Patent Application
20210049702
As many people face retirement, there are many unknowns regarding properly saving for retirement to ensure adequate retirement income. Without pensions or other annuity type vehicles, determining a person's retirement income can be complicated and uncertain. Providing a service that helps plan for retirement and offer some level of guarantee would help reduce some retirement uncertainties.
In the drawings, which are not necessarily drawn to scale, like numerals may describe similar components in different views. Like numerals having different letter suffixes may represent different instances of similar components. Some embodiments are illustrated by way of example, and not of limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings, in which:
Determining the amount of money a person needs for retirement may be a complicated process involving different assumptions. Various saving and investing strategies may be created to help ensure a person has enough retirement income to last through their retirement. Continuing to follow such strategies may not be easy though given the normal complexities of life. Various embodiments described herein help encourage a plan participant to follow a retirement plan. For example, a plan participant may be encouraged to continue with a retirement plan based upon receiving an additional benefit or guarantee if all or part of the retirement plan is met. As a specific example, a guaranteed return on some investment for a plan participant may be provided once the plan participant follows the provided retirement plan or provided retirement advice. Automatically monitoring may be done to ensure the participant is following the retirement strategy.
Additional financial inputs such as current spending, investments, 401K contributions, etc. may also be collected, stored, and used to formulate a plan 104. In an example, the plan 104 is a plan for the person's retirement. The plan may include an investment strategy that changes over time. The plan may also include an expected accrued amount based on an expected rate of return of the person's investment. The plan may also have investment requirements. The investment requirements and plan information may be stored in a database and access by various computing systems. For example, continued investing in a 401K account at a prescribed level may be a requirement. Another investment requirement may be a certain amount or a certain number of deposits into a savings or investment account.
In an example, multiple plans may be created, by a server computing system, that each have different parameters. For example, one plan may require more investment compared to other plans. Another difference may be the level of risk between the plans. The various parameters and risks involved with each plan may be provided and explained to the person.
In addition, each plan may have a guarantee 106. In an example, the guarantee 106 may be viewed as an incentive provided to the person to continue to follow the selected plan 104. The guarantee 106 may be an additional amount of money provided to the plan participant at certain points through the life of the plan 104 and/or at the end of the plan 104. For example, an amount of money may be deposited into a plan participant's 401K account for investing some amount of money during a period of time. This investment may be subject to the 401K maximums. The guarantee 106 may also be a guaranteed rate of return of certain assets; a guaranteed minimum loss; a guarantee of a percentage of principal; an additional investment amount; and/or a guarantee of the entire principal of some investments. For example, an additional investment amount may be the amount of principal that the plan participant deposits during the life of the plan, but not cover any original assets from before the start of the plan. A guarantee may be selected based upon the financial inputs and the investment requirements.
Once the plans and associated guarantees are determined, a person may elect a plan and become a plan participant.
The monitor or the backend system may determine the financial impact of missing a particular deposit. In an example, the system may determine a catch-up amount of money needed to be made at a later date to account for the missed deposit. The catch-up amount is the amount needed such that the there is no adverse effect to the accumulated amount. The catch-up amount may have a time period in which the catch-up amount should be deposited, with an additional calculation for a second catch-up amount for later dates.
At a prescribed time, a plan participant may make a withdrawal 208 from the accounts 204. For example, at the of the plan the plan participant may make withdrawals 208. In a specific example, the plan participant may be retired and make withdrawals 208 as part of the plan participant's retirement income.
At 320, retirement costs are estimated. Expected monthly costs may be determined as part of determining the retirement costs. A retirement locale may be determined where the plan participant may relocate to upon retirement. In addition, a housing selection may be determined. Housing selection may be based upon how large, expensive, and/or amenities that the plan participant would like in their retirement housing. Based upon the housing selection and the retirement locale, housing costs and utility costs may be calculated. Utility costs may be collected from various locales across the country and used to estimate utility costs for different locales. The utility costs may then be estimated across different locales that are of interest to the plan participant. For a retirement example, the utility costs and housing costs may be estimated across the projected length of a customer's retirement. In addition, retirement costs may include an annual increase to account for items such as inflation. Locales may also be used to estimate healthcare costs, long-term care costs, and/or taxes.
In an example, various locales and housing selections may be used to calculate various different costs that may be compared to one another. A plan participant, therefore, may see different costs for different locales. These costs may, be used to estimate the amount of retirement savings or retirement income needed for the plan participant.
