Free The Drones Personal Finance Blog » Tools and Calculators http://www.freethedrones.com/blog A personal finance blog dedicated to achieving financial freedom for those drones slaving away in jobs they hate. Wed, 21 Feb 2007 05:45:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 Find The Shortest Airport Security Line http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/28/find-the-shortest-airport-security-line/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/28/find-the-shortest-airport-security-line/#comments Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:09:21 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/28/find-the-shortest-airport-security-line/ This is a random travel tip, but I wish I’d had it for the Christmas season. For those of you who travel regularly on business, it can be the difference between making your flight and missing it. There is a little tool created by the Transportation Security Administration that will let you find out the average time it takes, at any time of day, to get through all the security checkpoints in every U.S. airport. This can be a big deal – I tested several airports and found that the times could vary from a minute or two for the least used checkpoints to 18 minutes at the worst. That means if you regularly use a certain airport, you need to find the quicker ones – you’ll save yourself a lot of time waiting around, and if you’re cutting it close the 15 minute difference could determine whether you make your flight or not. Luckily it also gives you a link to a map of the airport you select, so you can go find the different checkpoints fairly easily.

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]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/28/find-the-shortest-airport-security-line/feed/ 2 Social Security Benefits Calculator http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/27/social-security-benefits-calculator/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/27/social-security-benefits-calculator/#comments Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:06:05 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/27/social-security-benefits-calculator/ Here’s a nice little online tool I ran across from the Social Security Administration: a calculator to tell you how much you’re going to get each month in social security. For the younger among us it’s not that useful, mainly because it’s such a crap-shoot as to whether or not it will be around, in the same form, or at the same benefit levels. Making precise predictions about what will happen 40 years from now is basically impossible. But if you’re nearing retirement, it’s very useful – all you have to put in is your age, earnings, and date of retirement if you want to retire early. If you’re over 50, this should be your first stop in figuring out a retirement plan because it’s the minimum you’re going to make on retirement. That will help you figure out how much more you’ll need to supplement your payments.

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]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/12/27/social-security-benefits-calculator/feed/ 0 Monthly Car Payment Calculator http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/20/monthly-car-payment-calculator/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/20/monthly-car-payment-calculator/#comments Sun, 20 Aug 2006 11:00:55 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/20/monthly-car-payment-calculator/ Here’s a good calculator from Fox News Business: it’s for people considering buying a car who want to know what the payment will end up being. In general, you probably don’t want to be buying cars new anyway – it’s not the ideal way to spend your money there. The smart approach is usually to buy a car that’s a couple of years old – so that it’s still relatively new, but you don’t pay the “new car premium.” But we all know not everyone’s going to do that, so for those who want to buy new, this calculator considers a number of different variables, including the interest rate, the downpayment, the trade in, sales tax, and the length of the repayment period.

How do you use this calculator? Mainly to combat the car dealer’s greatest weapon: keeping you focused on the monthly payment. They’ve got all kinds of tricks to make sure you pay through the roof, even if you think you’re getting a deal you want based on how much you’re willing to pay per month. I used a similar calculator when I bought a car a few years ago from a dealer to figure out roughly what I’d pay each month depending on what the interest rate was. It came in very handy, because the salesman initially tried to pin me down to a monthly payment that I knew would be about 10% interest – a horrible deal. But if they’re just quoting numbers at you, you won’t realize that if you haven’t run them beforehand. So figure out the price of the car and run several different rates through so you know what monthly payment is OK and what is way out of line.

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]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/20/monthly-car-payment-calculator/feed/ 0 Calculate How Long You’re Going To Live http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/14/calculate-how-long-youre-going-to-live/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/14/calculate-how-long-youre-going-to-live/#comments Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:00:55 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/14/calculate-how-long-youre-going-to-live/ From FiveCentNickel, who has a detailed post out with advice on whether you’re saving enough for retirement, I came across this nice calculator that gives you your rough life expectency based on your personal health history and your habits. That adds a little accuracy to the generic life expectency numbers I’ve discussed earlier here. It’s still kind of rough as an estimate, but it will give you a better idea of how long people in your situation tend to live. You can use that both to try to live longer and to get an idea of how many years you need to be saving for in your retirement plan.

