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Part 1: Where do you stand?

Jump to page 6 in your retirement workbook or download an Excel version  of your Net Worth and Cash Flow Statements. Take all of those receipts, statements, and checkbook entries and fill out your Net Worth Statement and the 1st column of your Cash Flow Statement.

Work through the questions on page 3 in your workbook and paint yourself a broad picture of the future. Use the Multiply by 25 Rule to estimate some of your lifetime expenses, and the calculator to estimate your retirement income (you can jot these numbers down in the second column of your Cash Flow Statement).

As you start to fill out what you have now and to think about the future, take a minute to let us know what you think is the hardest future cost to estimate.

One more thing: We suggest you get familiar with that calculator we mentioned before starting to play with it. Remember, it will only give you a general picture of retirement costs and expenses and cannot compute extremely personalized or unique situations. 

Test drive the calculator
This first exercise will take you through how to use the calculator, some tricks you can use, and some common boo-boos to avoid.  As promised in Lesson 1, we've developed some case studies to help you learn how to use the retirement calculator by making entries for a hypothetical couple. Make the required entries, and then answer the questions. If you get stuck, we have answers.

Since we're starting to look at how much retirement is actually going to cost, you might want to visit the Investing for Retirement board.

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