TIP$TER is a revolutionary (yet free) patent-pending financial planner, retirement calculator, and portfolio simulator.  It's chief purpose is to help people develop a plan of savings and an appropriate mix of stocks and inflation-adjusted bonds to meet their financial goals.

    TIP$TER analyzes every financial plan using a risk-free baseline: the sustainable retirement budget that amortization of a portfolio fully invested in government inflation-indexed bonds – plus other user-anticipated retirement income sources – would support.  (See sample figure).  Then, against this baseline, TIP$TER compares the simulated performance (including the supported retirement lifestyle) of a planned mixed portfolio divided and annually rebalanced between inflation-indexed bonds and stocks.  (See sample figure).

    TIP$TER is structured upon the two most important concepts in finance: the risk-free rate and the expected risk premium.  This distinguishes TIP$TER from virtually every other financial planning simulator.  By focusing on the expected risk premium, TIP$TER's simulations are inherently forward looking.  By contrast, as discussed in the "Problem" section, most simulators are essentially backward looking.  Also, by comparing the simulated performance of a mixed portfolio to a baseline portfolio that grows with the risk-free rate, TIP$TER gives investors and financial planners something the other simulators fail to do – meaningful insight into choosing a stock/bond asset allocation. 

    Version 2 Beta introduces an exploratory simulation model.  TIP$TER simulates a financial plan and its stocks against over 1600 rolling intervals of a looped set (spanning Jan. 1871 to June 2009) of real S&P 500 return data.  The data is scaled to match your expected forward looking long-term annualized real return for the stock market. TIP$TER also provides other simulation models with which to stress-test a financial plan.

     Also, TIP$TER PRO, an advisor-targeted version, generates sharp, graphically-rich reports that registered users (such as financial planners and other professionals) can generate for their clients.  For a limited time, Prospercuity is offering registrations of TIP$TER PRO to professional advisors for free. (Find out why.)

    TIP$TER's simulation methodology is superior to the simulation methodology used in many of the industry's dominant professional financial planning software packages (which you can read about here) – the ones that most of America's financial advisors use to generate fancy reports for their clients.  Try it!

     Don't simulate a financial plan on the faint hope that future stock market performance will resemble the halcyon performance of the past. Anchor your equity return expectations in reality.  And compare those projections to a low-risk, inflation-indexed-bond-portfolio baseline.