At 330, accumulation values may be determined. The accumulation values may be the amount of principal the plan participant is expected to have at the end of the plan. The accumulation values may be determined based upon the financial inputs and the estimated retirement costs. In an example, the accumulation values are large enough to cover the estimated retirement costs. For example, a plan participant may be comparing one housing selection to a more modest housing selection. The retirement savings for supporting the more modest housing is less than the retirement savings for the more expensive housing. The different accumulation values are used to support either housing. To achieve a larger accumulation value, the plan participant may be required to invest more money during the plan and/or invest some assets in more risky but potentially higher upside investments. Accordingly, each accumulation value may be associated with a different investment risk. The accumulation value and the associated investment risk may be stored together in a data store for later retrieval. In addition, the accumulation value may be used to calculate a retirement income. For example, based upon the number of years of retirement, the accumulated value may be used to calculate the retirement income available on a yearly basis.
Each accumulation value may be associated with different investment requirements. An example of an investment requirement is having the plan participant continue to make deposits into an account for a certain amount of time and of certain amounts. The investment requirements may be calculated based on the financial inputs and an accumulation value. For example, a user may have little retirement savings, as indicated by the financial inputs, and desire a large accumulation value to be used for retirement. The investment requirements, therefore, would be large enough to ensure that the plan participant has the desired accumulation value at the end of the plan. Non-financial investment requirements may also be attached to an accumulated value or plan. For example, agreeing to be a member of a gym, or to visit the gym a certain number of times may be a requirement.
The various accumulation values and the investment requirements may be provided to a plan participant for review and selection. For example, the various accumulation values and the investment requirements needed to achieve the accumulation values may be provided such that the plan participant may review and compare. The various accumulation values and the investment requirements may be provided via a computing system, a mobile device, a website, etc. At 340, a selection of one of the accumulation values is received.
In an example, a probability that the selected accumulation value will be met is calculated. For example, a Monte Carlo calculation may be made to determine the probability. A security, such as an insurance policy, may be used to cover the costs and/or risk of the plan not achieving the accumulated value. This security may be purchased automatically as part of plan enrollment.
At 350, an investment plan is created based upon the selected accumulation value and the investment requirements associated with the accumulation value. In an example, the plan is created based upon determining an initial amount of assets that are to be used for saving towards the accumulation value. The difference between the accumulation value and the initial amount may be determined. The difference along with the investment requirements may then be used to determine how aggressive and how much risk is needed to achieve the accumulation value based upon the amount of time until the event, such as retirement, is reached.
The investment plan may have additional investment requirements. For example, the investment plan may require a range of different investments to ensure that assets are balanced and/or diversified according to the plan. The investment plan may also alter the original investment requirements. For example, deposits of different amounts may be used. For example, based upon the investment plan's projections less money may be needed such that the deposit amounts may be reduced.
At 360, a guarantee for the investment plan is determined. The guarantee may be based upon the selected accumulation value and the associated investment requirements. The guarantee may be one or more of a maximum guaranteed loss, reduction of fees, minimum return, guaranteed principal, etc. The guarantee may also be non-financial. For example, a guarantee may be a fixed pricing for a gym membership or discounted movie tickets. Guarantees may also change the investment requirements for an investment plan. For example, a higher guaranteed return may be provided for increasing the deposit amount that the plan participant will make. Another example is increasing the guarantee based upon requiring more money to be invested earlier in the plan to take advantage of compound interest. In the examples with various guarantees, a selected guarantee for the selected investment plan is received.
In another example, an investment plan and guarantee are determined for each of the possible accumulation values. The plan participant may then select the plan and guarantee. In this example, an investment plan may have different guarantees. For example, an investment plan may have possible guarantees of a certain lump sum at the end of the plan; smaller payments made throughout the life of the plan; and/or non-financial guarantees such as a locked in rates for services, e.g., a gym membership, etc. In another example, the investment plan may allow the user to select multiple guarantees. In this example, the selection of one guarantee may impact other guarantees. For example, the plan participant may elect to take a smaller lump stun payment at the end of the plan and select a fixed gym membership pricing during the plan.
During the plan, the investment requirements may be monitored. For example, accounts may be monitored to determine if deposits are being timely made. At the end or during the plan, the guarantee may be provided to the plan participant based upon the investment requirements being met.
While the investment requirements are being monitored by a monitor as described above, one or more investment requirements may be determined as not being met. For example, a deposit may not have been made or the deposit may be less than the required amount. The negative impact that deposit has on the plan may be determined. For example, how the deposit impacts the accumulated value may be calculated. An alert may be provided to the plan participant to let them know of the investment requirement and the negative impact it has on the accumulated value. Another example may be how the missed investment requirement impacts the guarantee of the plan. A catch-up value may be calculated. The catch-up value may be an amount of money that needs to be deposited to remedy the missed investment requirement. In this example, a deposit of the catch-up value ensures that the investment requirements are met or may be met.
