The directions below are worded for financial planners using these financial planning software modules to do work for their clients. The same steps pertain to investors using the tools for themselves.

Once you understand the basic concept of Excel cell references, you can use them to quickly and easily share data between all of these software modules.

All of this will work just fine as long as you don't rename the workbooks/spreadsheets, delete them, or move them to a different folder, after you link data.

When you change the data on one spreadsheet, the changes will automatically flow into the other spreadsheets, whether they are open at the time or not. Closed workbooks won't calculate anything, so it's always best to keep all workbooks open that you're using.

This is called "cell referencing" and is basically the Microsoft way of doing the exact same thing to integrate as other software platforms. You can share any data you want to - client's names, ages, investment values, cash flow numbers, so you won't have to input the same things over and over.

First, decide what types of work you are going to do for the client. That will tell you which of the modules you'll be using. For example, if you're going to use the Asset Allocation Software to run an investment asset allocation report, College Planning Calculator to show them what they need to do to send kids to college, Life Insurance Need Analysis to see how much life insurance they really need, and an overall financial plan showing what their financial future/retirement will look like before and after your brilliant recommendations, you'd use the RWR Retirement Planner combined with the Cash Flow Projector.

Once you know the tools you'll be using, copy these five spreadsheets into a unique folder. Once all of the files are all in one happy spot on your hard drive, the rest is automatic, and will almost never cause you any maintenance or problems. Tips on organizing files for financial planning clients are here.

Open all five files using Excel at the same time (Life Insurance Calculator, Asset Allocation, College Asset Allocation, Cash Flow Projector, and RWR).

First, run the asset allocation report. When it's done you'll have the totals for personal and qualified investments. For example, after the asset allocation report is done, you'll have the total amount of personal investments in cell B15 and the total amount of qualified investment in cell B41 (see the demo).

Now when you're using the RWR retirement planner you can use this data as input into the asset sheets. Assuming you want to input all of the personal investment assets into RWR's Oldest Asset #1:

Go to cell A6 (RWR's Oldest Asset #1) and enter an equal sign. Do not press enter - leave it hanging.

Next (in Excel 2003) go to the Window menu, and switch to the Asset Allocation workbook. Click on cell B15 and press enter. Cell A6 of the RWR asset sheet will now get its data from cell B15 of the asset allocation workbook (total non-qualified investments). If you tinker with the asset allocation workbook later, and the total in cell B15 changes, it will automatically be updated in RWR, whether it's open at the time or not.

Do the same thing when you make a new RWR asset for the qualified money (IRA's, 401ks, etc.). More than likely, they all will have about the same rate of return, and they are all probably taxed the same way, so it's fine to lump them all together while using the Flexible payout option. Repeat the process above, but click on cell B41 instead of B15 of the asset allocation workbook.

If you want to divide the investments up into more than one RWR asset, then you can use Excel's simple summing feature to do that. For example, say you want the John's Work 401(k) and Mary's IRA listed in the asset allocation report to be two different RWR assets.

The IRA's investment totals are listed in cells B26 - B29 and the 401(k)'s assets are listed in cells B21 - B23.

In RWR, input an equal sign into cell A6.

Now you can either use the summing function manually, or let Excel to it automatically. To do it manually, you would input: "=sum(" and then go to the asset allocation workbook.

Click on B21 so the workbook name and all are entered into the formula. Then input: ":b23)" and press enter.

Now the contents of A6 will be the sum of all of the investments in John's 401(k). A more experienced Excel user would have just entered "=" into RWR's cell A6, switched to the other workbook, highlighted the data range by dragged the mouse from cells B21:B23, and pressed enter - which takes less than five seconds.

Using these simple functions allows you to control how data is shared between the workbooks. As you can see, you can control everything as precisely as you want to.

Next, let's assume that you want to run an RWR scenario showing the husband passing away at some future year.

Run an illustration using the life insurance calculator.

If you want to include the lump sum needs to fund college in the life insurance software:

- First run the college funding report
- Go to cells A35 - 40 of the Life Insurance Software's Input sheet
- Input the equal sign in the cell for the right kid
- Flip to the College Calculator's results sheet (Presentation)
- Go to cell G or O 27 or 28 (whichever one you want)
- Press enter

Now college needs are input into the life insurance needs software.

When everything is done, the total amount of life insurance needed (and assuming they buy this much) is listed in cell I27 of the Presentation sheet.

Make a new proposed investment in RWR for this.

For the market value, again go to cell A6

Enter =, then go to the life insurance calculator, and click on cell I27.

Press enter.

Now make the investment become effective in the year you want to assume the husband passing away, and you now have proceeds of the life insurance module going into the financial plan.

How to integrate the detailed annual cash flow numbers from the Net Worth Calculator/Net Worth Projector, Budget/Cash Flow Projector, into RWR or RP is explained in detail here and here, respectively.

Using the College Asset Allocation tool, you'd just do the same thing between the sheets in the same workbook, rather than between workbooks, as explained above.

Be sure to not count college, and other expenses, twice. If you input miscellaneous expenses in RWR, ensure you don't account for them in the Cash Flow Projector too. The best place to do all of that is in the Cash Flow Projector.

For example, once you've ran the asset allocation part of the college funding tool (using the Asset Allocator sheet of the College software), you'd just go to the Input sheet and for the initial balance needed to go into cell A9, you'd just put an equal sign there and switch to the Asset Allocator sheet and click on cell B24.

If you want the college cash flows to be included in the RWR report, you would just reference the cash flows in column T of the college planning tool Calculation sheet into one of the six manual income/expense fields in the Summing & Input sheet (starting in column AZ). If you're using the Multiple College Calculator, and have more than one student, then use the annual expense values on either the All Kid Public Presentation or All Kid Private Presentation sheet, starting in cell C176.

To integrate total present values of college funding into the life insurance needs calculator: Open the life insurance needs software, and click on cell A35 of the Input sheet. Input the equal sign, then open the single college funding calculator and click on either cell F14, F13, or N14 or N13 of the Presentation sheet. Press enter. Now the life insurance needs will reflect changes in the college calculator. If there is more than one child, then repeat using cells A35-A39 of the life insurance software Input sheet.

So as you can see, with just a little learning of basic Excel formulas and functions, you can integrate these financial planning modules as much, or as little as you want to, and everything will work just as slick as all of the expensive fancy shmancy integrated financial planning software you're used to.

If you bought support, please send e-mail about any questions you may have about integrating the modules.