Quinkana

The attached .zip file contains the start of a "Whole Of Life Finances" spreadsheet.

Please download (virus check), have a look, try out, criticize, suggest / make modification, ...

The basic idea is to find the minimum income needed to finance a mortgage, if you have one, pay your living expenses and taxes and end up at retirement owning your house and enough investable money for an adequate retirement.

There is plenty to criticize about the model:
1. it assumes that your income will maintain a constant purchasing power from now to retirement,
2. it assumes only one income per family,
3. it assumes that the return on your investments will just maintain the value of your money,
4. ...

I hope that you will play around with it at first as a plausible model to encourage debate.

gedge

I get a run time error on the UCase statement where you convert the entry against Company. Says project or library not found.

When i comment the line out, it then has a problem with the 'SolverReset' procedure - same message.

Quinkana

Do you have "Solver" installed?

Check "Tools", "Add-ins"

gedge

Probably not. What is it? Part of Excel?

MrsDagboy

Mine says its read only mode when I open it

gedge

Are you running the spreadsheet from within the zip file?
Try extracting it first before opening it.
Should work from within Winzip but this would simplify things.

Quinkana

Because you opened it from the .zip file? Try saving it to disk, closing it and opening from disk.

Quinkana

Solver is an Excell Add-In. Check "Tools", "Add-ins" for "Solver". If not there, you will have to load it from your MS-Office CD.

It is really hand for all sorts of numeric optimizations - a very useful knowledge to have.

FRONTLINE SYSTEMS - Solver

MrsDagboy

Got it now - thanx.

Current investable worth include your own house?

gedge

Thanks for that, added and run ok. Just figuring out the numbers now!

MrsDagboy

I knew there was a reason I didnt become an accountant .

Quinkana

Your choice - but I say no because:
1. You must live somewhere,
2. Your house does not pay you an income today,
3. Your house saves you the expense of rent allowing you to save today.

The view I suggest is more looking at the Rest-Of-Your-Financial-Life-From-Today rather than actually the Whole-Of-Your-Life.

Quinkana

The model, while simple, throws up some interesting points.

For example, you can minimize tax by paying off your mortgage until the moment of your retirement. This might actually be a little risky because your income might cease before retirement due to becoming unemployed.

gedge

Chances are that any real income would cease when you retire anyway, so the most obvious plan would involve splitting your mortage over the number of years you have left before retirement anyway?
As I don't have a mortgage I am placing figures in on a best guess if I did join the home owners guild. What is the mortgage principle? Why do you set mortgage years to 1? I'm obviously new to this.

MrsDagboy

Ok I give up, too hard for me, I think we'll just keep Dagboy working for another few years & stick some money under the mattress .