Discuss this on the Free the Drones Retirement Forums here.

]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/14/calculate-how-long-youre-going-to-live/feed/ 0 How do I calculate how long my money will last? http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/12/how-do-i-calculate-how-long-my-money-will-last/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/12/how-do-i-calculate-how-long-my-money-will-last/#comments Sat, 12 Aug 2006 11:00:51 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/12/how-do-i-calculate-how-long-my-money-will-last/ SmartMoney has an easy calculator up that will help you figure out the answer to that question for your retirement. It’s a little backward in that it really tells you how much money you’re going to be able to USE each year rather than how long it will last – but you can use it to answer the question. The calculator assumes a 7% return and 3% inflation, which is probably about right by your retirement years (given that you have to be in more conservative investments). I ran the numbers a few times just to test it out, seeing what it would take to be able to withdraw $50,000 a year:

Assume you think you’ll live to age 80, or 15 years after retirement. You’d need to have about 600,000 a year saved up to have 50,000 a year in income.

If you think you’ll live longer, to 90, you need about $800,000.

If you want close to absolute safety and want to plan to live to be 100, you need $1,000,000.

But then, nothing is sure in the world – an economic crisis could make that money worth a lot less, technology could make you live a lot longer, or you or someone in your family could have an emergency that forces you to spend a bunch of money. I always recommend erring on the safe side of having more money than you think you need.

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]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/12/how-do-i-calculate-how-long-my-money-will-last/feed/ 0 Portfolio Rebalancing Tool / Calculator http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/portfolio-rebalancing-tool-calculator/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/portfolio-rebalancing-tool-calculator/#comments Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:10:24 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/portfolio-rebalancing-tool-calculator/ Having posted earlier mentioning rebalancing your portfolio, I just ran across this tool at CNN’s site to help you do just that. It’s called the Asset Allocation Wizard, and it helps you figure out what an ideal percentage of your portfolio should be in each kind of investment depending on when you want to actually use the money and how willing you are to tolerate the ups and downs of riskier investments. It’s a little simplistic and ideally you might want to spend some more time thinking about exactly what you want to invest in, but it will give you an idea of what to do.

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]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/portfolio-rebalancing-tool-calculator/feed/ 2 Cost of Living Calculator for Planning a Move http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/cost-of-living-calculator-for-planning-a-move/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/cost-of-living-calculator-for-planning-a-move/#comments Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:48:19 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/cost-of-living-calculator-for-planning-a-move/ Thinking about moving to a new city to take a job offer? Before you do, you should run your prospective salary through a cost of living calculator such as this one at CNN to see how much more you’ll need to make – or how much further your money will need to go. Different cities can have extreme differences in what it takes to get by – with New York and other big cities costing a lot more to live in than a smaller city such as Omaha or Kansas City. This is a useful little tool that will tell you roughly what you can expect cost-wise when moving to a new location.

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]]> http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/08/cost-of-living-calculator-for-planning-a-move/feed/ 0 Financial Calculator for Deciding Whether to Buy or Lease a Car http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/06/financial-calculator-for-deciding-whether-to-buy-or-lease-a-car/ http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/06/financial-calculator-for-deciding-whether-to-buy-or-lease-a-car/#comments Sun, 06 Aug 2006 11:00:12 +0000 kneukm03 http://www.freethedrones.com/blog/2006/08/06/financial-calculator-for-deciding-whether-to-buy-or-lease-a-car/ From time to time I run across tools and calculators which are useful for anyone who is mathematically challenged and wants help making a financial decision. I’ll post them in the Tools and Calculators Category for easy access.

This one comes from Fox News’ Personal Finance division. It’s a calculator for people looking to get a car that asks whether you should buy or lease – and I like that it has added into it an option to consider the alternative of taking your downpayment you would have made and investing it. Remember that this is a more complicated decision that any simple calculator can show – but it gives you a good idea of whether it’s better in 5 years to have a car that’s lost some value or a down payment that’s gained some value.

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