For those of us that strive to control our finances and get ahead in life, being able predict what a potential portfolio will be worth in the future is absolutely essential. If I save $100/month for the next 10 years, what will the value of my portfolio be? More importantly, what will my purchasing power be? What if I increase that $100 per month by 10% per year? What if I only make quarterly deposits to my account? These are all questions that effect real people every day.

The problem is that projecting an investment portfolio into the future requires many assumptions. The most important of which is the rate of return you expect to earn on your investments. The second most important is what the inflation rate will be during that same time frame. While most people track stock market returns like a hawk, they don’t look at the other side of the coin. If the stock market returned 10% in one year, that’s great right? But what if inflation was 12%? Congratulations, your purchasing power decreased by 2%. Dammit!!!

In searching for high quality investment calculators online, I found that the majority are just too simple. They either don’t allow you to input a recurring payment (such as monthly or quarterly), or they don’t take into account inflation, or they don’t allow you to differentiate what your returns would be between stocks and bonds, etc. Most of these online calculators just don’t have enough customization options to truly get a picture of what an individual’s future portfolio could look like. Therefore… they’re useless! Plain and simple! These calculators are about as good as a large pile of mierda.

So I wrote my own portfolio and retirement spreadsheet, and I made it customizable. Take a look at the input screen below. You’ll notice that it allows you to specify a payment frequency, as well as a growth rate. It will take into account your allocation between stocks and bonds, and the corresponding returns. It allows you to input an inflation rate. And best of all, it allows you to build up a projected portfolio value, and then analyze it using three different retirement approaches.

Hello all !! Before I start this blog post I want to point out that I’ve added a loan repayment tool in the Free Tools section of the site. This tool is different than many in that it’ll let you define a constant extra payment every month, or you can go to the amortization table and enter a single extra payment on any given month. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people that revolved around, “how would a single $1,000 extra principal payment (tax refund) affect my loan in the long run?” This tool will tell you. For example, in the case of a $200,000 loan at 4%, an extra $1,000 in the first month would shorten the loan by 3 months and reduce total interest by almost $2,300. Feel free to check it out.

Now on to today’s topic. It’s been an extremely busy summer so far. With multiple travels for work, kids sporting schedules, and somehow fitting a family vacation into all of that, It's been very hard to maintain track of financial goals, make progress on investing studies, read (I try to read a book a month), or even write blog posts. Fortunately, I spent this last week in Lake Tahoe, getting a little rest from the working / responsibility world. This was our first trip to Tahoe and to say it was beautiful was an understatement.

The crisp cool air, blue water, and smells of pine made for the ultimate relaxing getaway. Spending this kind of quality time with the family is more than worth the expense, and it reminded me why I'm striving so hard, and am so motivated to reach financial independence.

We hiked to Eagle Lake, which was probably my favorite part of the trip. Although my knees felt like they were going to explode by the time we got back. Yes, apparently I've got the knees of an 80 year old. Look at that picture!

I recently traveled for work, from Los Angeles to Mississippi. The evening prior to my return was a beautiful gulf coast evening. The air was crisp and cool, the beach was almost empty, the sun reflected a deep red off the water, and as I strolled along I couldn’t help but envy how relaxing everything felt. It was a completely different feel from that of Los Angeles. There were no car horns, no road rage, no concrete highways 8 lanes wide, and best of all, no traffic. Oh, and this was a Thursday….

If you’ve read the last couple blog posts, you may be thinking, “If I make all these spending cuts, life’s gonna suck!” I’ve actually heard people say it, that living within your means is boring; they’d rather enjoy life now while they’re young, and worry about the debt later. Making the choice to live a lifestyle that’s in direct contradiction to probably 75% of your neighbors, friends, and family isn’t an easy choice. You’ll get comments like,

If you’ve read the About Me section, you’ll already have a small perspective of who I am, and what I want to do here.  This is a blog about MONEY and INVESTING. This is a blog about my family and I coming to terms with the idea that we didn’t want to work until we’re in our 60’s and too old to do anything fun. It is about setting retirement goals and being accountable to those goals, which I’ll share on this blog. I’m not one of those who has already achieved my goals of retiring at 30. I’m on this adventure now and I want to share it… if for no other reason than to motivate others so we can all be a happy investment family, and as family I hope you’ll call me out when I make a dumb decision.