Introduction
Pocket Plan is a first draft financial plan. You can create a plan and connect with an advisor in minutes.
Yes, Pocket Plan is free for 7 days. After 7 days if you’d like to keep your financial data updated a monthly subscription fee is charged. If you’d like to avoid a monthly subscription fee, you can connect with a Financial Advisor who will have access to your Pocket Plan.
You own your data. Pocket Plan does not sell any of your financial data to third parties.
Yes, you can share your Pocket Plan with a licensed financial professional like a Financial Advisor, Insurance Professional, CPA or Estate Attorney by linking with them from within the “My Advisors” section.
Once they accept your request, they’ll be able to view your Pocket Plan. You can disconnect your plan from an advisor at any time from the “My Advisors” section.
You can create your free account by registering here.
No, Pocket Planner Inc is a software company, not a financial advisor. We offer simulations of potential future outcomes, but don’t make any guarantees of future results.
Our goal is to help you get organized and find professional help.
Pocket Planner Inc makes no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. The views are subject to change and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.
No, we offer no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be considered as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from investment related course of action as none of Pocket Planner Inc or any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Pocket Planner Inc about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Pocket Planner Inc makes no guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of the data provided. The views are subject to change and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.
Security
We take privacy and security very seriously. Except as described in our terms of use, we will not access your Pocket Plan without your permission.
From a technical perspective, we have a number of security measures in place. We do not store your account credentials to access your financial accounts in our database. We require SSL encryption for the Pocket Plan application. We require secure websocket communication for all financial data.
Pocket Plans in our database are protected by 256 bit salted AES block-chaining encryption.
No, we do not store your username and password used to access your financial institutions in our database. Your information is traded for a secure token to access your data. This token expires and can only be used to connect your data to Pocket Plan.
Pocket Plan nor your advisor can see your account number, username or password to access your financial accounts.
Your advisor can see all reports and information added to your Pocket Plan.
Building Your Pocket Plan
You can create your Pocket Plan account here.
Once you’ve created your account, you’ll need to answer a few questions to create your Pocket Plan. These include things like:
- Your age
- If you have a spouse
- Your spouse’s age (if eligible)
- Desired Retirement Age
- Current retirement savings
- Amount you save for Retirement
Connecting your financial accounts will create your financial reports including your Cash Flow, Net Worth & Retirement Score.
To connect your accounts, simply click the plus button in the bottom right corner. From there you’ll need to choose your financial institution. Use your current username and password to login and we’ll take care of the rest.
You can view which accounts are connected at anytime on the desktop app by clicking “Connected Accounts”.
Be sure to connect your bank, investment and liability (debt) accounts for best results.
After you’ve added in your financial data from your bank, investment and debt accounts Pocket Plan will sort the information in an easy to use format. This includes:
– Assets
These include your property & financial accounts
– Liabilities
These are any accounts which you pay regularly
– Income
Your income includes your current income & Social Security
– Insurance
Includes your Medical, Property & Life insurance info
– Estate
Includes your Will, Powers of Attorney and Trust info
You can manually update many fields if necessary.
Your Cash Flow statement organizes your income and expenses from your financial accounts over a period of time. Now you can see your big picture in a single report. Your expenses are categorized as:
– Essential
– Non-essential
– Savings
For a full breakdown of expenses by type click here.
Your Net Worth is a snapshot of assets and liabilities at a single point in time. This is the big picture view of your financial wellbeing. Your assets include all accounts with a positive balance. Your liabilities are all accounts that you owe a debt to.
Your retirement score is the probability that you won’t run out of money before age 86. The Retirement Score range is from 0 – 100. The closer the number is to 100, the better your odds of not running out of money are.
Your Retirement Score is not a guarantee of future success. It is calculated using a Monte Carlo analysis based on historic investment returns.
Your investment report shows your investment accounts and holdings. You can view your entire investment portfolio and asset allocation. This includes all investment accounts like a 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, Annuity, Money Market or Brokerage account. We do not offer support for crypto currencies or privately held investments.
A scenario allows you to test the impact of changes to your Retirement Plan. You can change how much you save, when you retire or how much you spend. The impact of these changes is shown in the Retirement Score.
Monte Carlo
A Monte Carlo analysis is a model to predict future outcomes. Specifically, we’re looking to put a number on the likelihood of you running out of money before age 86.
We use a Random Walk portfolio model that assumes your investment returns based on stock and bond holdings. These holdings are pre-assigned based on your age. The closer you get to retirement, the more bonds you hold. The further from retirement, the more stocks you hold.
The Monte Carlo is run 1,000 times to simulate how random investment returns impact your outcome. For instance, one trial may assume investment returns from 1930 – 1960 whereas a second trial may assume investment returns from 1960 – 1990 and a third trial would assume investment returns from 1990 – 2020.
After 1,000 trials we calculate how many of those trials ended with you losing money and how many resulted in you being.
Yes, you can adjust how many trials your Monte Carlo runs. You can also adjust the optimistic and pessimistic bands that define success or failure. Currently, you can’t adjust the portfolio allocation or rebalancing, but these are features that we’d like to include in future releases.
Company
Pocket Planner makes money by selling user and enterprise software licenses. We were able to jumpstart our company by investment from friends and family.
Pocket Planner Inc was founded by Nathan Garcia. Nathan is a licensed financial advisor, Certified Financial Planner Professional and a thirteen year veteran of the financial services industry. He earned a Bachelors of Science in Financial Planning from Virginia Tech.
You can learn more on our About Us page.
We continue to improve access to and quality of financial advice with improvements to our platform and access to data sources.
Yes, you can export your data via CSV
No, this is not financial planning as there are several limitations around the modelling of taxes and investment returns. Pocket Plan helps organize your financial data into a Cash Flow and Net Worth Statement. Your Pocket Plan builds a Retirement Score using the Monte Carlo analysis. However, you can’t make several adjustments to your financial plan simultaneously like you can with industry grade financial planning software.
Yes, you can access in person support with a paid or sponsored subscription.
You can add your photo in the “My Personal Info” section of your Pocket Plan.
