Tools

ProjectionLab is a financial simulator that will help you work out the mechanics of financial planning. It enables you to enter your current financial profile and future projections, then determine when you’ll reach your goals. But it does more than that. It allows you to change inputs and assumptions to account for contingencies and changes in life.

On balance, ProjectionLab is an excellent tool to help you reach your financial independence or retirement goal.

Since space is limited, and this product has so many different moving parts, I’m going to do this review in something more like a summary fashion. If you’d like a more detailed analysis of the ProjectionLab service, you can check out this YouTube video, ProjectionLab Review | Financial Planning Software.

ProjectionLab QuickTake

• Crunches the numbers to help you reach retirement or financial independence
• Flexible platform that enables you to run virtually unlimited scenarios
• Accounts for the life variables that can have a material effect on your retirement plans
• Focuses on both the accumulation and withdrawal of wealth in pursuing your financial goals
• Realistic simulations and variables based on real world assumptions

About ProjectionLab

ProjectionLab is a financial planning simulator designed to help you analyze and project your ability to reach financial independence or retirement. It was designed to help you simulate your financial future and run various scenarios to understand the best way to reach your goals.

ProjectionLab was founded by creator Kyle Nolan, under ProjectionLab LLC, based in Boston. The service was initially rolled out in April, 2021, and is admittedly something of a work-in-progress. But Kyle has continued to improve and update the product, both to incorporate a wider range of information and to improve the user experience.

Because ProjectionLab is new and still being developed, no third-party information is available. The company has not been rated by the Better Business Bureau or Trustpilot, and since no mobile app is yet available, there are no user ratings from either Google Play or The App Store.

But even in the absence of third-party information and ratings, my own experience shows this service to be one well worth investigating. It provides comprehensive and useful strategies and projections to help you reach your future financial goals.

Customer service is available by email only, at [email protected] 

ProjectionLab Review

How ProjectionLab Works

Setup

If you want to sample ProjectionLab, you can simply click the “Try for Free” link in the text just above the three Pricing & Subscriptions section on the main page of the website. You’ll be given a choice of either a Normal Walkthrough or Sandbox Mode. Normal Walkthrough is the more detailed of the two, enabling you to fill in your own data as part of the tour.

After you click the Continue button, you’ll be brought to the Setup screen, where you’ll enter basic information:

The next screen will ask you the question “Which of these do you have today?” The choices will be savings, investments, real assets, and debt. You can choose whichever apply to your financial situation.

On subsequent screens, you’ll be asked to fill in balances for each of the four categories. You can add multiple accounts within each category.

The investment screen will provide multiple boxes to check that will include taxable investments, various retirement plans, health savings accounts, 529 plans, and even cryptocurrencies. You can click and complete the information for any and all investment accounts that apply to your situation. Note that if you list any accounts as joint, the funds will be divided 50/50 between you and your spouse.

After completing the various financial account inputs, you’ll be brought to the Dashboard page. There you’ll find all the information you’ve entered so far.

Add Plan

Notice at the bottom left-hand side you see the Add Plan box? If you click that, you can begin adding your long-term financial plan. But don’t forget to name your plan in case you want to create more than one (which is exactly what I didn’t do since I’m only doing one plan).

ProjectionLab will ask you to input a plan start date, and then to “set up a few milestones”. That’s when you’ll begin entering the ages at which you expect to retire, the end of plan (your anticipated date of death), and how large your portfolio will need to be to reach financial independence.

The latter is determined by a number multiplied times your expected monthly expenses. In the screenshot, 25 is automatically assumed. This is because multiplying 25 times your expected annual expenses will result in what’s commonly referred to as the 4% safe withdrawal rate. And if you look just below that line, there’s also the capability to add additional milestones.

This is the point at which you are defining the parameters in your journey toward financial independence or retirement. And of course, you can always go in and change the dates later.

In this case, we’re expecting retirement at age 60, and living to age 85.

The next input screen asks you to input the anticipated growth rate of your investments, the expected dividend yield, and anticipated rate of inflation. The screen automatically populates, and I believe the numbers presented are fairly accurate. But you can change them if you like or shift over to actual historical market performance.

Notice that some of the input lines have an i next to them. By clicking that icon you’ll get detailed information on how the numbers are calculated.

Income

On the next screen, you’ll enter income. 10 different options are provided, and you can check each that apply.

