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Recently, I was exposed to an interesting new online personal finance savings and life goals realization tool, called MagicNumber.com. And today, I wanted to share a my experiences in trying it out with you all.
What is Magic Number?
At first glance at the Magic Number home page, it appears that (as the name implies) the site specializes in helping you figure the amount of money you'll need to make work optional in order to live the lifestyle that you want at a specific target age. However, I soon found out that Magic Number offered much more than this. In fact, I think MagicNumber.com can best be categorized as a general life goals realization/execution tool, with a focus on personal finance.
Overall, Magic Number has two primary features:
- Guides you through calculating the amount of money you need to make working optional at a specific target age and then allows you to set goals to reach this target.
- Facilitates execution of other general life goals that are important to you at a core values level.
How Does MagicNumber.com Work?
Listed below is the overall flow of how Magic Number works:
- Upon landing on the MagicNumber.com homepage, you enter 1) the age at which you want work to become optional, and 2) your email address.
- For me, I set this age as 50 years old.
- Next, you enter what values are important to you in life.
- For example, standard of living, career vs. family focused, active vs. relaxed lifestyle, social vs alone time.
- Then, you are taken through a total of 8 screens to help you figure out your Magic Number, or the amount of money you need to have saved up to live the lifestyle of your dreams by the age you entered on the homepage.
- The 8 screens that you are taken through are summarized below:
- Dream home price
- Dream transportation purchase price
- Amount of money you'll spend per month for the lifestyle you dream of
- Amount you want to spend per month on hobbies
- Amount you want to spend per year on vacations
- Amount you want to donate per year to charity
- Amount you want to have leftover to will to others once you die
- Your current net worth
- Each screen features a simple slider toolbar to adjust the amount of money you think you'll need for each category. An example of the lifestyle screen is shown below.
- The idea here is to get a very general/quick gauge of the amount of money that will be required for a certain lifestyle.
- The Magic Number that was generated for my inputs was that I needed to have ~$9 million by age 50.
- After generating your specific Magic Number, the system will display a screen similar to the one below, detailing the daily, monthly, and yearly savings goals that are needed in order to obtain your Magic Number amount by your set target age.
- Once the system generates these numbers, I'd then recommend doing a "reality check" to make sure that your savings goal is achievable given your current salary and financial condition.
- If these two things don't align, you can then go back and re-evaluate your Magic Number if needed. This was the case for me, since as you can see below, the savings target of $11,000 per month is not possible given my current graduate school salary.
- Next, the Magic Number system will take you to a screen similar to the one shown below where you can enter other general life goals that you have based on your core life values. You'll also specify target achievement dates for these goals.
- For me, this was fairly similar to the exercise I go through twice per year where I evaluate my life values and life dreams.
- After specifying each life goal, my favorite feature of the MagicNumber tool comes in to play. Important Note: Using this feature involves a fee. See below for more details.
- What I mean by this is that Magic Number then helps you break down an execution plan for your life goal by (after starting with your long term goal) first setting 3 year goals, then 1 year goals, then 90 day goals, then immediate actions you can take. You also specify achievement dates for these as well.
- An example of this feature's online interface is shown below.
- For me, this is a very powerful feature since many times (even though I do a goals review twice a year), I sometimes forget during the "day-to-day hustle and bustle" about the interim steps I can be taking to achieve my long term life goals.
- After entering each interim goal and the target date for each respective action approaches, you'll then also see alerts for these "upcoming actions" in your account dashboard interface.
How Much Does Magic Number Cost to Use?
Certain parts of MagicNumber.com are free to use, and other portions are not. For example, you can generate your Magic Number savings goal and enter your other general life goals in to the system for free.
However, in order to use the goal achievement breakdown and tracking tool shown in the last picture above, there is either a monthly or yearly fee, as described below:
- $95.67 per year
- Or, $9.97 per month
What's the Bottom Line?
Overall, Magic Number is a fun and easy-to-use online tool (everything is a very visually intuitive) to help an individual 1) determine how much money will be needed to achieve the lifestyle of their dreams and 2) to realize other general core life values goals through continuous monitoring and tracking of interim action steps.As such, Magic Number if well-suited for people that have specific goals they want to achieve, but often find that they arrive at the end of the year without having made significant progress since they got busy with everyday life.
How about you all? Have you ever heard of or tried out MagicNumber.com? If so, what did you think of it?
If not, how do you track your overall life goals and how frequently do you review your progress?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
Important Note: This review was sponsored by MagicNumber.com. However, the opinions and perspectives represent my honest review of the product. Thanks for reading - Jacob
