Monday, July 30, 2012

Retirement Calculator Spreadsheet

CalculatorPhoto by 401(K) 2012
Instead of just telling...err typing you something, today I thought I would give you something. Candy. No, not candy. It's a retirement calculator spreadsheet. Exciting right? Not really. Well, you're the one reading a personal finance blog, what did you expect? Candy. Moving on...

A couple years ago, I wanted to figure out what I was looking at for a retirement year. I searched around the Internet and found a number of retirement calculators, but I wanted something a little more customizable. So one night I hammered out this spreadsheet.

You can enter your salary and expected investment return. It also has places for 401(k) and IRA contribution information. In case you have other types of retirement accounts, there is a spot for both a percentage-based account and/or a biweekly contribution account too. Plus you can enter starting account amounts. I know, it sounds like a lot, so thank me! Actually, maybe look it over first and make sure you appreciate the awesomeness of it and then thank me.

Oh yeah, I forgot, I said the reason I created this was because I wanted more customization. My main motivation for making this was to see what our retirement timeframe would be if we switched to a single income. In order to figure that out, I made the spreadsheet allow for customizing your salary (and everything else) on a biweekly basis. So, if you want to see what would happen if you quit working, you can. Just change the salary to zero on the date you would stop receiving your paycheck and there you have it. Everything will adjust automatically. Same for contributions. Want to see how much adding a percent to your 401(k) will have in 25 years, change it and it will auto-fill down for all future entries. Try it out. Let me know what you think.

Download the spreadsheet here if you haven't already. Don't forget to share this post with your retirement calculating friends and family.

What are you doing to make sure you retire at your ideal time?  How have you been tracking your progress?

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