In an example, monitoring an account may also allow for automatic asset allocation based upon the selected plan. For example, at certain times, such as yearly, bi-yearly, etc., investment accounts may be analyzed for the distribution of assets. The selected plan may have a requirement that the assets be allocated in a certain way. If the current distribution does not meet the requirement, asset reallocation may occur such that the asset allocation is in line with the selected plan.
Monitoring a plan participant's plan and requirements may be used to calculate a reputation score for the plan participant. The reputation score may be based on the plan participant's compliance with the various requirements. For example, the reputation score may be the number of requirements met by a customer divided by the total number of requirements to date. In an example, a requirement may be based upon the reputation score. For example, a requirement may be that the plan participant's reputation score be above a predetermine value. The reputation score may be negatively impacted when an investment requirement and/or a non-financial requirement is not met. In an example, spending habits may also be monitored and impact the reputation score. In another example, health monitoring data may be used to determine if the plan participant is meeting an exercise non-financial requirement. Additional information that may be used to impact the reputation score include the plan participant's consistent savings, credit score, sophistication of the plan, investor profile, etc. In an example, behavior across multiple plan participants may be used. For this information, a distribution of scores may be used to calculate the reputation score of a particular plan participant.
A selected plan may span multiple years. Accordingly, plan modifications may occur from time to time. As the plan changes, the associated guarantee may also change. For example, a plan participant may determine that more money will be saved for retirement. The additional funds, may provide an increase the current guarantee that was based on the previous scheduled deposits. Similarly, a plan participant may determine to save less money, in which case, the guarantee may be reduced. Changes to the plan may be made any time and/or on a pre-determined schedule.
The representative hardware layer 1104 comprises one or more processing units 1106 having associated executable instructions 1108. Executable instructions 1108 represent the executable instructions of the software architecture 1102, including implementation of the methods, modules, components, and so forth of
In the example architecture of
The operating system 1114 may manage hardware resources and provide common services. The operating system 1114 may include, for example, a kernel 1128, services 1130, and drivers 1132. The kernel 1128 may act as an abstraction layer between the hardware and the other software layers. For example, the kernel 1128 may be responsible for memory management, processor management (e.g., scheduling), component management, networking, security settings, and so on. The services 1130 may provide other common services for the other software layers. In some examples, the services 1130 include an interrupt service. The interrupt service may detect the receipt of a hardware or software interrupt and, in response, cause the architecture 1102 to pause its current processing and execute an interrupt service routine (ISR) when an interrupt s received. The ISR may generate the alert, for example, as described herein.
The drivers 1132 may be responsible for controlling or interfacing with the underlying hardware. For instance, the drivers 1132 may include display drivers, camera drivers, Bluetooth® drivers, flash memory drivers, serial communication drivers (e.g., Universal Serial Bus (USB) drivers), Wi-Fi® drivers, NFC drivers, audio drivers, power management drivers, and so forth depending on the hardware configuration.
The libraries 1116 may provide a common infrastructure that may be utilized by the applications 1120 and/or other components and/or layers. The libraries 1116 typically provide functionality that allows other software modules to perform tasks in an easier fashion than to interface directly with the underlying operating system 1114 functionality (e.g., kernel 1128, services 1130 and/or drivers 1132). The libraries 1116 may include system 1134 libraries (e.g., C standard library) that may provide functions such as memory allocation functions, string manipulation functions, mathematic functions, and the like. In addition, the libraries 1116 may include API libraries 1136 such as media libraries (e.g., libraries to support presentation and manipulation of various media format such as MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, NG, PNG), graphics libraries (e.g., an OpenGL framework that may be used to render 2D and 9D in a graphic content on a display), database libraries (e.g., SQLite that may provide various relational database functions), web libraries (e.g., WebKit that may provide web browsing functionality), and the like. The libraries 1116 may also include a wide variety of other libraries 1138 to provide many other APIs to the applications 1120 and other software components/modules.
The frameworks 1118 (also sometimes referred to as middleware) may provide a higher-level common infrastructure that may be utilized by the applications 1120 and/or other software components/modules. For example, the frameworks 1118 may provide various graphic user interface (GUI) functions, high-level resource management, high-level location services, and so forth. The frameworks 1118 may provide a broad spectrum of other APIs that may be utilized by the applications 1120 and/or other software components/modules, some of which may be specific to a particular operating system or platform.
The applications 1120 includes built-in applications 1140 and/or third party applications 1142. Examples of representative built-in applications 1140 may include, but are not limited to, a contacts application, a browser application, a book reader application, a location application, a media application, a messaging application, and/or a game application. Third party applications 1142 may include any of the built in applications as well as a broad assortment of other applications. In a specific example, the third party application 1142 (e.g., an application developed using the Android™ or iOS™ software development kit (SDK) by an entity other than the vendor of the particular platform) may be mobile software running on a mobile operating system such as iOS™, Android™, Windows® Phone, or other mobile computing device operating systems. In this example, the third party application 1142 may invoke the API calls 1124 provided by the mobile operating system such as operating system 1114 to facilitate functionality described herein.
