Investor · 30080 · Member since 2020 · 40 posts · 14 votes
I’m going to cross post this in a few places and to be clear, I am NOT talking about software or a bookkeeper that specializes at any of the following:
bookkeeping for taxes
rent roll and property management
property purchase assessment
renovation budgets and build management
traditional stock market investments
business management
personal finances
I am looking to take information from all of the above areas and create a holistic cash flow, net worth, short term and long-term automated projection of EVERYTHING all at once. So if you have COVID-19 shutdown or you are looking to buy a new property, you can see how this affects your entire financial big picture (not evaluate one financial silo at a time). The only way I know to do that is to dump info from the software above into a big ugly custom spreadsheet I’ve been using. It’s tedious and slow and I dread dealing with it.
What are you actually USING? Are we just stuck with spreadsheets to put it all together?
Investor · 30080 · Member since 2020 · 40 posts · 14 votes
6y
It's funny you mention that as I was going to try it this week! However, it doesn't integrate real estate with all your other personal finances and retirement investments for long term planning (or does it?).
Rental Property Investor · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2020 · 40 posts · 31 votes
6y
I use Personal Capital and it does a nice job showing you the big picture and tracks your net worth, assets, liabilities, cash flow, etc. It is free and easy to use. You can link your accounts up so the data is refreshed and updated in real time.
Investor · 30080 · Member since 2020 · 40 posts · 14 votes
6y
Michael, I've got an account with them and I think it's a GREAT tool for people who don't own rental property as a retirement vehicle. If you do own rental property, here are a few of the problems I've had:
It does not include property assets in your net worth in the “retirement planner,” just traditional funds. So you have no clear way to predict your future net worth and estimate an approximated point of financial independence.
For each property I’ve been using a spreadsheet to calculate future value minus taxes and commissions to provide an estimated net for a certain sale date, then manually add the lump sum cash injection as an “income event” in Personal Capital, but you can’t associate any property related items together.
For example, a mortgage, rental income, and even a property sale are never associated with each other. If you sell a property it doesn’t delete the mortgage and stop the rental income. So if you change something or move around dates...
Here’s another example: let’s say you decide you’re going to save $50,000 a year towards retirement. It just adds that money in but it doesn’t deduct it from your annual cash balance. You just get free money added to your account every year! You could create a separate event called “other expense” that happens to match the savings contribution, but changes to one do not automatically make changes to the other.
Still, overall a great tool if you're not into property investing.
Financial Advisor · Indianapolis, IN · Member since 2018 · 294 posts · 165 votes
6y
@Benjamin Arritt
The financial services industry has a couple tools that likely do what you are looking for. MoneyGuidePro and EMoney are the primary tools that almost all financial planners use to accomplish what you asked for.
It’s definitely not free and may be unreasonably expensive to license for personal use. You may consider just working with a planner who already pays for it and hope they can add value in multiple other ways.
Investor · 30080 · Member since 2020 · 40 posts · 14 votes
6y
I did, but they weren't too keen on running REI purchase assessments and scenarios for me. LOL. Sounds like I will need to purchase something myself. They used eMoney and it was pretty inaccurate. Applied a flat % gain on rent increases annually, doesn't account for mortgage payoffs, applies same tax rate across time regardless of income changes, etc. Is MoneyGuidePro any better? Most FAs I've met have an aversion to people with rental property as part of their retirement portfolio....maybe I just haven't found the right one!