We Have Updated Our Four Actuarial Budget Calculator (ABC) Workbooks

In our ongoing effort to simplify the present value calculations involved in the Basic Actuarial Equation used to help you develop a reasonable spending budget that is consistent with your financial goals, we have updated our ABC workbooks for:

• Single Retirees 
• Single Pre-retirees 
• Retired Couple 
• Pre-retired Couple
  

These Excel workbooks are available for download at no charge from the “Spreadsheets” section of our website.  We encourage you to download one or more of these workbooks and try them out.  Please remember to “Enable Editing” when you open the spreadsheets.

What’s New in These Updated Versions?

If you were already using an older version of our spreadsheets, the new “updated” version should give you the same answer as the older version provided all the input items are the same.  We have made two significant changes in the “input” section of the Input/Results tab of the updated workbooks:

• The recommended Lifetime Planning Periods (LPPs) from the Actuaries Longevity Illustrator (or approximate estimates of those LPPs) have been incorporated into the updated workbooks.  By entering your age nearest birthday and sex (and, if appropriate your partner’s age nearest birthday and sex), the new workbooks will automatically determine these years for you. 
• Default assumptions have been incorporated in the updated workbooks for the expected rate of return/discount rate, expected inflation rate, desired rate of increase in budget after retirement and LPP(s).  These default assumptions are the assumptions for these items that we recommend to determine your Actuarial Budget Benchmark (ABB).  You aren’t required to use the default assumptions.  You can select an alternative assumption by selecting to “override” the default assumption in the dropdown box in column C and entering the assumption you want to use instead in the “override assumption” in column F. 
  

Acknowledgments

Thanks to our readers for pointing out deficiencies in our workbooks and for suggesting changes for improvement.  If you discover a problem with the new versions, please let us know.  We really appreciate your feedback.  Also, thanks to Bobbie, Kin Chan and my wife, Emily for making these improvements possible and being patient with me. 

If you like our workbooks, please refer them to a friend.  If you think they can be improved, feel free to suggest changes.  If you are an Excel guru and think you can improve the spreadsheets, we are happy to provide you with an unprotected version and give you full credit for the next round of updates.