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README.TXT
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Gold'N Years Retirement Funds Analysis (v4)
Copyright (C), 1996, Maristream, Inc.; All Rights Reserved.
Maristream, Inc.
2015 Franklin Street
N. Little Rock, AR 72114
(501) 758-7482
Will you retire a millionaire? Or, if you are like most folks, do you not
even have any idea how much you will have to live off of after retirement?
If you are not sure if your golden years will be in the red or in the black,
well, this is the program for you! Gold'N Years is a retirement funds analy-
sis program that projects how much your 401 (K)'s, IRA's, and other funds will
be worth when you retire, and how much you will get back from them each year
during your retirement. Besides tracking your current investments, you can
also use Gold'N Years to try out other funds and mixtures of funds that you
are considering investing in for your retirement, and see what effect they
have on that future income.
I must warn you first, though, playing around with different scenarios using
Gold'N Years is kindof addicting! And, don't get depressed if you learn that
your current retirement contributions won't even put food on the table when
you retire - at least now you will be able to determine what you need to do
to fix this problem before your retirement party takes place, assuming that
you have the time to do so. You might even discover that you are in pretty
good shape, and that you don't have to keep putting so much into your retire-
ment accounts to look forward to a comfortable retirement financially.
But, be aware that the past performance of funds does not mean that they will
make similar returns in the future, so neither Gold'N Years nor any of the fund
professionals can make any guarantees, unless you put your funds into fixed
return instruments, such as savings bonds, where the returns are usually much
lower. You must determine what level of risk that you can stand to take with
your money in order to potentially receive higher returns on your retirement
funds. One rule of thumb that I've heard is that you should have a percentage
equal to 100 minus your age in stocks or stock mutual funds, and the rest in
fixed return accounts. The closer you get to retirement, the harder you will
have to look at how much risk you are willing to take with the funds that you
have accumulated for your retirement, especially if you are within 5 years of
your retirement date.
Gold'N Years was developed as a DOS-based application to allow it to run on
most PC's, from 286's on up, in 470K of base memory. Although it was created
as a spreadsheet, you DO NOT NEED a spreadsheet program such as Lotus 1-2-3
or Quattro Pro to run it. Gold'N Years is distributed as shareware, so, when
you find it useful after your free 30-day evaluation period, as I hope that
you will, please send in your payment of $10.99 for continued use of it (if
you did not purchase it directly from me) to let me know that my effort on
it was worth it to you as a future millionaire.
Information used in calculating your retirement includes:
1) Your current age and age at retirement.
2) Your current salary base.
3) Your contribution (including matching employer contribution) to
the funds, as a percentage of your base salary.
4) Cost Of Living Adjustments (including raises) anticipated, as a
percentage of your base salary.
5) The estimated inflation rate (defaulting to the historical 3.59%).
6) Information on up to five funds, including:
a) The fund name,
b) The current value of the fund at the beginning of the base year,
c) The percentage of your contribution going to that fund, and
d) The historical percentage return of the fund (10 years is best).
Gold'N Years shows you what each fund will be worth at your retirement, given
the historical percentage returns of the funds and your ongoing percentage
contributions to the funds with cost of living increases, and includes a
breakdown per year of each fund's contributions and returns, which can be
modified on a per-year basis to cover special case years and anticipated
changes in contributions, along with the accumulating balances for each fund
and yearly contribution and earnings summaries of the combined fund amounts.
It also gives you five retirement payout scenarios and what they are worth
relative to your baseline salary year, so you can determine if what you are
contributing and what returns you are making will be able to support you and
your household during retirement. These scenarios include:
1) Disbursement of earnings only, leaving the principal untouched,
based on the continued historical returns of the individual funds
(which shouldn't be done after age 70.5, or you will be socked by
a 50% under-payment penalty by the IRS (USA)).
2) Payout over N years (such as 20 years) of the earnings and principal,
based on the continued historical returns of the individual funds.
3) Payout over N years of the earnings and principal, based on a given
single percentage return for the monies in all of the funds at
retirement, if you want to roll them over to a single interest
bearing account.
4) Payout over each of N years of the earnings and principal with cost
of living adjustments based on the inflation rate, given a single
percentage return for the monies in all of the funds at retirement.
5) Payout over each of N years of the earnings and principal with cost
of living adjustments based on the inflation rate, with earnings
based on the continued historical returns of the individual funds.
With this information, you will be able to keep up with your own funds
yourself, and do your own "what if" analysis, without having to call up
your brokers to have them calculate it for you. Note that these are
projected estimates only, and your brokers may be able to give you more
accurate information, especially on disbursements, where they can factor
in the ever-changing tax codes and other regulations, along with payments
from Social Security (which averages 27% of income needed at retirement)
and other governmental programs, into your retirement income.
INSTALLING GOLD'N YEARS
If you received Gold'N Years on a floppy disk:
1) Insert the floppy disk into your A drive,
2) Type A:, and
3) Type INSTALL
This will install Gold'N Years into the C:\GOLDNYRS directory on your PC.
If you need to install it from floppy drive B, change step 2 above to B:
instead of A:. If you need to install it to a different directory, change
step 3 above to include the full directory name after INSTALL, including
the disk drive letter, such as INSTALL D:\GOLDNYRS.
If you received Gold'N Years as a .ZIP file:
1) Make a directory for it using the MD command, such as MD C:\GOLDNYRS,
2) Type CD C:\GOLDNYRS (or whatever directory name you created), and
3) Type PKUNZIP GOLDNYRS.ZIP (prefixing the .ZIP file with whatever
directory it is in). (PKUNZIP is not included with Gold'N Years.)
RUNNING GOLD'N YEARS
To run Gold'N Years, assuming that it is in the C:\GOLDNYRS directory:
1) Type CD C:\GOLDNYRS (or whatever directory it is in), and
2) Type GOLDNYRS (or GOLDNYRS yourfile, for a specified file)
This will bring up the Gold'N Years title screen and load the GOLDNYRS.WKB
data file. Press the Enter key after the data file has finished loading
to show the file and work with it. If you have saved your previous work
to another file, press / F G (File Get) and type in the name of that file
to retrieve it. The slash key (/) switches you to the list of menus at the
top of the screen. Pressing the highlighted keys in those menu items brings
up other menu items or data entry fields or screens so you can make changes
to those system values and perform other functions. You can also press the
arrow keys after switchin