Speaker: Matt Zucker
Why did you choose MaxiFi to create a personal financial plan?
Matt Zucker: Before I retired, I did my research. I talked to friends, I read articles, talked to financial planners, really wanted to understand all the different options available to me, for managing my finances when I retired. What I came to was that I wanted to manage my finances myself and I felt more comfortable doing that than handing over control to someone else to manage on my behalf. I liked MaxiFi like what I read about it and gave it a try. And then when I retired a few months ago, I started to actually use the tool actively, and I've been using it ever since and very pleased with the results.
What MaxiFi features do you like best?
Matt Zucker: The MaxiFi feature that I like best is the reports themselves. What I like is the way the reports lay out the granular detail of the plan and really allow you to feel confident that the information that you're acting on is sort of close at hand that, that you're able to really look at month by month detail and understand, really where you are at each stage in the game and also to see how that plays out over time. And then as you make changes or review different options you're able to see those changes sort of ripple through the plan again on that month by month basis. I think it's a very powerful feature and for me it really increased my confidence in what I was doing.
Did you find MaxiFi easy to set up and use? Please tell us about your experience.
Matt Zucker: I found it pretty easy to start using MaxiFi and the data that I was asked to provide was easily obtained, and I was able to start generating reports fairly quickly. One of the things I find most powerful about MaxiFi is that as I start to get familiar with the reports and understand the implications, I'm able to go back to my base profile and re-enter data, change assumptions, think about some things a little differently, and I think that makes the reports that I end up generating much more powerful and useful to me.
Did MaxiFi help you make important financial decisions? If so how?
Matt Zucker: MaxiFi really helped me make some very important decisions about my retirement, you know, there's so many things that you have to think about when you're planning your retirement finances and some of them seem sort of mysterious, big complicated decisions, but when you see them broken out in the plan and in your reports, you feel much more confidence in being able to decide, for example, when to convert IRA funds into a Roth IRA or how to set aside funds for important life events that you want to make sure you've got on your radar. Just having the confidence in making those decisions is a huge step forward to me, very valuable.
Did you have a long-term financial plan before using MaxiFI? If so, how did you create that plan?
Matt Zucker: Before I started using MaxiFi, I had a very broad, vague, financial plan for my retirement. I knew there were things that I wanted to do. My wife and I had talked about what our goals were, but again, it was very broad and the specifics–– I just didn't have a handle on the specific steps I would need to take in order to execute that plan. So having the ability to then turn that sort of broad idea, those dreams into a tangible reality with the very practical steps I would need to take to get there. It's a huge benefit for me of using MaxiFi.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Matt Zucker: For me, the confidence that it gave me to be able to manage my own financial future was tremendous. I think it's a shame that many of us go into retirement without confidence in being able to manage our own financial future and have to give that that control over to someone else. It's much more powerful, I think, to be able to go into this, this great and very productive and exciting time of our lives. And feel like you are in control and that you know what's happening and you're doing it really with your own interests in your own way. I really appreciate that that MaxiFi gave me that confidence.
