www.esplanner.com/press/divergent-roads-retirement-read -
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Published on: 11/11/2007
Last Visited: 3/11/2009
"The Kotlikoff tool [does] a very, very careful calculation of how your consumption ought to vary with variations in family size, with college expenses and all the rest of it," said Tony Webb, a research economist at Boston College's Center for Retirement Research.
But Webb and others have reservations.
For one, savers must be comfortable making major assumptions about the future.
Simpler retirement calculators tend to ignore many variables; while some might consider that a shortcoming, it's also true that it makes them easier to use.
The other problem: ESPlanner takes a fair amount of time, and "most people have really short attention spans when it comes to financial planning," Webb said.