You have decided to start saving both to buy a house and for retirement and you want to build a model that will help you plan. Until you retire, you intend deposit at the end of each year either a certain fixed amount or a certain percentage of your salary into your retirement savings account.

Prior to retirement, your retirement savings account is expected to generate a 10% rate of return. After you retire, you plan to withdraw money at the beginning of each year, and your retirement savings account will still receive an investment return, but, as you intend to shift to a lower risk portfolio, this return is expected to be 6%. Furthermore:

Your current age is 25 years. You plan to retire a somewhere between ages 65-70, and you expect to live up to the average life span of 85 years.

Your current gross salary is $36,000 per year (for this assignment, you may ignore personal income and capital gains taxes). This is expected to increase annually at a cost-of living allowance rate of 3.0%.

5 - 10 years from now you plan to buy a home will need to make a down payment on the purchase of the

home of 10% of house value and borrow the rest through a mortgage which you plan to pay off from then

until when you retire. You expect the house to cost $300,000

You have $15,000 saved up to make an initial savings investment today.

You have recently read a study that made you decide that when you retire you want to be able to live on

somewhere between 50% - 70% of your pre-retirement income (determined from your last year of working) and you expect this amount will gradually increase at a rate of inflation of 2%. (http://fortune.com/2014/08/18/phew-you-may-be-spending-less-than-you-think-during-retirement/)

make a spreadsheet model that will assist you in your retirement planning. What should the objective of the retirement plan be, what are the decisions that need to be made, and what are the inputs into the model? These should be clearly incorporated into your spreadsheet model.