Patent ID: 8812379

Claim:
A method of summarizing household resources and claims through a future lifetime as of a particular date, thereby enabling a household to balance the claims against the resources over a time horizon, the method including: accessing a collection of data structures in computer readable memory, including a savings object adapted to represent net savings cash flows prior to retirement; a plurality of financial asset objects adapted to represent positions in financial assets and associated cash flows, if any, and a plurality of household expense objects adapted to represent various post-retirement household expenses, the household expense objects including at least expense amounts and expense timing, and a desirability rating for a particular household expense; and evaluating using a processor and summarizing for a particular date present values of resources and claims over a predicted lifetime, the resources and claims including at least the net savings cash flows prior to retirement, the positions in financial assets and the post-retirement household expenses, the summary organized into groups of the resources and the claims, wherein a base level of the household expenses are grouped together as obligations, other of the household expenses are organized by the desirability ratings of the household expenses, thereby representing at least primary and secondary goals among the household expenses, and a residual (or deficit) of the resources exceeding (or failing to satisfy) the claims is reported, thereby reflecting wealth building.