Professor,

In trying to apply my knowledge in the real world, I am trying to create a realistic retirement schedule. However, I am running into difficulties using both a financial calculator as well as our equations from class in doing this.

I am trying to do the following: plan a retirement schedule between the ages of 22 and 68, in which I would deposit 25% of my income each year. The income starts at 80,000 with an annual growth rate of 5% and, to be realistic, assuming an interest rate of 2.5%. I will assume for simplicity that I receive my first salary ($80,000) when I turn 22, and my last salary when I turn 68. As soon as I receive a salary, I will save 25% of it.

However, this raises issues, as if I try to use the equation for the present value of a growing annuity with a 5% growth rate and 2.5% discount rate, r-g will yield a negative number. Also, I could not find online how to do this on my HP 10bII+ financial calculator and I don't want to manually enter 47 payments.

Do you know how I could overcome this obstacle?

1. () Start by drawing the timeline, showing the first three and the last two deposits, ie the deposits at t = 22, 23, 24, 67 and 68 (the amount of each deposit and how you calculated it).