I’ve entered salary, a side hustle, and for retirement, pension income and Social Security. Notice that not only does each contain the expected income, but also the start date and end date. This recognizes for example, that salary will continue from now until retirement, when pension and Social Security will take over. Side hustle is expected to continue for life.

Next is the all-important input screen, Cash-Flow Priorities. This is where you’ll enter specific spending priorities, like adding to specific asset accounts for paying extra for the payoff of debts. In this case, I’ve chosen to add an additional $200 per month to be paid toward the student loan.

Expenses

The next screen is entitled Expenses, and this is where you list some variable expenses. There’s a long list here:

Conspicuously absent from the list is your mortgage. That’s because it’s included when you enter your house as an asset and will already be reflected in your expenses. You can add any other expenses that apply.

You’ll then come to a Real Assets screen, that will enable you to add future purchases. These include another house, a motorcycle, furniture, a car, a boat, or precious metals, among others. You can add any that apply, and ProjectionLab will calculate those into your financial future.

Income Taxes

You’ll be presented with a screen that will give you a predetermined income tax and capital gains tax rates. You can accept those or make changes to percentages that more accurately reflect your tax situation.

Output

With all the above entered, we come to an output screen that’s set up as a graph. Based on the input we’ve provided, it shows we’ll reach $1,248,887 in net worth by retirement at age 60. That number will approximately remain constant until the end of life, which means we are not in danger of outliving our money.

Now, those are just the results from setting up a single plan. Not only can you change the input and assumptions and come up with new simulations, but you can also develop additional plans, and compare them. That will give you an opportunity to choose which strategy will work best for you.

Advanced Options

On the top bar of the Dashboard is the Advanced tab. If you click on that, several options will display that will include Monte Carlo Simulation, Withdrawal Strategy, Cash Flow, Compare, and Notes.

The Monte Carlo Simulation is particularly interesting, because it allows you to do up to 94 simulations, each with different input assumptions. It then provides the rate of success in each scenario. For example, it may show an 89.4 % likelihood a simulated plan will be successful, meaning you won’t run out of money before the end of your life.

This is one of the features of ProjectionLab I find to be most attractive. It gives an opportunity to evaluate the viability of any strategy you run for the simulation, reducing it to a single percentage that makes it easy to compare with other simulations.

Also interesting is the Withdrawal Strategy. You can establish a distribution order outlining which accounts you will begin drawing funds from first. For example, you can set up a hierarchy that includes cash-on-hand first, followed by savings, cryptocurrencies, taxable investments, then finally retirement plans.

PROS

• Helps project & prepare for financial independence or retirement
• Flexible platform to accommodate multiple scenarios
• Flexible low-cost plans + free version
• No ads, no calls and no selling of your data

CONS

• New service still working out the bugs
• Customer support by email only
• Tax analysis limited

ProjectionLab Plan Pricing & Sign Up

Plan Pricing

ProjectionLab offers three different plans, Basic, Premium and Pro. There are as many as three pricing levels for each plan. If you pay the subscription fee annually, the monthly cost works out as follows:

You can also choose a straight up monthly payment plan. For the Premium plan, the monthly fee will be $12, and $60 for the Pro plan. Be aware that the Pro plan is designed for financial advisors and coaches, who will use it for multiple client profiles. If you are only going to use ProjectionLab for your own purposes, you can use either Basic or Premium.

It’s important to understand the Basic plan will enable you to create simulations, but it does not save data. You’ll need to sign up for the Premium plan to save data, which makes it a logical choice between the three plans offered.

Note also that both paid versions come with a 7-day trial to give you an opportunity to try out the product. If you cancel your subscription at any time within the first seven days, your credit card on file will not be charged.

The third option is available only on the Premium plan. For a one-time payment of $450, you’ll have lifetime access to the service for your own personal use. (The lifetime payment option is not available for the Pro plan.)

Sign Up

If you want to sign up with ProjectionLab you can do so directly from the website by clicking the Start Now or Start Trial buttons under one of the three plans. Once you do, you’ll be asked to create an account, which you can do either by signing up with Google or with Email.

I went for the monthly Premium plan with Google, and it requested my Google email address. Next, I was asked to supply my ZIP Code.

In the very next screen, I was asked to indicate adding a credit card or PayPal, so it’s clear you’ll need to add a payment method to get the 7-day free trial.

Signing up for the actual service will give you the best and longest free look at the service. If you’re not satisfied, you can cancel your order within seven days and your card will not be charged.

