- April 7, 2017
- Category: Retirement
Creating a retirement plan and saving money in accordance with the plan can be challenging, to say the least. Fortunately, there are several no-cost or low-cost apps and tools available online to make our lives easier.
Our “golden years” are supposed to be just that – a time that shines brightly thanks to the personal financial choices we made during our working years. Creating the best possible retirement plan, saving money each month for decades, and then finally, distributing the money in the smartest way possible will hopefully provide the standard of living you’ve always dreamed about during your retirement years. If you are looking for quality online tools and apps to help you with planning or forecasting for your retirement, consider the following options:
- Personal Capital: This free tool is a wildly popular retirement planning aid that allows users to connect investment accounts from multiple brokers or mutual fund companies in one easy-to-navigate location. Then, the program will seamlessly analyze the portfolio to display the user’s asset allocation, investment fees, and investment portfolio performance. Full-color charts and graphs turn complex financial data into simple visuals, and the onboard 401(k) fee analyzer even helps investors see how much of their portfolio is being “lost” to investment fees.
- Betterment: This comprehensive tool not only tracks your investment accounts and creates visually appealing charts and graphs, but it can also simplify the art of investing by essentially making all of the key decisions for you. Betterment has a solid and simple interface that features a sliding bar that can be manipulated to show the impact of various asset allocations – from all bonds to all stocks. It also features an asset allocation wizard that can instantly create a balanced allocation between stock and bond ETFs. You’ll have to fund the Betterment account first to begin using the tool.
- Wealth Minder: Founded in 2012, Wealth Minder is now a leading service provider in the personal investment space. It acts as a one of the best tools to help connect financial planners with individual investors, with Wealth Minder’s ultimate goal being the promotion of qualified, competent financial advisors to support individual investors with less than $500k in investable assets. More than a hundred million households in the U.S. can claim this level of investing capital. What originally started out as a tool to support self-directed investors has not become more of a networking site for investors at all stages of the game.
- AARP Social Security Calculator: There are several high-quality paid tools available online today that can help make sense of social security benefits, but a free tool that is quite robust and can help clarify the issue of taking SSI payments is AARP’s free calculator. The goal of the free retirement planning tool is to help you make timely, wise decisions to maximize your monthly social security benefit.
- FutureAdvisor: This tool is similar to Betterment in that it not only provides plenty of reporting power and data analysis options, but it can also suggest asset diversification strategies to rebalance a portfolio. The Premium Membership goes one step further and can complete trades automatically on your behalf, will allocate new investable cash to your chosen investments, and even harvest tax losses at the end of each year.
These tools and applications will help you make sense of the complexities of investing – including investment account diversification and asset reallocation strategies. For more information about adding physical precious metals to diversify your portfolio, contact the Gold IRA experts today at American Bullion.
Although the information in this commentary has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, American Bullion does not guarantee its accuracy, and such information may be incomplete or condensed. The opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. American Bullion will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information nor for the availability of this information. All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only and should not be used to make buy or sell decisions for any type of precious metals. We, at American Bullion, are not financial advisors or tax advisors. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please do your homework before diversifying with precious metals.