Money Tree to unveil financial planning software
New planning software will be available from Money Tree in coming weeks.
Distribution Solutions, which is being beta tested, is designed to help advisers solve several financial planning conundrums such as comparing lump sum payout tax consequences with rolling the assets into an individual retirement account.
Also, users can compare the benefits derived from converting to a Roth IRA from an IRA. It can compare the income generated from investing a lump-sum payout with that of monthly benefits using both single and joint-life options.
Other features include answers to many required-minimum-distribution questions, the ability to analyze the effect inflation will have on income and capital, and income options analysis, which allows an adviser to illustrate three options that are available to clients who need income before they’re 59½.
Money Tree Software Ltd. of Corvallis, Ore., is offering a pre-release special price of $195; the regular price is $269.
For more information, visit
Money Tree and click on Distribution Solutions.
To view sample reports in a PDF format, visit this special
Money Tree link.
One gadget, three uses
Advisers who have grown tired of taking notes the old-fashioned way — with paper and pen — could consider switching to the Pulse Smartpen.
In addition to its writing duties, this ballpoint pen has a built-in microphone, circuitry and 2 gigabytes of memory for $199 (a 1-GB model is available for $149) for recording the audio that goes along with whatever you are scribbling. It also comes with software that allows you to upload your handwritten notes into your computer as well.
One market participant relies on it to record conversations with clients and for taking other notes. “It’s become pretty indispensible,” said Warren Steinborn, president of Warren Steinborn Associates, a pension consulting and employee-benefit-planning firm in Indianapolis.
But there is a catch. You can’t use paper to take your notes if you expect them to synchronized with the recorded version of a meeting.
Instead, specially ruled microdot-filled notebooks ($19.95 for a box of four) from the company are required. A tiny camera located on the tip of the pen works in tandem with its computer circuitry to track the device’s movements and match it up with the recorded audio.
Livescribe Inc. of Oakland, Calif., developed the Smartpen.
For more information, visit
Livescribe.
Advisor Software awarded patent
Advisor Software Inc. has received a patent for a technology that can determine if an investor will outlive his or her retirement savings.
An adviser that uses the vendor’s Wealth Manager application can make that determination based on several variables.
“The advantage of this innovation is that it allows advisers to generate investment recommendations considering comprehensive household information in a fraction of the time it would normally take,” Andrew Rudd, chairman and chief executive at Lafayette, Calif.-based Advisor Software, said in a statement.
The patent is for a “workstation-based search algorithm which formulates investment strategies that take into account uncertain economic environments over future decades and maximizes against tiered personal goals,” according to a statement.
For more information, visit
Advisor Software.