ProjectionLab Alternative

Empower is a wealth management service that also offers a free financial aggregator, where you can connect all your financial accounts in one place. And while it doesn’t provide the depth of financial simulations that ProjectionLab does, it does offer its Portfolio and New Worth trackers, as well as Retirement Planner and a Retirement Savings Planner to help you reach your long-term financial goals. Again, the platform is free to use, and you’ll pay only for the Wealth Management service if you choose to take advantage of it.

Final Thoughts

ProjectionLab is an excellent service to help you if your goal is retirement, early retirement, or financial independence. And since the cost is no more than $96 per year for the Premium version, it won’t take a big bite out of the funds you’re trying to save to help you reach your goal.

ProjectionLab is fairly numbers-intensive, and best designed for those who like to crunch a lot of numbers when it comes to finance. If this doesn’t describe you, the service may be a bit overwhelming, and you may be better served using the free version of Empower as an alternative.

ProjectionLab Review Rating

Tiller Money enables you to manage your financial life in spreadsheets that are automatically updated every day. The tools make it easy to create budgets, track net worth, and even manage your Investments. We'll take a deep dive into the tool in this 2022 Tiller Money review and user guide.

I met the Tiller Money team several years ago at Fincon, a personal finance bloggers conference. They were kind enough to give me a demo of their software. At the time, I'll be honest, I didn't really understand how Tiller Money worked. I found it confusing at first.

Once I understood the basic concept, however, it became clear just how powerful and easy it is to use. More recently, I've spent a lot of time with the tool and absolutely love it. It's become my primary budgeting tool, which I use in conjunction with Personal Capital to track my investments.

In this review and user's guide, I'll walk through the main features of Tiller Money, how I use the tool, and how it can help you manage your money.

How Tiller Money Works

Many people, myself included, love working with spreadsheets. They are easy to use and give us complete control over our data. When it comes to budgeting and managing money with a spreadsheet, however, there are three key problems:

1. We have to manually enter our income and expenses;
2. We have to spend time designing the spreadsheet if we want it to look good; and
3. We don't have basic tools available with must budgeting apps

Tiller Money solves each of these problems.

Tiller Money enables you to link your financial accounts to a Google or Excel spreadsheet. Once linked, transaction data and balances are automatically downloaded into the spreadsheet. That solves the first problem.

Tiller also provides a robust template that can enable you to track your budget, net worth, investments, and even your business income and expenses. Problem number two solved.

Finally, Tiller gives you a robust and growing set of tools to analyze your finances. We'll look at several in just a minute. Problem number three solved. In fact, Tiller solves these issues so well that it made my list of the best Quicken alternatives.

Connecting Financial Accounts to Tiller Money

The first step to using Tiller Money is to connect your financial accounts. Tiller enables you to connect checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, and even investment accounts. Tiller uses bank level security through Yodlee, which nine out of the 15 largest banks in the country also use.

Once logged in to Tiller, you simply click the Add Accounts button.

A pop-up box will prompt you to search for your financial institution. I've yet to encounter a bank account, credit card or investment account that Tiller can't handle. You'll enter your login credentials for your financial institution to connect it. Tiller money will never have access to your login credentials or to any of your financial institutions (more about security below).

Creating Spreadsheets with Tiller's Foundation Template

The heart and soul of Tiller is the Tiller Foundation Template. While you can create your own spreadsheet from scratch, I highly recommend you start with the Tiller template. You simply launch the Google Sheet and walk through a number of easy steps to authorize the template in your Google account (see video below for a walk-thru of the process).

Here's where one thing tripped me up. Having connected my accounts, I launched the Tiller Foundation Template. When I opened it, there were no transactions. What it took me some time to understand is that connecting my accounts to Tiller does not automatically connect them to the spreadsheet. That's actually good news.

It allows me to connect those accounts that I want to in up to five spreadsheets. For example, I connect our personal accounts to our personal budget spreadsheet. I connect my business checking account and credit card to a separate Tiller spreadsheet I use to track my business. And I connect our investment accounts to yet a third Tiller spreadsheet to track our net worth.

Of course, you decided how to set up Tiller. You could track everything in one spreadsheet if that's what you wanted to do. For each of up to five spreadsheets, you can connect any or all of the financial accounts you've connected to Tiller. Once you have the spreadsheet set up and connected the financial accounts, Tiller offers a host of tools and templates to manage virtually every aspect of your financial life. 

