Retirement Planning

I read with interest the article in COMPUTE! on retirement planning (April 1983). It is reassuring that retirement planners are finally acknowledging that inflation may be here to stay. Unfortunately, the program assumes that inflation will stop on the day you retire. A pleasant assumption, but one that could result in a lot of retirees who may not be able to afford subscriptions to COMPUTE! ten years down the road.

I have found the following program extremely useful for computing with my Atari 400, how much capital I would actually need in order to retire early. The program assumes:

1. That inflation will continue at a constant rate, and your yearly expenses will increase at this rate.
2. That you wish to spend your capital after retirement.

 10 ?"ENTER CAPITAL AT RETIREMENT": INPUT A:?
 20 ?"ENTER EXPECTED RATE OF INFLATION": INPUT B:?
 30 ?"ENTER YEARLY ANTICIPATED RETURN ON INVESTMENTS AFTER TAXES AND INFLATION : INPUT C:?
 40 ?"ENTER YEARLY EXPENSES LESS ANY INDEXED PENSION PLAN OR SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS" : INPUT D:?
 50 ? : ?"YEAR" ; , "INCOME" ; ,"CAPITAL"
 55 Y = 0
 60 INC = INT(D * (1 + B/100) ˆ Y)
 70 Y = Y + 1
 80 Z = B + C
 90 A = INT(A * Z/100 + A) - INC
100 ?Y, INC, A
110 IF A < 0 THEN ?" CAPITAL EXHAUSTED" : END
120 GO TO 60

Craig Cole