ESPlannerBasic joins the club
You might need a new plan for keeping your money safe.
As you probably know, there are a whole crop of web sites out there that will help you manage your finances. ESPlannerBasic is the latest new online financial management tool.
ESPlannerBasic is the free trial version of the online money management tools offered at www.esplanner.com. The homepage of the site says “No one wants to splurge today and starve tomorrow, nor do the opposite.”
ESPlannerBasic not for everyone
The site advertises that ESPlannerBasic, and the advanced, for-purchase versions of their program, will help you plan a lifetime of saving and spending. That made me want to laugh. There is no way I could make a financial plan right now that would be valid for the rest of my life, or even the rest of this year.
As I continued my research of ESPlannerBasic, though, I realized this service does not target twenty-somethings who often need emergency loans but are still considering racking up another 20 grand in debt for grad school.
No, ESPlannerBasic is for people in a more stable situation.
Retire-what?
Most of the articles I’ve seen about ESPlannerBasic tout it as a good tool to help you plan for retirement. At ESPlanner.com, it says:
ESPlannerBASIC, economics-based software, calculates how much you should spend, save, and insure each year to achieve a stable living standard — now and through retirement.
So, if you are in a position to start planning for retirement, ESPlannerBasic could be a great tool for you.
Where can I get some of this ‘extra money’?
As far as I understand it, ESPlannerBasic helps you manage your “extra money.” This mysterious “extra money” is apparently something that some people have after they pay all of their bills and buy gas and groceries. The site says:
The software incorporates all your economic resources as well as “off-the-top” expenditures on housing, taxes, college, etc. It then develops annual discretionary spending, saving, and life insurance recommendations.
So, if you want to make the most of your “discretionary” funds, you might want to give ESPlannerBasic a try.
Family friendly
ESPlannerBasic goes a step farther than many online money management tools. I doesn’t assume that the user will be keeping the same job and expenses for the rest of his or her life, but it does assume that the Social Security system will be the same when the user starts collecting it.
ESPlannerBASIC is a financial tool that can help you raise your spending power and make lifestyle decisions. It shows the living-standard impacts of changing jobs, contributing to retirement accounts, having children, down-sizing your home, retiring early, waiting to collect Social Security, and much more.
Ask the economists
The web site that offers ESPlannerBasic says “The results are designed to help you develop a stable living standard without putting you into debt.” So maybe it’s actually to late for me to use it, not too early.
Long story short, you should probably not take financial advice from me, but Laurence Kotlikoff, Professor of Economics at Boston University, and other economists might have some better insights. That group developed ESPlannerBasic, and many testimonials on the site report good results. Check it out.
This free online software is definitely useful to establish some kind of guidelines, but it can be used as the only guidance for the retirement planning. The matter is too serious for individuals to rely solely on one theory.
We did smart planning for retirement. We had no debt. We found our stocks and pensions under attack to pay for those who weren’t (mainly bankers, builders, and first time home owners). Now we lose big time.