Download The RC here.
Strap yourself in for quite possibly the most exciting three minutes you’ve ever had in your life. Seriously, you get to learn about what the fields in the RC mean, which means you are three minutes closer to being a thousandaire. Okay, so the video itself is a little dry, but if you don’t know what’s going on, this is really important. And I kept it short so you can watch it, absorb it, and move on. If you don’t have time to watch a three minute video, you could probably read the following in about a minute or so. You should probably also loosen up your schedule a little bit. Seriously, you don’t have three minutes?
- Amount Contributed – How much you put in your retirement accounts
- Value (if tax deferred) – How much money you will have at the specified time (either the day of your retirement in the left column, or the day of your death in the right column) if you use a 401k, Roth IRA, a combination of both, or any other tax deferred accounts. Tax deferred means Uncle Sam keeps his grubby hands off your money as you earn interest.
- Value (if not tax deferred) – How much you’ll have if you don’t leverage those tax deferred accounts, which wouldn’t be very smart. Now, if you’ve maxed out your tax deferred accounts, that’s a different story
- Interest Earned (if tax deferred) – How much interest you will earn on all the money you’ve saved. If you have a long time until retirement, this number will be substantial. (That’s why it’s so important to start saving early)
- Interest Earned (if not tax deferred) – Again, how much interest you will have earned by retirement.
- You screwed “The Man” out of: – This is my favorite because it shows how much tax deferred accounts can help you keep your hard earned money. This is how much in taxes you would have paid if you were paying capital gains taxes on your investments.
- Age you went broke – I think you get the idea with tax deferred so I’m lumping this stuff together. If you haven’t gone broke, you planned well and you’re a Thousand-aire. Congratulations. If you do go broke, this will show you the age you will go broke.
That’s it. Pretty easy, huh? The harder part is the inputs, so once you have your mind wrapped around this stuff, check out the inputs video and figure out how to really make The RC work for you.
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Uh oh, I can’t download your RC spread sheet here…. 🙂 Link doesn’t work for me, bro!