The applications 1120 may utilize built in operating system functions (e.g., kernel 1128, services 1130 and/or drivers 1132), libraries (e.g., system 1134, APIs 1136, and other libraries 1138), frameworks/middleware 1118 to create user interfaces to interact with users of the system. Alternatively, or additionally, in some systems interactions with a user may occur through a presentation layer, such as presentation layer 1144. In these systems, the application/module “logic” can be separated from the aspects of the application/module that interact with a user.
Some software architectures utilize virtual machines. For example, systems described herein may be executed utilizing one or more virtual machines executed at one or more server computing machines. In the example of
Example architecture 1200 includes a processor unit 1202 comprising at least one processor (e.g., a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU) or both, processor cores, compute nodes, etc.). The architecture 1200 may further comprise a main memory 1204 and a static memory 1206, which communicate with each other via a link 1208 (e.g., bus). The architecture 1200 can further include a video display unit 1210, an alphanumeric input device 1212 (e.g., a keyboard), and a user interface (UI) navigation device 1214 (e.g., a mouse) in some examples, the video display unit 1210, input device 1212 and UI navigation device 1214 are incorporated into a touch screen display. The architecture 1200 may additionally include a storage device 1216 (e.g., a drive unit), a signal generation device 1218 (e.g., a speaker), a network interface device 1220, and one or more sensors (not shown), such as a global positioning system (GPS) sensor, compass, accelerometer, or other sensor.
In some examples, the processor unit 1202 or other suitable hardware component may support a hardware interrupt. In response to a hardware interrupt, the processor unit 1202 may pause its processing and execute an interrupt service routine (ISR), for example, as described herein.
The storage device 1216 includes a machine-readable medium 1222 on which is stored one or more sets of data structures and instructions 1224 (e.g., software) embodying or utilized by any one or more of the methodologies or functions described herein. The instructions 1224 can also reside, completely or at least partially, within the main memory 1204, static memory 1206, and/or within the processor 1202 during execution thereof by the architecture 1200, with the main memory 1204, static memory 1206, and the processor 1202 also constituting machine-readable media. Instructions stored at the machine-readable medium 1222 may include, for example, instructions for implementing the software architecture 1102, instructions for executing any of the features described herein, etc.
While the machine-readable medium 1222 is illustrated in an example to be a single medium, the term “machine-readable medium” can include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database, and/or associated caches and servers) that store the one or more instructions 1224. The term “machine-readable medium” shall also be taken to include any tangible medium that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying instructions for execution by the machine and that cause the machine to perform any one or more of the methodologies of the present disclosure or that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying data structures utilized by or associated with such instructions. The term “machine-readable medium” shall accordingly be taken to include, but not be limited to, solid-state memories, and optical and magnetic media. Specific examples of machine-readable media include non-volatile memory, including, but not limited to, by way of example, semiconductor memory devices (e.g., electrically programmable read-only memory (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM)) and flash memory devices; magnetic disks such as internal hard disks and removable disks; magneto-optical disks; and CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks.
The instructions 1224 can further be transmitted or received over a communications network 1226 using a transmission medium via the network interface device 1220 utilizing any one of a number of well-known transfer protocols (e.g., HTTP). Examples of communication networks include a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), the Internet, mobile telephone networks, plain old telephone (POTS) networks, and wireless data networks (e.g., Wi-Fi, 3G, and 6G LTE/LTE-A or WiMAX networks). The term “transmission medium” shall be taken to include any intangible medium that is capable of storing, encoding, or carrying instructions for execution by the machine, and includes digital or analog communications signals or other intangible medium to facilitate communication of such software.
Various components are described in the present disclosure as being configured in a particular way. A component may be configured in any suitable manner. For example, a component that is or that includes a computing device may be configured with suitable software instructions that program the computing device. A component may also be configured by virtue of its hardware arrangement or in any other suitable manner.
The above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive. For example, the above-described examples (or one or more aspects thereof) can be used in combination with others. Other embodiments can be used, such as by one of ordinary skill in the art upon reviewing the above description. The Abstract is to allow the reader to quickly ascertain the nature of the technical disclosure, for example, to comply with 37 C.F.R. § 1.72(b) in the United States of America. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.
Also, in the above Detailed Description, various features can be grouped together to streamline the disclosure. However, the claims cannot set forth every feature disclosed herein as embodiments can feature a subset of said features. Further, embodiments can include fewer features than those disclosed in a particular example. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into the Detailed Description, with a claim standing on its own as a separate embodiment. The scope of the embodiments disclosed herein is to be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with the full scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.
