A great retirement calculator

**forHISglory** · 02-21-2011, 11:34 PM

If you think about retirement at all, you might want to use this free retirement calculator at cnnmoney.com. It's one that we used for some time as we tried to decide when and if we could retire early.

It begins by asking about your goals, including your current age, desired retirement age, life expectancy, current income, and desired amount of income during retirement. The nice thing about this is that you can always switch answers to see different scenarios. For example, if you want to retire at 62, you can see how that compares with retiring at 65, etc. Or if you have a goal of having $40,000 a year to live on during retirement, you can see how possible that would be.

Next, it moves into possible sources of income during retirement. This includes social security, pension, annuities, trusts, etc. It does not include income from working jobs during retirement.

The third part asks for you to list your savings, including IRA, ROTHS, 401 k or b, SEP, Keoughs, and taxable accounts. For many of us, these will be dismal numbers, but it's important to see your situation clearly.

In part 4, you identify the type of saver/investor you are. We tend to be very conservative, which means we probably earn a lower percentage on our money.

Finally, it calculates your retirement needs, your chances of reaching your goal, what you need to improve, and gives a very detailed look at what your year by year retirement picture could look like.

It doesn't take too long to put in the figures, and it's interesting to play out different possibilities. For us, personally, it motivated us to increase savings and debt free living in order to reach our goal. Important: this is not a guarentee, but rather a tool to explore various aspects of the future. Try it!