Our story
HOW IT ALL STARTED
Income Planner is your future story, so you’ll know what to expect
Knutsford
My name is Howard Goodall and I designed this retirement planning system.
I was an Independent Financial Adviser running my own successful business for most of my working life. From being a director of a chartered practice and now retired.
Three advanced calculators
I’ve been planning retirement for people since the 1980s. Many of these same people and families remained as clients until I retired. This system evolved and supported their aims and ambitions up to an beyond their own retirement.
Before you go on – take a step back, look at the big picture, projections work if you use them honestly, be true to yourself.
The natural evolution of Income Planner
Before computers
when telephones were grey and had a dial on the front
I built up my business helping families and small business owners. Most of people working for small businesses, including those owning the buiness had none of the benefits of a large firm. They had to set up their own retirement plan and death benefits, in fact, the same is true today.
The evolution of my business
She smiled every time she saw her Sony flat screen monitor
The 1992 IBM ThinkPad, the first proper Windows laptop, caused a revolution in portable PCs and software. It was mind-blowing even though it crashed a lot.
In the early 2000s the internet that was ‘fairly’ reliable and computers that didn’t crash too often, it was what I needed to turn my office paperless. Computing was coming of age for my business, As an IFA (Independent Financial Adviser) with my own firm, but we still worked under the weight of reams of paper. And now my assistant had the very latest technology – the first of its kind, a Sony flat screen monitor, she smiled every time she saw it, just what you need on Monday mornings.
I'm an innovator, trying always to be ahead of the curve
In 2002 my office was still an old story, bulging at the seams with paper and not a large firm.
We had been filling a four-drawer filing cabinet every year. With technology improving, I converted everything to one of the first IFA paperless offices.
Now it was time to have a computer-based system. From the beginning I gave clients graphs and charts, produced from my scientific calculator and a written report. I wanted to modernise these with computer software.
It had to include a reporting and analysis system that was clear and easy for clients to read. I tried off the shelf packaged systems; they were still in their infancy, complicated and messy, and did you really need an automated 35 page report, with mostly blank pages?
So, I built my own,
these calculators are one part of that system
Once I retired, I found it hard to just leave it in a drawer. Income Planner is one part of that professional system.
Pensions became too complicated
I aim to get to the point, things have become more complicated with too many layers of infomation
Pre computers it was more about simplicity
Today I would say we have far too many layers, too much complication. The technology has created well needed regulatory control, although like so many things it has swung too far the wrong way. This website tries to get to the point and explaining some of the background as clearly as I can. The good thing about being retired is that I cannot, nor do I wish to, offer financial advice. Instead, I bring you my experience of meeting thousands of people, week in week out, over forty years.
Whether you have a financial adviser or not, this website and it’s planning calculators are invaluable.
It’s a stand-alone system for anyone to use.
