SBIR Phase I: A Holistic and Robust Personal Financial Planner

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在开发一个财务专家系统，该系统考虑家庭当前和预计的财务状况(收入、税收、费用、资产、负债、融资选择)的总体，以自动创建高度个性化的多阶段储蓄和支出计划，旨在实现家庭的财务目标。这项拟议的研究在两个根本方面具有创新性：它从整体上看待财务规划，并明确解决了市场不确定性和家庭达不到目标的风险。基于最先进的数学规划技术，特别是稳健优化方面的最新进展，拟议的系统将适当使用不同账户的特殊税务处理，根据客户随着时间的推移的独特需求推荐新账户开立，为它们提供资金并将其用于分配，最后确定所有账户的稳健资产分配解决方案。由此产生的工具及其可操作的全面计划将代表对当前技术状态的实质性改进，该技术包括不提出策略而只是从用户提供的计划中预测潜在结果的说明性计算器，以及孤立地解决相互关联的规划问题的一个方面的工具。该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种赋权和教育工具，可通过其雇主或其金融服务机构向家庭销售。拟议的技术将能够服务于广泛的经济和年龄人口结构，加强他们的财务未来。用户将能够在他们的一生中应用这一工具：从财富积累年份，到实现自置居所和资助教育的年份，再到退休时，他们将创建退休工资支票。目前市场上没有这样的工具，需求非常迫切。最近的调查显示，退休信心处于20年来的最低水平，希望孩子上大学的父母中，只有不到一半的人能负担得起他们的教育费用。一个设计和执行良好的个人财务规划工具可以让人们看到增加储蓄的长期影响，并更好地评估他们一生中发生的不同目标之间的权衡，从而使他们保持在成功的道路上。从长远来看，这可能会导致人们更好地准备好应对金融复杂性，从而对未来更有信心。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop a financial expert system that considers the totality of a household's current and projected financial situation (income, taxes, expenses, assets, liabilities, financing options) to automatically create a highly personalized multi-period savings and spending plan designed to achieve the household's financial goals. The proposed research is innovative in two fundamental ways: it takes a holistic view of financial planning and explicitly addresses market uncertainty and the risk of households falling short of reaching their goals. Based on state-of-the art mathematical programming techniques and in particular recent advances in robust optimization, the proposed system will make the appropriate use of special tax treatment of different accounts, recommend new accounts to open based on the client's unique needs over time, fund them and use them for distributions, and finally determine robust asset allocation solutions across all accounts. The resulting tool with its actionable comprehensive plan will represent a substantial improvement over the current state of the art which consists of illustrative calculators that do not propose strategies but merely project the potential outcomes from plans supplied by the user, and tools which solve one aspect of the interconnected planning problem in isolation. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to develop an empowering and educational tool that can be marketed to households through their employers or their financial service institutions. The proposed technology will be able to serve a wide range of economic and age demographics strengthening their financial future. Users will be able to apply the tool throughout their life: from wealth accumulation years, to the years of achieving home-ownership and funding education, and into retirement when they will create a retirement paycheck. There is no such tool in the market today and the need is urgent. Recent surveys show that retirement confidence has plateaued at the lowest level in two decades, and less than half of parents who expect their kids to go to college can fund their education. A well designed and executed personal financial planning tool can enable people to see the long-term effects of increased savings, and better evaluate the trade-offs between different goals that occur during their life so that they stay in the path to success. In the long term, it can lead to a population who is better prepared to deal with financial complexities and as a result more confident in its future.