The Acropolis Financial Forecaster® is a model designed to identify and quantify what clients need to do in order to increase the chances of meeting their goals.
At the heart of our financial planning recommendations is the Acropolis Financial Forecaster® (AFF). Unlike traditional financial planning models, the AFF generates a thousand scenarios that include market crashes, hyper-inflation, asset bubbles, deflation, and everything in between.
The AFF enables clients to see the effect that different market and inflation environments might have on your financial situation.
The investment model we build for each client is custom: some clients will prefer to work longer and save less, while others will want to take substantial market risk for the possibility of retiring earlier. We review the AFF inputs and results with you each year adding any changes to your situation and updates to our market and inflation assumptions. If the probability of your success begins to alter, we can make adjustments to the variables, keeping you on the right path.
Our goal as managers is to help you find the most risk-averse path to success.
Ultimately, the probability of your success boils down to the following variables, some of which you can control and some of which are out of your control:
- Pre-retirement savings rate (you control)
- Retirement date (you control)
- Retirement cash flow requirement (you control)
- Asset Allocation (you control)
- Market Returns (no control)
- Inflation Rate (no control)
Obviously, the AFF does not predict the future – there is no such device! It does however, provide clients with:
- Direction on how much market risk is required to meet your goals.
- Guidance on how much to save, how much cash flow to expect during retirement, and, critically, when to retire.
- A realistic range of possible outcomes.
- A probabilistic framework for making sound decisions.