Notice: The following spreadsheets are all under Beta-level development ** |
The Simplified Income-Stream Planning Tool or SIPT is an Excel spreadsheet that calculates a personal finance glide-path of cash-flows from yearly income streams while subtracting expenses and taxes. This spreadsheet, comprised of a collection of worksheets, estimates yearly income from various sources: work, Social Security, pensions, annuities, and insurance; contributions and withdrawals from deductable retirement accounts (IRA, 401(k), 403(b), etc.), Roth IRAs, and savings investment accounts. Contributions and withdrawals may be specified for the investment and expense accounts. These may be entered as scheduled (i.e., periodic) or irregular (upcoming additional expenses - e.g., trip around the world, new house, new car, etc.), or both. The spreadsheet then estimates yearly federal tax rates, cash flows, and investment account balances as they accumulate. Results are presented as tables and glide-path graphs. To use the spreadsheet, enter your current data into red cells in the data entry worksheets. Also enter your age(s), estimates of the stock, bond and cash returns, CPI, COLAs, insurance, etc. The spreadsheet then estimates future values in the accounts affected. The Demo version of the spreadsheet contains demonstration data examples that exercise all options. The User version provides no demonstration data; it is the version you might use to enter your data. If you are interested, review the SIPT-Introduction (PDF) - the first worksheet of the SIPT that describes how to use the spreadsheet (or downloading the spreadsheet itself and read the Introduction worksheet there).
DOWNLOAD
Download individual Excel files by clicking on the links for particular files in the following spreadsheet descriptions. After clicking on a particular spreadsheet hyperlink, then click on the Download button that will appear to download the Excel spreadsheet file to the location that your computer saves downloaded files (e.g., "download" directory on Windows, etc.).
To edit and save your data, the version of Excel on your computer may require you to click on "Enable Editing" if it says "Protected View" at the top of the screen when you open the spreadsheet.
|
SUMMARY:
This Excel spreadsheet is designed for people who want to plan for future income, saving, and spending needs. It calculates rough estimates of saving and spending patterns over time. You must enter summaries of a range of your personal financial data as required by the model. These include applicable investments (taxable and retirement), pension, Social Security, work, annuity, and expenses. The final results are shown in summary tables and glide-path graphs for those tables. All data are entered and calculations are done only in this spreadsheet. No data are exported or saved from the spreadsheet (either locally or to the Internet). Once the data are entered, the spreadsheet estimates yearly cash-flows using income from various sources: work, pensions, Social Security, annuities, and life insurance benefits; contributions and withdrawals from tax-deferred 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), IRAs, Roths, and savings investment accounts. The spreadsheet estimates yearly investment returns, taxes on investment returns, and expenses. It estimates yearly Federal tax rates and resulting cash-flows are estimated. The spreadsheet allows for scheduled and irregular (upcoming additional) contributions and withdrawals for investment accounts (IRA, Roth, Savings) as well as for scheduled and irregular expenses and deductions. From this data, the spreadsheet then calculates yearly net worth. Glide-path tables and graphs are created are useful for investigating different planning scenarios by making changes to inputs.
The SIPT software may be run in a variety of spreadsheet programs including Windows Excel, the free OpenOffice or LibreOffice "calc", Google "sheet". The spreadsheet doesn't use Microsoft Visual Basic as VBA is not available in all spreadsheet programs. Apple's "numbers" spreadsheet program has some incompatibilities, so use either Excel for Mac or one of the free spreadsheet programs.
Why model? Although models by nature are imprecise, calculating a rough estimate of your income stream may be useful for financial planning. The spreadsheet represents a compromise between complexity and completeness and leans in the direction of a simpler model. As statistician George Box noted, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." To illustrate the concept of glide-path modeling, a very crude glide-path calculator, "SimpleCalc", is available (both as a worksheet in the SIPT spreadsheet and as a separate spreadsheet). This may be useful for you to experiment with to better understand the concept of glide-path before using the full SIPT spreadsheet, which uses a more complete financial planning model. These spreadsheets are educational tools.
See Appendix D in the the SIPT spreadsheet for the latest status and Revision-Notes History.
Here are a few additional spreadsheets that may be useful. They are not part of the SIPT spreadsheet.
VERSION: 0.4 Beta, 8-05-2016
VERSION: 0.5.4 Beta, 8-05-2016
VERSION: 0.4, 8-05-2016.
Disclaimer: The software computes various personal finance estimates using simplified models. No claim is made to the accuracy, suitability, and correctness of the algorithms. Note, estimates become less accurate over time. As the software uses static models and static rates of return, CPI, etc., it will not track actual market values over time. The software uses only Excel formulas and does not use Visual Basic (VBA), so one may easily review all computations as desired. Because it uses generic spreadsheet coding (with no VBA), it will run in a variety of spreadsheet programs such as Windows Excel, free OpenOffice or LibreOffice "calc", free Google"sheet", etc. Use this software at your own discretion and risk, as an initial way to think about personal finance problems. This is educational software. Absolutely no warranty is offered for this software and no responsibility is taken for any errors in or use of the software. |
Revised: September 9, 2016
License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0 (GPLv3) at [http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html](http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html)
Web: [https://github.com/SIPT2016/SIPT/README.md](https://github.com/SIPT2016/SIPT/README.md)
E-mail: finPlan.SIPT@gmail.com