Thanks for Financial Engines retirement link

Hi Terry: Thanks to your recommendation, I’ve been tracking the accumulation of my retirement funding for a number of years with the help of Financial Engines. I love it, and am grateful to you for having steered me in that direction. I am curious though if you’ve ever had any feedback from any of your readers, now retired themselves, as to the validity of the projections provided by Financial Engines. One would think that it’s now been around long enough to have developed an actual track record, and yet I’ve never seen anyone sharing their actual experiences; either good OR bad, with their use of Financial Engines. Your thoughts, please?

SAVAGE SAYS: Thanks, I’m due for a followup on Financial Engines, and I will do some research. Let me just say that they give retirement plan advice to employees of more than 80% of Fortune 100 companies — so they must be doing a lot of things right! Remember, also, that there are two aspects to the planning they do. The first is advice during the accumulation phase, on which funds to use in your plan. The second aspect of their service is planning for both investments and withdrawals as you approach retirement. So the “final results” won’t be known for a long time! For those interested in learning more, go to TerrySavage.com and click on the box marked FinancialEngines to get a free trial for one year. And I will do a followup column soon! Thanks for a good idea, and I’m glad you have been using the program.