Welcome!

Thank you for visiting my site – The Measure of a Plan. This is my first post in what I hope to be a long and fulfilling blogging life. To learn more about this site, please see the about page.

The first ‘tool’ that I’ll publish will be a Rent versus Buy calculator, which will shed light on the often debated question of: is it better to rent or buy your home?

After that, here is what I’d like to publish:

Tools:

• Budgeting tool (excel tool which will take your spending data as input, and will generate outputs for you, including: total spending over time, spending breakdown by category, etc.)
• Retirement planning tool (excel tool to assess your ability to retire, depending on your current age, net worth, income, spending habits, etc.)

Data Sets:

• Stock market returns by country (summary of total returns over various time periods, breakdown of total returns by capital appreciation vs dividends, etc.)
• Bond market returns by country (summary of total returns, prices, implied yields)
• Housing prices over time by country / city (prices, growth, summary tables); breakdown by type of property (detached / semi detached, home vs condo, etc.)

Case studies:

• For each of the tools that I publish, I’d also like to follow up with real-world ‘case studies’ of how these tools can be applied. For example, using my Rent vs Buy calculator to assess the relative attractiveness of renting vs buying an average apartment in New York City

I would love to hear suggestions from you on new content that you’d like to see here. Is there a specific financial tool that you haven’t been able to find online? Is there a topic in personal finance that you’d like to learn more about? Please let me know in the comments below, or through email at themeasureofaplan@gmail.com!

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Photo credit: Peter Franc on Flickr