The Lemon Fool

I've been reading recently about the various programs that can be used to plan into retirement, including FIRECalc, but they all seem to be US-centric.

I read about RetireEasy which is a UK based system and wondered if anybody on here had any experience with it and if so, how it rated as a planning tool?

Blatter wrote:I've been reading recently about the various programs that can be used to plan into retirement, including FIRECalc, but they all seem to be US-centric.

I read about RetireEasy which is a UK based system and wondered if anybody on here had any experience with it and if so, how it rated as a planning tool?

Surely you are not actually going to pay for one of these tools are you?

Dod

Blatter wrote:I've been reading recently about the various programs that can be used to plan into retirement, including FIRECalc, but they all seem to be US-centric.

I read about RetireEasy which is a UK based system and wondered if anybody on here had any experience with it and if so, how it rated as a planning tool?

Never heard of them but since the other tools are free but RetireEasy's website seems to show that their basic offering costs £2.99 per month I won't bother to try them. The free tools seem good enough if you just ignore the fact that they are using dollars and just input the amounts as though they were pounds.

I watched the “take a tour” video. It seems that the system simply guides you into entering all your assets and liabilities into it, asks you to make assumptions about growth rates of your investments, and allows you to change the figures after things start changing... nothing that can’t be done with a spreadsheet.

GrahamPlatt wrote:I watched the “take a tour” video. It seems that the system simply guides you into entering all your assets and liabilities into it, asks you to make assumptions about growth rates of your investments, and allows you to change the figures after things start changing... nothing that can’t be done with a spreadsheet.

Precisely. That is all any of these sites can do. Nothing you will not learn by simple use of a spreadsheet and making your own judgement calls. people spend far too much time on such fruitless exercises when they would be better spending it on reading company accounts otr thinking about what they need to know to invest with some confidence.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:

GrahamPlatt wrote:I watched the “take a tour” video. It seems that the system simply guides you into entering all your assets and liabilities into it, asks you to make assumptions about growth rates of your investments, and allows you to change the figures after things start changing... nothing that can’t be done with a spreadsheet.

Precisely. That is all any of these sites can do. Nothing you will not learn by simple use of a spreadsheet and making your own judgement calls. people spend far too much time on such fruitless exercises when they would be better spending it on reading company accounts otr thinking about what they need to know to invest with some confidence.

Dod

The other tools like Firecalc either backtest against historic stock market returns or use monte-carlo simulations rather than simply calculating the expected growth using growth rates you input.

Like the other posters I use a combination of Monte-carlo back testing (firecalc) and my own spreadsheet. To be fair if you click on the about menu from the link you find that it's derived from his own spreadsheet.

I'm not going to critisise "RetireEasy". I'm sure that for many it's very helpful. However I do think that investing the time needed to understand retirement investing is more valuable than paying for short cuts.

The tax treatment of 401k, 403k, SIPPP's, DC schemes, contribution limits and lifetime allowances may differ between the UK and US. However those are the EASY things. You can learn about them in a few weeks and update your knowledge once a year.

More difficult are questions like "what do I want to spend in retirement"? Or "how long do I plan on living"? What do I want to do with my time? How risk averse am I? How much effort managing my investments do I want to put in before and after I retire?

If you manage to pick answers to the difficult questions then how much to save, when you can retire and how much you can retire on become easy.

More difficult are questions like

- how much do I want to leave the kids etc?
- hence should I be concerned with IHT planning?

T7

I had a go with it for a while-it was initially free
Dropped it when they started to charge
Didn’t advance the cause very much
Certainly didn’t know any more than I did
Monevator.com has good articles for free
xxd09

The tool to have is Voyant. Very powerful planning. The BIG but is that it is about £1500! Firecalc is the next best for me. There is a list of calcs to try on Monevator.

Related to the issue of paying for this kind of thing - I agree that tools that model/forecast the performance of your portfolio in retirement are only part of the story in managing financial life after work. However, I have wondered in the past whether a tool that told you which, and how much, of your assets to sell and buy based on one or other recognised "method" would in fact be worth paying for.

So in the same way as "robo investing" is a thing, so to might "robo drawdown". So for example, if you want to maintain a 60/40/10 asset allocation, and it's all split across ISAs and SIPPS etc., I'd pay for a system that said "This month, sell £2000 of VHYL from your ISA account, and use £500 of that to top up your bonds ETF in your SIPP" or something like that. Or if I want to follow something "advanced" like Gyton's Guardrails, I could do that.

