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EISI introduced NaviPlan in 1990 and boasts a user base of more than 70,000. NaviPlan is another product in this review lineup that takes a broader approach to the planning process, including both goal-based financial planning as well as cash flow-based estate planning, which focuses on tax reduction and maximizing the amount of assets that can be passed to heirs.
Katie Stokes is the firm administrator for J.E. Wilson Advisors, LLC (www.jewilson. com), the oldest financial planning and investment management firm originating in S.C. The firm manages approximately $100 million, and most of its clients utilize the firm's comprehensive financial planning service. Stokes says that they use NaviPlan primarily for its Monte Carlo functionality. "We simply use it as a tool to show people if they have enough at the current level of assets and savings to meet their cash flow goals," she said. "There are many more functions of the program, but this is a good tool to use." Stokes noted the program's flexibility and that they're able to tailor the plans as needed, which is what drove them to select the program in the first place. "The output is in Microsoft Word, which is much easier to edit than those programs whose outputs are in *.PDF form," she said. "However, this does require a lot of time to format each plan." Stokes also mentioned that in the Extended version, you cannot make a template for output although you can do so to a certain extent in the desktop version. "We can use our own returns, standard deviations, and correlations that represent our actual portfolios," Stokes said. "Other programs use Ibbotson data or something similar, which may differ greatly from the advisor's actual return data."
Stokes...