Esplanner 2000

Traditional financial planning makes people set their own saving and life insurance targets. This is hard and, if people set their targets too low, dangerous. ESPlanner TM finds the right targets for you by doing life cycle consumption smoothing -- finding the most a person can spend today without suffering a drop in living standard tomorrow.

ESPlanner not only calculates a family's highest sustainable living standard, it also determines the amounts of saving and life insurance the family needs to maintain and protect that living standard through time. ESPlanner delivers its findings in the form of annual spending, saving, and insurance recommendations. The new version of ESPlanner is able to calculate the impact of relocation to a state with a different income tax structure, as well as real estate appreciation and capital gains taxes on homes.

It can also accommodate unmarried partners who wish to plan their financial lives together. ESPlanner was developed by three of the nation's leading experts on saving and insurance -- Stanford University economist Douglas Bernheim, economist Jagadeesh Gokhale, and Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff.