New Javascript investment planner

[JohnB]

People might be interested in my Javascript investment planner at http://www.johnbray.org.uk/retire/retir ... cated.html. As a step up from spreadsheets it allows you to set up a investment plan and runs it forward to death, handling tax, sequence of returns and variable spending patterns. It produces graphical and table results showing how your wealth holds out. It handles DB pensions/SIPPs/ISAs/unprotected funds, shares/bonds/gold/cash/own house. You can move house, inherit and give away money.

Its quite complicated, but is pre-populated with a sample scenario (not my circumstances), and allows lots of what-ifs. I don't use cookies, or keep anyone's inputs.

It was written for my interest, so only handles a single person, no Buy to Let and doesn't go beyond higher rate tax.

Be gentle with it, there is no error trapping of inputs, and I'm sure there are bugs. I want to keep ownership of it, so its obfuscated and will stop working on the 23th of Feb. There is no documentation at present.

Let me know what you think.

[forlesen]

Thanks for sharing! You've clearly put a lot of work in on this, although it is obviously not polished yet.

I've had a quick play with this, with some made-up data, so here are some comments.

The general impression is that it does produce plausible outputs, but with such complex input data and a closed source program, it's hard to be sure about that. I spent a bit of time running down various apparent quirks, some of which I could explain, some I couldn't. For example:

1. When I retired at 55, I could not immediately see why my SIPP kept building up till age 67. First, Other was run down (to 50K - controlled by a parameter), then the ISA. I then realised there is another parameter that I had not touched, controlling the drawdown age.

2. I found the movements of cash between SIPP, ISA and Other after drawdown quite hard to understand. Are there any parameters controlling the prioritisation of which source(s) will be drawn on, and how much?

3. For some reason, the model completely empties the SIPP in favour of Other and ISA. If you have dependents, this is surely far from optimal, as it misses the opportunity to bypass IHT by passing on the residual SIPP to your dependents. There does not seem to be any way of controlling this.

4. I made partial sense of what was happening to the SIPP by looking at the cash flow columns for that and Lump Sum, but there do not seem to be corresponding columns for cash flows into / out from ISA and Other. Adding these would make the running balances easier to understand.

5. I half-liked the way you can make a couple of alterations to key parameters at different ages. But if you are going to do this at all, it would be better if you could enter multiple age-based changes in a table, rather than being limited to a fixed number of them, e.g. 2 or 3. That way, you can keep the initial inputs simpler (leave the tables empty), but still have a much more flexible model if you want to.

6. I haven't bothered to explore the investment performance configuration and behaviour. I'm sure that would generate just as many comments as the above.

7. One remark on that - it would be good to have a FIRECalc-like option for that part of the model, as the overall "shape" of different possible outcomes is actually more important (IMHO) than the precise behaviour of one specific scenario.

8. There needs to be some way of working with multiple models (configuration sets). The input is far too complex to manually enter every time. Ideally, these models could be shared (e.g. as XML files).

[JohnB]

Thanks for spending the time to provide such constructive feedback, much appreciated. But the lack of any other comments here suggests there isn't much interest in it, so I don't think I'll be spending the effort broadening it from a tool for my purposes to a more general one.

[forlesen]

You're welcome, I enjoyed it.

I'm a little surprised at the lack of interest. This is a well-used board, populated with knowledgeable people actively engaged in planning their retirement finances. Something more sophisticated than a spreadsheet to explore this topic could be a valuable tool for many people, before and after retirement.

Before you just give up on this, perhaps we could ask others who took a look at your post but passed on without responding, why they have not responded, and what would be needed to get them more interested. I think there are several possibilities, e.g.:

- Happy with spreadsheet
- Already suitable tools for this elsewhere
- Potentially interested, but... (it would be good to know what the 'but's were - they might be things JohnB would be willing to address)

[StepOne]

I did take a quick look and was mightily impressed - you've clearly put a lot of effort into this.

I didn't go any further because I've got my own excel-based version. It hasn't got all the bells and whistles, but it does what I need, and obviously it's exactly based on my own situation.

