Are you a little fuzzy on your financial future? Maybe you think you are doing the right things but are you sure? After using OnTrajectory retirement calculator Michelle and I had a much better idea about our financial path…
Most of the world will make decisions by either guessing or using their gut. They will be either lucky or wrong.”- Suhail Doshi
First before we get into the sweet data goodness of OnTrajectory let me mention that they are a sponsor of High Five Dad but my review is completely my own.
Alright now onto the DATA goodness…
Are You On a Path to Financial Disaster? OnTrajectory Review
What is OnTrajectory?
Honestly coming up with the right description for it seems almost impossible. Gwen from FieryMillennials.com called it “If Excel Had a One-Night Stand with cFIREsim” and Time.com said that OnTrajectory “simply has one of the best user interfaces available in the retirement calculator world.” and has since been moved it onto Time’s Best Retirement Calculator list…
So yeah the bar has been set high with writing catchy description.
Simply put, OnTrajectory is a tool that pulls back the curtain back of your retirement future. It provides a wealth of data that will allow you to make changes in your life today which will impact your financial future.
In other words…. It’s a retirement time machine!!!!
Great Scott!
How does OnTrajectory work?
Easy… just accelerate the Delorean to 88 mph and…
Okay okay…
First things first head on over to OnTrajectory.com
As soon as you are there click Sign Up. It located near the top corner and also in the middle of the screen. Go ahead and pick the FREE plan.
One of the great things about OnTrajectory is that it allows you to use the calculator for free. If you like it or need more information go ahead and jump onto the PowerPlan. It’s cheap!
Once you register you will have to fill in some basic information such as:
- Birth Year
- Current Savings
- Annual Income Before taxes
- How much you save per year
Instantly after that you enter that information you are presented with your trajectory.
Here is mine with some “semi-accuarate” data…
You will also receive your chance of success
Woooo Hooo… We have a 90% chance of making it… Our final trajectory is a bit lower than what we want but that’s where OnTrajectory shines!
See that HUGE warning?!?
Shortfall! Click for Recommendation
So of course I clicked for Recommendation and got this beauty!
See this really is where OnTrajectory provides actionable data for you to make changes in your life.
If we reduce our spending by $100 dollars a month we will hit the goal of age 90.
But wait it gets better…
There are 5 different tabs that allow you to make adjustments to the calculation. When you first enter in your information OnTrajectory makes it’s best guess based upon a TON of research and behind the scenes calculations. But the great thing about the tool is you can customize EVERYTHING.
Income Tab
OnTrajectory starts off with 2 basic income streams.
- Base Income- That’s what you entered at the start
- Social Security
But you can also add a TON of other income sources such as:
- Rental Income
- Pension Income
- Bonus
- One Time payouts
- Etc
Each of these can be customized with a start and finish date PLUS be adjusted for inflation.
With the Free Plan you can only have 2 sources of income but that was enough for us to see the power behind the product. Having the ability to add multiple sources of incomes gives us a much better picture of what our financial future looks like.
Expenses tab
Similar to the Income Tab, OnTrajectory enters two pre-set items. One is called Base Expenses and the Second is called Retirement expenses.
Within Base Expenses you can group things. So we went through our monthly budget and created our Base Expenses.
The expense tab allows you to go super detail to get a really good picture of your financial future. One of the cool things is, once you make a change in your expenses your graph instantly changes.
The power behind that is amazing. We played around with the calculator and deleted a couple expenses and now we are sitting at a POSITIVE Financial future.
Accounts and Taxes Tab
The first two tabs were great but this is where the magic of investing happens…
Can anyone say COMPOUND INTEREST?!?
Yeah… this dude… oh I forgot to mention he is also founder of OnTrajectory.
On this tab is the place to add your savings account, your 401K, your HSA, your Roth, etc… You name and it’s there.
You can set up your interest rate, your yearly contributions and of course age range. One of the neat things that we did when we were playing with the tool was set up our 503B to show us contributing to it for 10 years and then stopping and allowing it to grow until retirement.
We then changed it to 5 years and then 15 years, etc.
We basically wanted to see the impact of compound interest 🙂
The flexibility of OnTrajectory makes it one of the best retirement planners we have used.
Goals Tab
If you don’t have goals then how will you know when you get there?
The goals tab is a great place to create and monitor goals. OnTrajectory allows you to set goals for the following things:
Trajectory reaches $__________ on this Date:
Projected Progress reaches $_________ o this Date:
Trajectory reachers $__________ on _________ at this cumulative Rate:
Projected Progress reaches $__________ on _____________ at the cumulative Rate:
We loved setting various trajectory targets and the neat thing is that it shows up on your graph.
Progress History Tab
This is exactly as it sounds. Its the history of all the check ins that you have made to date. Its a quick and easy place to review your check ins over time.
Pros of using OnTrajectory
- Hands down one of the best and most comprehensive retirement calculators that you will find.
- Robust projections capabilities at your fingertips.
- Help guides on top of Help guides!
- Not only are there Help guides but there is ON- Screen Wizards that teach you everything you need to know.
- Reddit Support forum here: www.reddit.com/r/OnTrajectory
Cons of Using OnTrajectory
- Free version limits you to a couple accounts. The free version allows you to see how the product works and some great insight. But to really see the power of the tool you should upgrade to the PowerPlan ($5 dollars a month).
- Learning Curve
- The product has a TON of guides to help you but it is a new platform. Once you learn it, its super intuitive.
- You may find yourself spending HOURS playing with different calculations… haha
Do you know if you are on a path to financial disaster or a path to financial success?
OnTrajectory is financial planning tool that will help you answer that question. The tool allows you to dig into the details and provides you data to make changes in your life. OnTrajectory provides both a simple to use interface and the ability to export your data as a PDF report or excel. Michelle and I have already begun to make a few adjustments based upon the graph so that we can meet our needs.
By the way, this is Tyson from OnTrajectory — if anyone has any questions about our tool, happy to chime it!