Unless you’re a genuine fortune teller – and there aren’t many of those around – you can’t say with absolute certainty that you’re ready to meet financial goals in your life.
Whether you’re planning to buy a car in a few years, send a child to college, or retire early, a solid plan can help you meet your goals. May-Investments offers clients access to one of the most highly regarded financial-planning programs available – MoneyGuidePro. The program might be the closest thing to a financial fortune teller that you’ll find.
MoneyGuidePro takes a comprehensive look at an individual’s financial situation, using personal, financial, and investment data supplied by the individual and a set of calculations based on the information. The program also uses a series of scales to determine the relative importance of several variables in the individual’s profile, such as willingness to save more or delay retirement.
The program uses personal data and preferences to calculate various options, which it presents in a range from “Ideal” to “Acceptable.” For example, based on an individual’s profile and resources, the program might determine that 65 is an “ideal” retirement age, but 67 would be an “acceptable” retirement age. MoneyGuidePro contains a powerful set of tools that let users create various scenarios to determine how making certain changes in their goals or financial strategy might affect their likelihood of reaching their financial goals.
Finally, MoneyGuidePro can produce a customized report outlining the user’s chance of reaching financial goals and suggesting changes that might help the user reach those goals more effectively.
In an analysis of 13 financial-planning software products, independent researcher Aite Group ranked MoneyGuidePro as one of the top products available. According to an article appearing on the Financial Planning website, MoneyGuidePro ranked as the best tool for talking to clients about their goals, and Aite Group liked the program’s ability to establish a range of outcomes for various scenarios.
“We like its goal-oriented approach so we can identify what people need from their finances,” says Doug May, owner and chief investment officer for May-Investments. Once a client’s goals and financial needs are determined, an investment plan can be formulated to meet those goals, May says.
Another advantage of MoneyGuidePro is the fact that it is an online program and can be accessed from any place that has an Internet connection. May says clients and outside advisers can log into MoneyGuidePro at their convenience to update information and create different scenarios.
Posts
