itshalfempty

It annoys me how hard it can be to find reasonable tools to help understand financial concepts. The calculations are generally not very complicated if you already understand the concepts - but if you don’t, trying to quickly find a simple calculator or explanation leads to sites riddled with ads, data collection forms, or information that isn’t exactly right.

A few years ago I started trying to figure out whether or not I was on track for retirement. There are plenty of “rules of thumb” for how much to have saved at different points in your life - but little clarity on where those numbers came from and whether or not they were actually right for me.

finra.org has a pretty decent calculator that can help consider taxes, but I find the form and results pretty annoying to work with. It’s tough to play with contribution amounts, retirement ages, retirement income, etc., and run some “what-if” scenarios. I made my own quick-and-dirty calculator that drops tax consideration, but makes it a lot easier to use for rough planning. I found it really useful for helping me better understand how to meet my nebulous retirement goals and figured someone else might too.