The Financial Planning software industry is fairly varied and dynamic. What most Financial Planning programs strive to enable you to do is to effectively build a strategy for saving money. There is likely a program specifically for you whether you are saving for retirement, which is a large portion of the financial planning community, or simply trying to regain control over a budget which has wrestled out of your control and is hemorrhaging your hard earned dollars all over the market place. This is good news in that there is a program that can specifically cater to nearly every financially organized fantasy you can imagine, however it is also bad news as it can be quite tedious to sort through an overwhelming availability of information.
By determining how much of a comprehensive program you need it is possible to begin paring down the amount of programs that will be appropriate for your situation. There are programs that are fairly simplistic and have a price tag of $0. On the other end of the spectrum there are programs as high as $2000 for a yearly license. If you have an extremely diverse and complicated portfolio of assets, it might benefit you to attain a program that can effectively organize and assess your entire financial environment giving you a strategy for savings. If, however you are simply trying to pay down your credit card debt and free up some cash to spend on the weekends, you do not necessarily need a Monte Carlo simulator or stock program to handle it. If you are not sure what some of that means, you probably need to go with a simpler program.
Here are just a few of the many available financial planning programs with a relatively brief overview of each:
Advice America
- AdvisorVision Retirement Income Edition(RIE) $750 annually or $75 monthly
- Monte Carlo simulations
- Focuses on retirement goals
- Retirement income products ie annuities
- Reverse mortgages and bond ladders
- Risk (ie early death or long term disability)
- Risk strategy that enefits of life insurance, annuity, long term care policy
AdvisorVision Comprehensive Planning Edition (CPE) $1500 annually or $150 monthly
- More multi faceted and comprehensive
- Option and hedging strategies
- Estate and tax planning
- Life Insurance and Long Term Care
- Asset allocation
- Business Intelligence Reports (Advisor trends, customer conversion rates, revenue opportunities)
- For high net worth clients with detailed needs
Mint (part of Quicken now) free
- Products however are ranked in order of savings to you
- Anonymous information (does not require social security, name, address, or account numbers)
- It is a read only program; it cannot access funds from programs
- Mint maintains a database of checking, savings, credit cards, brokerages, CDs and IRA rollover offers that can save you money
- Shows interest rates on all debts, how much you owe, and which would be most beneficial to pay off first
- Tracks investments; performance, returns, and fees
MoneyGuidePro $1295 (annual license)
- Offers a Roth Conversion Calculator
- Four Calculation Methods: SmartCalculation, MonteCarlo, Custom, Custom with MonteCarlo
- Smart options which integrates preferences into calculations, Retirement Ages, Goals with a ranking scale and Extra Savings
- Utilizes Morningstar to determine assets (stocks, mutual funds, annuities)
- Risk tolerance assessment
- Links to all accounts with up to date and current values
MoneyTree offers two different programsSilver Financial Planner $495
- Utilize up to 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations
- Income and expenses
- Savings and investments
- Social Security and benefits
- Asset allocation advice, adjustment for inflation, tuition and housing estimates for most major colleges, credit shelter, and life insurance trust
TOTAL Planning Suite $850
Separated into three phases:
‘Easy Money’ which is goal based:
- For use with middle-income clients, it determines retirement needs with solutions to potential shortfalls.
- Analyze long term care, life insurance and disability
- Assets and net worth
‘Golden Years’ which is based on the cash flow:
- For the client that seeks fine-tuned detail and extremely accurate tax analysis on the yearly basis
- Focuses on asset growth, expenses, taxes, and income
- Monte Carlo simulations
- Capital accumulation and draw down
‘Strategic Solutions’ which has specialized reports
- A specific module for quick analysis and reports of specific scenarios
- Early IRA withdrawals
- Taxable account and deductible retirement plan
- Single-life or joint pension distribution
- Monte Carlo Simulations
- Retirement taxes and cost of delayed start to savings
As you can see the options available in each program can become quickly overwhelming if you are window shopping. Determine your specific needs for financial planning and your price range. Keep in mind that if your financial situation is complicated enough, the more expensive software could more than pay for itself via the savings and strategies that can be organized. If you are not sure where to start, begin with a simpler program that costs less. Or even consider a trial or demo version which many companies will offer.
Before purchasing a financial planning program make sure to compare all the best programs offered and try a demo version where available so you could get the best possible deal.