Question for the Money Doctors

Question submitted on Feb 2, 2011.

Question

I have used several of the online web based retirement planning calculators and have not gotten the same results from any two. I realize they each have different underlying assumptions. I would like to know which webbased calculator is the most conservative and could be somehow recommended to use.

Answer

Since you are not referencing the specific calculators you have tried, I cannot provide an opinion or comparison.  However, CNNMoney.com has a basic retirement calculator.  The Genworth site has both a retirement income and retirement planner calculator.  This is useful should you want to estimate how much monthly income your retirement savings may provide at a specified retirement age as well as determine your retirement income needs in the future.  There is also a retirement shortfall calculator which estimates how long your retirement savings will last based on current assumptions.

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