Using Tiller's Tools to Manage your Finances

Once you've launched the Tiller Foundation Template and connected your accounts to the spreadsheet, you'll notice a number of tabs in the Google Sheet. These include the Insights tab, which is a financial dashboard that gives you a high level summary of your financial data. There's a Transactions tab that lists all of the transactions from all of the accounts you've connected to the spreadsheet. A Categories tab enables you to define your income and expense categories and set a monthly budget for each expense.

There's a monthly budget tab that summarizes your income and expense data by month. There's also a yearly budget tab, that shows you all of your income and expenses for an entire year.

Tiller Google Sheet Add-ons

There are two really important add-ons to Google Sheets that you'll want to use with Tiller. One is called Tiller Money Feeds, and the other is called Tiller Money Labs.

Tiller Money Feeds

Tiller Money Feeds provides the tools you need to connect your financial accounts to each spreadsheet. We've already covered it above, and it gets added to your spreadsheet as part of the process of using the template.

It includes a feature called AutoCat, which allows you to automatically categorize income and expenses based on the transaction description. More about this feature in a moment.

Tiller Money Labs

The Tiller Money Labs add-on provides additional tools that are incredibly useful. You can add it to Google Sheets by going to the Add-ons menu, select Get Add-ons, and then searching for Tiller Money Labs. This Add-on gives you access to a number of extremely useful tools that are far too numerous to cover in one review. But I'll highlight a few of the more important ones.

Split transactions: As the name suggests, it makes it very easy to split a transaction across multiple categories.

Net worth dashboard:  A template focusing on balances and how they change over time. It includes a net worth chart and trends table for up to 12 months of net worth data. A similar tool, called the Net Worth Snapshot, enables you to compare your net worth over two different years.

Debt planner: A streamlined debt-planning tool to build and manage your debt payoff plan and achieve debt freedom.

Bill payment tracker: The Bill Payment Tracker is designed to keep you informed about your upcoming bill payments.

Tiller also offers a number of dashboards for small businesses. I use a separate Google Sheet to track the income and expenses of my business. While I have a bookkeeper and use QuickBooks, I like Tiller as the better way to actually budget my expenses and to track them, day to day. It's just much easier than QuickBooks.

There are even tools for those pursuing FIRE (financial independence / retire early). Specifically, it offers a Retirement Planner that estimates the total value of your investments into the future. You can experiment with different growth rate scenarios and project outcomes in real time.

Budgeting with Tiller Money

Budgeting is the core Tiller feature. Once you've connected your financial accounts to the spreadsheet, the first thing you should do, in my opinion, is set up your categories in the Tiller Foundation Template. Here's what the categories tab looks like in the template:

You can and should customize the categories and groups. The groups organize the categories when viewed on a monthly or yearly basis. If you love the 50/30/20 budget, you could use just three groups that map to Needs (50%), Wants (30%) and Freedom (20%–savings, investing and debt paydown). You can also set your budget for the year. Any budget amounts you enter in the Jan 2022 column will automatically populate for the rest of the year.

Once you've created your categories, you can go to the transaction tab and begin giving each income and expense transaction a category. Here it's important to know that Tiller offers what it calls an automatic category tool (AutoCat). What this allows you to do is to automatically set the category of a transaction based on the contents of the transaction description.

For example, you could set all transactions with a description that includes “Starbucks” to a coffee category or perhaps a restaurant category. Once these AutoCat categories are set up, the vast majority of your transactions will be automatically and correctly categorized. It's a very cool feature.

Is Tiller Safe?

One important question is whether Tiller Money is safe. The short answer is yes. Tiller supports two factor authentication. When you connect a financial account with two factor authentication enabled the pop-up box will ask you for the code that either gets texted to you or that is generated from an authentication app if that's what you use. The data is protected with bank grade 256 bit AES encryption.

Furthermore, Tiller connects to your financial institutions using Yodlee. It's an industry standard tool used by nine of the 15 largest U.S. banks. As noted earlier, Tiller does not see or store your login credentials to your financial accounts. In addition, no one at Tiller will see your data unless you specifically choose to share it with a Tiller analyst or support team member. Tiller's access to your accounts is strictly read only, and it has no ability to move any of your money.

How Much Does Tiller Cost?

You can use Tiller for free for 30 days without any obligation. If you like it and want to continue using it, it's $79 a year.

Tiller Rating

Tiller Money Video