[Request] Software or Articles on financial life planning
post by whpearson · 2012-03-16T19:06:18.120Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 6 commentsDoes anyone have recommendations for software or articles on how to plan your financial life?
Lets say I have a goal, retire at age 50 to X location with Y income in todays currency. Are there any tools that help me make decisions? E.g. to rent for a while, until a property dip (based on cyclical observations). Or how to spread investments over countries and investment types to mitigate black swan events like economic collapses.
I found reno when googling. But I don't know whether thats just because they are good at SEO or actually useful for what I am suggesting. Preferably it would have a wealth of data, such as property price increases by location etc.
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comment by MileyCyrus · 2012-03-17T03:09:49.481Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Does your belief in the upcoming Singularity affect your investment decisions? Would it be foolish to save money for 50 years in the future if AGI is invented by then?
Replies from: whpearson, gwern↑ comment by whpearson · 2012-03-18T15:24:16.720Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't have a belief in the upcoming singularity, I assign it a certain amount of probability weight, depending upon year. And I'm interested in retiring before I am 80, so I need to save even if AGI comes in 50 years.
I also assign some weight to stagnation due to trying to wean ourselves off cheap oil with a growing population. I can't put precise numbers on both of these.
↑ comment by gwern · 2012-03-17T03:23:28.293Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Does your belief in the upcoming Singularity affect your investment decisions?
Under Hanson's model of a paradigm shift in growth rates driven by ems, equities are drastically underpriced.
Would it be foolish to save money for 50 years in the future if AGI is invented by then?
It would also be foolish to buy insurance if you never need it.
comment by jswan · 2012-03-17T00:54:09.985Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A decent place to start would be The Investment Answer, which is a pretty conservative, simple investment strategy. Then branch out from there. Most retirement planning software makes big assumptions about return rates and the linearity of markets; you need to make sure you're aware of that when using it. Most of them are based around Modern Portfolio Theory and the Efficient Frontier, so it's a good idea to be aware of that and its weaknesses.
So much of personal finance planning revolves around your personality type and desires; for atypical personality types it can be a bit tricky to fit yourself into generalized models. You definitely need to think seriously about stuff like how mobile you want to be, what your risk tolerance is, whether you have dependents, etc etc.
Replies from: whpearsoncomment by finlifeplanner · 2012-03-19T23:28:58.426Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
As a Certified Financial Planner, I'm authorized to give planning advice for Canadians, but not outside Canada. That's one reason why I must emphasize that what I'm going to say here is not advice; an even more important reason is that I have no idea about your circumstances, therefore couldn't give advice even if you're Canadian, ... so take it with appropriate caution and level of generality. Having said that, I think I may be able to give you some food for thought.
You're asking for software and articles. On my http://personalfinancialplanning.ca site you can find a lot that I believe is worth reading/watching. In addition to http://asset-aid.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/01/financial-life-planning/, perhaps the most useful would be if you checked out these pages from the http://asset-aid.com/blog/index.php/archive-index/ page (sorry for the not working links that are supposed to join them, ... I've just noticed that they need some fine-tuning; it makes sense to start with the bottom one and move up from there on the list):
Set out to be more self reliant
Allocate assets and products, and more kinds of them, wisely
Learn lessons of the past, and from long term running of numbers
Creative play with widely different planning scenarios
Four useful avenues
A few straight talking pundits
Why listen to me? … take it as chest thumping if you want
It's a huge amount of materials, ... I'm quite sure you'll not do more than skim it, so here are some short&direct answers to your question: Check out these two other websites:
1, http://personalfutures.net/ - explore Verne Wheelwright's site, read his book and articles, use his free workbook
2, http://www.retirementoptimizer.com/ - read Jim Otar's book and other writings, and get acquainted with his software.
Good luck!