu/
Holy Schmidt! YouTube Channel
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