I think that's the problem - most people are not interested in this kind of forecasting, and probably don't even understand a lot of the inputs that are required. Of the few that do, they probably have something basic knocked up, even on the back of an envelope, which works fine for them. It might be worth posting a link at some other personal finance boards - e.g. moneysavingexpert?

StepOne

[spiderbill]

I did take a look and there was much to like, although there were a couple of input fields which I wasn't sure about. I'd intended to take a further look when I had more time but have been away dealing with the purchase of a sheltered house for my father and starting the sale process for another house to wind up an estate, so such time has been in rather short supply.

With no formatting of the fields making some of the labelling a bit ambiguous I suspect some may have been put off investigating it further but clearly there is a lot of potential in it. I'll try and take another look over the weekend.

[Raptor]

I had a quick look at it and it seemed to be comprehensive. However as I am past that point now did not use it. Should think it worth a plug though.

Raptor.

[vrdiver]

I want to keep ownership of it, so its obfuscated and will stop working on the 23th of Feb. There is no documentation at present.

Let me know what you think.

When I read the tool has an expiry date, my first thought was "oh, he wants us to beta test it, but then not be able to use it if we like it."

Maybe harsh, but if you look at previous posters who've presented various tools, the tools have not been time-barred. You might get better uptake if you removed that constraint. Whether you offer an updated version as a result of feedback would be up to you.

Good luck with the project. I suspect it's a tool that many would benefit from if some of the feedback to date is incorporated.

VRD

[tjh290633]

Thanks for spending the time to provide such constructive feedback, much appreciated. But the lack of any other comments here suggests there isn't much interest in it, so I don't think I'll be spending the effort broadening it from a tool for my purposes to a more general one.

Moderator Message:
You do realise that there is a forum dedicated to financial software? viewforum.php?f=27

This would have been more appropriate there. TJH

[JohnB]

I only spotted the Financial Software link from the home page, which sends you to http://lemonfoolfinancialsoftware.weebly.com/

[forlesen]

There is also a forum, here: viewforum.php?f=27

However, I'm not convinced that you would have got more attention there. Mostly that board deals with financial software useful for day to day management of your portfolio, e.g. HYP top-ups, unitising your portfolio, and financial data extraction.

I for one spend zero time on there, as I invest in collective vehicles like ETFs, ITs etc, and find basic tools like a monthly tabulation of my various assets, backed up with occasional use of XIRR perfectly adequate for tracking my overall wealth and investment performance. I suspect many others primarily interested in the big picture aspects of retirement planning would find this present board more relevant too.

Still it would not be a bad idea to add a cross-post there.

[Raptor]

I have been watching this and thought about moving it to the "financial software" discussion board but I think that it would get a better "testing" and feedback here. If you feel that you may get responses from having it there, my suggestion would be to create a topic there pointing to this thread.

Raptor.

[gbjbaanb]

To be honest I think its a bit too complicated - I mean, it has fields for how much gold you own. Now I know precious metals are a fair part of a retirement portfolio, but there is little reason to put such things explicitly in - unless you can tell me the price in 10 years time, that is.

So for a longer-term planner, you're confusing details with what should be using generalisations. Look at the Aviva planner (https://www.direct.aviva.co.uk/myfuture ... r/AboutYou ) that asks how old you are and a few questions about how much you have. Then it figures the rest out from (I assume) average or conservative returns based on current thinking. For long-term planning, its going to be as accurate (or not) as this one but without requiring so much up-front effort.

[JohnB]

The gold thing illustrates the problem. Personally I have no gold, as I think its a daft idea, but I added it because I thought people might want it to illustrate a point. And if you cover more bases the complexity and the support burden rises. I wrote it because I personally wanted a UK-centric calculator with more detail, as all I could see were simplistic ones like the Aviva one or US-focussed ones with more detail. But people may prefer to maintain their own personalised spreadsheets, as I once did, and not struggle with a multi-focussed tool.

I feel that from the limited feedback here there isn't the interest in maintaining this tool as a public good, so I think I'll make it private again.

Thank you all for your input.

John