Comprehensive financial planning involves a few different items including retirement planning and potentially college planning, estate planning, tax planning, and others.

Running what-if scenarios for your retirement plan are not only extremely important for peace of mind, it can be a fun experience!

You have choices to make about how you want to spend down retirement money. Once you stop working, which accounts do you want to use up first? Or does it make sense to spread it around, taking from multiple accounts at a time?

Low interest rates cut both ways. If you're an investor in search of income, bonds probably haven't been doing much for you in recent years, forcing you to look elsewhere.

Their story will be familiar to readers who have seen articles about FIRE. Young-ish people decide they want out of the "rat race," and take their journey public via a blog. They generously publish a lot of details about their financial life and their progress, along with pictures of what they're eating, travelogues, and workout routines.

Adjusted for inflation, the cost of going to college went up by about 350% from 1985 through 2010. The constant increasing costs of going to college became a major burden for both students and their parents. Many parents sacrificed an early retirement to help put their children through school and many students left college saddled with thousands of dollars in student loan debt.

Many Americans are playing roulette with their retirement as they don’t have enough saved for emergencies.

Let's fantasize a bit. Let's talk about lottery-winnings-type money. If you had $10 million to retire on, how long would it last? Why bother going through this exercise? Well, it's kind of fun, for one thing. And who knows, it might even actually apply to some people reading this.

When it comes to planning specifically for a couple, though, there are a few calculations that can get tricky. But if you use the right software and have accurate inputs, you can get it right--and have a more accurate plan as a result.

When the question "How much do you need to retire" comes up, most people reflexively think of a target to hit. A million dollars, two million dollars. If I can just get to a certain amount, people think, I'll be set.

We have modern ways of putting together and reviewing a retirement plan, but the inputs are the same as always. You can use WealthTrace to figure out how much you need to save to have a successful retirement plan.

If you’re reading this article, you’re probably further along than most people. You’re thinking about your finances; you’re doing some reading and research. This is a good thing.

Wealth management software used to be the domain of professionals only. Now, individuals can get their hands on web sites and software as powerful as wealth management professionals use.

Times are good for the budget conscious and for those who like to track their investments' every move. There are tons of options--many of them free, many of them mobile-friendly--available for keeping tabs on your inflows, your outflows, and your investments. It really never has been easier to keep track of saving and spending.

I have written a number of articles about whether a certain amount of money would be enough to retire with. A million dollars. Two million dollars. I put a hypothetical couple through a hypothetical saving-and-spending scenario, and we see how it goes. I used the WealthTrace Financial Planner to calculate all of the scenarios in this article and you can do the same using our free trial.

A solid plan for any project, not just retirement, needs strategies to make it happen. Here are some essential building blocks for a retirement plan.

To get retirement right, you'll have to move beyond the dream stage. This means thinking about what will really be important and meaningful to you in retirement--and what it will cost.

You may have seen articles in the financial press recently about the rise of index-fund investing and the demise of active management (stock picking). This is actually nothing new. Investing has been evolving this way for many years, and is in large part a welcome development: Over time, most active management does not beat the indexes, and is expensive to boot. Low-cost indexing is the way to go for most investors.

You owe it to yourself--and your retirement--to do better than basing it on a simple spreadsheet. Using planning software such as our WealthTrace financial planner gives you the full picture.

In planning for retirement, a lot of time and effort and focus is understandably on saving enough money and investing it in the right securities. But a successful retirement plan--especially one that is longer than normal--can depend at least as much on spending.