If you’re planning for retirement, it’s likely that you’re interested in tips and tricks to make your efforts more efficient. It’s no secret that retirement planning has never been easy – past studies have revealed that only 18% of seniors expect to be better off in retirement than they are now. While preparing for and living well during retirement requires discipline, careful planning, and plenty of foresight, today’s innovative online tools can help make the process more intuitive. From tracking your investments to helping you budget your monthly expenses, today’s web-based tools are a fantastic way to make retirement planning just a bit easier. Here are seven of our favorite online retirement tools:
You Need a Budget
Even if you’ve saved hard throughout your life for retirement, the only way to make those funds last is through careful money management tactics. You Need a Budget is a budgeting tool that offers educational videos, a user forum, and plenty of tutorials to help you learn to manage your money better. The tool offers a free trail month and then costs $60 after the 34-day trial period is over. While this may seem like a big investment – it’s worth it. Available on Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android, the app plugs in to your financial information and helps you keep track of your spending by importing information from your checking accounts, credit cards, retirement funds, and various other financial platform.
What’s more, the app isn’t complicated, which is surprising for one that does so much. It’s easy to use, offers mobile apps for all devices, and can help you manage your money and learn to make your retirement savings last.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a free investment tracking tool that’s popular among people planning for and living in retirement. In addition to tracking the performance of your investments, Personal Capital provides an easy-to-understand asset allocation breakdown and syncs with data from both tax-advantaged and taxable accounts.
People love Personal Capital for its easy chart and graph displays and simple retirement planning tool, which allows users to adjust their investment strategies, analyze the performance of current investment portfolios, and keep tabs on their overall net worth. Additionally, Personal Capital offers a simple cash flow analyzer, so you can keep track of your daily, weekly, and monthly spending, as well as an innovative fee analyzer that helps prevent seniors from paying too much in fees on broker accounts, including mutual funds and retirement and investment accounts.
Moneydance
Moneydance is a simple personal finance platform that allows users to manage any currency from one simple online platform. Moneydance is available on Linux, Windows, and OS X and offers complete, integrated support for online banking. Depending upon what users prefer, Moneydance allows financial transactions to be uploaded manually or for the platform to connect with your financial institution to import transactions automatically. The home dashboard acts like an electronic checkbook ledger and displays every transaction you make, so you always know where your funds are being allocated.
Additionally, Moneydance allows users to set up automated transactions for things like monthly payments, which makes financial management easier and less stressful. Despite the fact that it does so many things, Moneydance is simple, streamlined, easy to use, and amazingly flexible. Moneydance offers a limited free trial (usually about 100 transactions), after which users will need to pay $50 for full access to the app.
BlackRock Portfolio Analysis
Unlike the other tools mentioned so far in this article, BlackRock’s Portfolio Analysis isn’t so much a tool as it is a page. Hosted by reputable financial agency BlackRock, Inc., this page offers several helpful tools and resources that can help you get a handle on your retirement savings and learn what you can do to help them stay healthy. The page includes things like a tool that can provide side-by-side comparisons of five closed-end or open exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, or indices. The page also features a hypothetical portfolio tool which can help users understand how acquiring new funds will allow the portfolio as a whole to perform.
Ideal for seniors who have extensive investment platforms and want to ensure that they continue to perform well and provide a constant stream of income during retirement, BlackRock’s Portfolio Analysis page is a great one-stop-shop for investment advice.
My Calculators
One of the simplest tools on the list, My Calculators offers a selection of pared-down financial calculators, including savings and investment calculators, 401k calculators, retirement calculators, and rate and yield calculators. With this selection of calculators, it’s simple to determine how long your retirement savings will last with monthly withdrawals. The calculators factor in inflation and available Social Security payments and give users an idea of their after-tax withdrawal rate.
Budget Simple
Yet another online budgeting tool, Budget Simple allows users to focus on their personal finances and ensure that they’ve developed a budget that works well for them. The tool helps users analyze finances, spending, and saving, and create a budget that allows them to meet financial or investment goals. The tool works by analyzing a user’s finances and then creating personalized suggestions on areas where money can be saved, how a user can plan better for set financial goals, and how to make retirement savings last. Budget Simple is a fantastic way to make developing and maintaining your retirement budget easy and the tool offers a simple, approachable, user-friendly dashboard and platform. Ideal for seniors who want to make a budget but aren’t comfortable with complex tools or involved online platforms, budget simple is a great way to manage money without feeling overwhelmed.
Mint
Mint is a comprehensive online financial tool that allows users to build budgets, keep tabs on credit scores, and gain access to customized financial tools and tips. The service plugs directly into a bank account and offers users alerts if any unusual account charges pop up. The service also encrypts all financial information for maximum security.
Conclusion
For seniors who need help budgeting their retirement funds, these seven innovative online tools are a fantastic place to start. From building monthly budgets to tracking funds and getting on-the-go account notifications, these tools can make planning for and living well during retirement easier than ever.