My Favorite-Ist Retirement Planning Calculator

I have tried a number of the standard retirement calculators on the web, and I say, I think this one is the best because it depresses me the least.

This would be bloomberg.com's Retirement Calculator.

It's very simple. All you enter is your age, amount you have, when you want to retire, expected return, and then either how much you want to end up with, or how much per year you can kick in. Then the calculator will show you a giant table showing how much money you'd have every year, and either how much you end up with or how much per year you have to contribute to reach this goal.

The particular reason that I like this calculator is that it allows me to look into the future and try to guess where I'll be in five years or ten years, and exactly how much cash I will have to sock away if I don't get going. While I don't relish the idea of working until I'm exactly 65, it does give me some breathing room if I say I have 43 years to amass money. Yay!

Some of the other retirement calculators are especially bleak, for whatever reason.. I especially dislike the ones that are very 401(k) driven, and make you rely on percentage of salary and company match and all that. Because what you put in is under your control, but what your salary is from year to year, and whether you get a match, usually isn't.