Forecaster Tool
Investment Options
Once you are inside the tool there is a set of basic investment options to choose from as well as optional advanced inputs.
The following options are compulsory
- Select an Instrument - choose either an Attitude to Risk, Cash Savings Account or one of your portfolios
- Investment Amount
- Term - between a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 50 years
Please note you can enter an investment amount of zero, however for this scenario you must enter an annual contribution amount.
You also have some advanced options which are not compulsory, click on the tick box to open these selection options. Untick to close the selection box and ignore any of these inputs.
Add an Instrument to Compare
You can choose another instrument to forecast for comparison and this can be an Attitude to Risk, Cash Savings Account or a portfolio. For example, you may want to compare your client's Attitude to Risk against their current portfolio.
Add an Annual Contribution
You can add an annual contribution to your forecast to replicate regular investment from your client. Enter the annual contribution value and you can select how you want this to increase over the term of investment. You have the following options
- No Increase - the contribution stays at the same annual figure
- Inflation - the contribution rises with expected inflation
- National Earnings - the contribution rises with expected national earnings
- Percentage - the contribution rises by a fixed percentage per annum
Add a Goal
Your client may have an investment goal in mind which you can add to the forecast. This will display as a green line on your chart at the goal value as well as an entry in your data table that will appear with the chart.
Please note your goal amount will not change if you choose to view the forecast based on future values so you may need to adjust this accordingly.
Add an Annual Withdrawal
You can choose to withdraw money from the total value over the life of the investment. You have either the option to withdraw a regular annual amount or regular annual percentage. You will have the same increase options as the contribution when you select regular amount.
You can also choose the withdrawal start point. The default option will be 'Now' i.e. at the point in time the chart is generated, however you will also have the option to defer the withdrawal for a certain amount of years, simply choose 'Defer for' in the drop down and enter the amount of years to defer the withdrawal for.
Once you have chosen your investment options click the 'Calculate' button to render the chart and table.