Thanks Chris

Your advice about avoiding specific date in the Lifetime Planner is very
valuable and I already follow your advice in my 'real' Lifetime Plan in
Money 04. It make adjustments/changes much easier ... especially when you
are doing your own 'what if' scenarios.

In this first experiment to compare Money LP and Quicken RP I have kept
things as simple as possible. I only have a $1M Investment Account (it is
the only account) and have Annual Expense hard set at a constant $50K year.
There is no other information in either file (i.e. no past budget
information, no houses, no other accounts) except the setup information that
is required for the Lifetime and Retirement Planners.

Thanks again for you thoughts on this!

Best Regards



"Chris Cowles" <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote in message
news:%23lmxe4%23AGHA.2512[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
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Thanks for the tip on SS gain. I did not know that.

In the simple plans that I set up for this comparison, there is not any
income in the plan (just the gain $1M investment account). The $1M
investment Account is the only account and the Annual Expense is a constant
$50K year. With this example I am trying to see if Quicken and Money are
close in order to Validate my 'real' Lifetime Plan in Money. I was hoping
that if I setup both identical or close to identical I would see similar
results ... 5 years difference on 30 years is a difference of 16+%. I guess
I had higher expectations.

Thank-you again for your thoughts/comments. I will let you know if I learn
more.


"GregK" <gregkann(remove)[at]comcast(remove).net> wrote in message
news:u5HlxU%23AGHA.2620[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
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"GregK" <gregkann(remove)[at]comcast(remove).net> wrote in message
news:e5i%23zn$AGHA.2620[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
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Thanks. I was unaware of that. It's interesting that Money makes that
assumption for "pension benefits" as well. For Social Security, it's
probably a reasonable assumption; for private pensions, perhaps not.

Based on your prompt, I found the page containing the information you cite.
For the benefit of others, when searching Money help for 'Social Security',
the relevant link is described as "About planning for Social Security or
pension benefits".
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

With regard to MS Money adjusting the benefit by 2% percent, I found this in
Help for MS Money 2004: Money assumes a conservative annual growth rate of
2% for your Social Security or pension benefits.

"Chris Cowles" <NoSpam[at]For.me> wrote in message
news:%23xkRTw%23AGHA.1124[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

"quest" <quest[at]abc.com> wrote in message
news:%23$fo5E5AGHA.1216[at]TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
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I've never used Quicken so cannot compare. However, if your budget is
relatively detailed, my sense is that Money's Lifetime Planner is as
accurate as a model of the future can be. The more detail you enter, the
more accurate it is. By that, I mean entering predictable lifetime events
like 'Buy a used car when child gets driver's license', 'Purchase
supplemental health insurance when retired', or 'Sell big house and trade
down to retirement condo'.

The one thing it does that affects me negatively is assume I'll make
premature IRA withdrawals to pay expenses in a given year. It gives priority
to savings, which we all should do, of course. But it doesn't consider that,
instead of making savings deposits, then withdrawing those deposits
prematurely, I'd simply reduce my deposits that year. The result is payment
of premature withdrawal penalties.

No matter what you do with it, it's still somewhat of a WAG. It's simply a
model. But you can make the WAG more accurate, allowing some degree of
confidence that you won't have to eat dog food.

One suggestion: as much as practical, try to avoid 'on a specific date' for
model events. Instead, tie events to other events such as 'retirement',
'college starts', or things like that. That way, if you change one event,
the other linked events adjust dynamically. Otherwise, the specific dates
you entered for some events are no longer relevant to the rest of the plan,
rendering it less accurate.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

"GregK" <gregkann(remove)[at]comcast(remove).net> wrote in message
news:u5HlxU%23AGHA.2620[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
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How did you determine that? Is it documented somewhere? Or did you calculate
it based on changes of payment listed in each year's details?
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

A difference of 5 years, 30 years from now does not seem too far off. I am
not familiar with Quicken but I know with MS Money 2004 assumes a social
security increase of 2% per year (not the inflation value you select). It is
not adjustable. There may be other non settable configurations in both. If
they are not the same there will be slight differences. Keep us posted on
what you find.

"quest" <quest[at]abc.com> wrote in message
news:%23$fo5E5AGHA.1216[at]TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Lifetime Planner (Money) and Retirement Planner (Quicken) comparison

Has anyone else tried comparing Money's Lifetime Planner and Quicken's
Retirement Planner?

I have been a Money user for a long time and wanted to validate the Lifetime
Planner information I have in Money.

I purchased Quicken Dlx 2006 and I already have Money Dlx 2004. I started
from a simple example. I created a 'new' file for each and added one Saving
account with $1M dollars. I entered identical setup information in both,
but they predict different results.

Money Lifetime Planner claims I will have enough money until 2039
Quicken Retirement Planner claims I will have enough money until 2034

Money's Lifetime Planner and Quicken's Retirement Planner have very a
similar look and feel, and as far as I can tell, if not identical setup
information very close to the same setup information. With this in mind, I
would expect them to have similar results. I would be happy with slightly
different results, but not as significant as I am seeing.

Does anyone have any thoughts/comments? Has anyone else experimented with
this? TIA