Of course, I'd still have to actually do the selling and buying, but I'd not have to think about what sell/buy as long as I knew what drawdown method the system was using.

Gilgongo wrote:Related to the issue of paying for this kind of thing - I agree that tools that model/forecast the performance of your portfolio in retirement are only part of the story in managing financial life after work. However, I have wondered in the past whether a tool that told you which, and how much, of your assets to sell and buy based on one or other recognised "method" would in fact be worth paying for.

So in the same way as "robo investing" is a thing, so to might "robo drawdown".

These systems are available, at a price. If you go the old fashioned route of an IFA you can get access to Dimensional funds. They use a Global approach of Equities, Bonds, etc rather than concentrating on Income. You invest an amount, and choose how much you want out each month. The advantage is for people who don't want to worry about these things, or just make it very simple for themselves.

We're considering this route with some of our non-ISA investments. We automatically could draw off an amount each month, reducing the size of the investment whilst allowing our ISAs to grow unhindered.

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:
These systems are available, at a price. If you go the old fashioned route of an IFA you can get access to Dimensional funds. They use a Global approach of Equities, Bonds, etc rather than concentrating on Income. You invest an amount, and choose how much you want out each month. The advantage is for people who don't want to worry about these things, or just make it very simple for themselves.

We're considering this route with some of our non-ISA investments. We automatically could draw off an amount each month, reducing the size of the investment whilst allowing our ISAs to grow unhindered.

How does this approach compare to doing it manually with Lifestrategy ## ? I could accept doing a lot of manual monthly sales for a 1% difference in overall fee structure.

Definitely agree with drawing down non ISA funds first.

If you're happy with a not very diverse 100% equity portfolio (which is philosophically rather at odds with diversified equites and bonds and etc...) then Fundsmith offer this on direct investments, wrapped and unwrapped. I assume they use it to help reduce transaction volumes, further reducing their dealing costs.

i don't know if any platforms offer it, it seems unlikely it isn't a feature somewhere?

xxd09 wrote:I had a go with it for a while-it was initially free
Dropped it when they started to charge
Didn’t advance the cause very much
Certainly didn’t know any more than I did
Monevator.com has good articles for free
xxd09

Thanks for answering the question, xxd09. I'm just curious to see whether something like this can offer as much as conventional research. Doesn't look as though it's the case.

Blatter wrote:I read about RetireEasy which is a UK based system and wondered if anybody on here had any experience with it and if so, how it rated as a planning tool?

I signed up a few years ago out of interest (because you can only see glimpses of the product) when they were offering a 14 day money back guarantee if you were not happy.

I asked for refund half an hour later after seeing the full product and what it could (and could not) do.

The owner seemed quite grumpy that I had done so and didn’t seem happy that anyone didn’t think his product was wonderful.

Maybe it has improved.

DrFfybes wrote:These systems are available, at a price.

Presumably though, you have to have your investments with them? Instead what I mean is that you could have your investments anywhere, the system would just tell you how to draw down on them in order to get your desired income in retirement. It's just a formula after all, the exact type of which you could (theoretically) choose.

Gilgongo wrote:
Presumably though, you have to have your investments with them? Instead what I mean is that you could have your investments anywhere, the system would just tell you how to draw down on them in order to get your desired income in retirement. It's just a formula after all, the exact type of which you could (theoretically) choose.

That sounds reasonably feasible to build in a spreadsheet? feed in the desired asset allocation, pick up the prices automatically, you could if you wanted to allow for optimising tax allowances.

AF62 wrote:

Blatter wrote:I read about RetireEasy which is a UK based system and wondered if anybody on here had any experience with it and if so, how it rated as a planning tool?

I signed up a few years ago out of interest (because you can only see glimpses of the product) when they were offering a 14 day money back guarantee if you were not happy.

I asked for refund half an hour later after seeing the full product and what it could (and could not) do.

The owner seemed quite grumpy that I had done so and didn’t seem happy that anyone didn’t think his product was wonderful.

Maybe it has improved.

Thanks AF62. Exactly the sort of thing I figured might happen if I dipped a toe to see what it was they offered. As you say, they're only "selling a sizzle" on the website and you have to sign up to see any further. Needless to say, I won't be bothering.

xeny wrote:That sounds reasonably feasible to build in a spreadsheet? .

Not one that I could reliable create though