Crunching your retirement numbers

Retirement calculators are handy tools, but simple retirement calculators can provide misleading results. Try using a simple retirement savings calculator as a "dry run", but then look for something more sophisticated as your retirement investment savvy improves. For instance, a sophisticated retirement income calculator can account for increasing the size of your contributions to retirement savings, allow for tax sheltered annual contributions, and project inflation rates--all of these are factors that could significantly affect your bottom line.