Welcome to Just Run The Numbers

Just Run The Numbers

Just Run The Numbers (JRTN) is all about modeling your retirement. A retirement model is a comprehensive prediction of your retirement finances. Retirement Models are sometimes refered to as Retirement Calculators. The term Retirement Model is used here because we are aiming to answer many different questions and not just a single, albeit important, question such as “can I retire?” The Retirement Model is an important input to your overall Retirement Plan. The model takes your current financial situation, your expected external income sources, your spending needs, and assumptions about the future such as market conditions, inflation, and longevity, etc. It uses this information to build a year-by-year cash flow documenting where the spending money comes from and the value of your assets over time. The core proposition is that this is something that anyone can do.

Modeling is addressed in two ways. First, a manuscript has been developed that provides a top-to-bottom discussion of retirement modeling. Secondly, a free open-source tool called JRTN has been developed to support retirement modeling. The first and larger part of the manuscript is tool independent; in fact, it concludes with a section on modeling tool selection. The second part of the manuscript documents the use and implementation of the JRTN tool.

Many folks will turn to a financial advisor. JRTN will help here too; it will provide insights into what the advisor is doing, allow you to make independent judgements, and facilitate a more informed discussion. For example, if you are provided with a “Roth conversion tax savings” you can question the assumptions that go into this and even if it is the right metric. (spoiler: It probably isn’t) You are certain to be a more informed consumer of these financial services.

One potentially valuable outcome is Click Bait Inoculation. You will be able to safely ignore eye-catching posts such as “Is $1M enough in California,” “When to take Social Security,” “Roth Conversion Mistakes,” “Social Security Donut,” “Challanges for a Widow,” etc.

This website provides additional resources for your financial journey including book reviews, pointers to resources including other retirement model tools, and a brief overview of retirement modeling.