About

This Project

Right after my first year at Notre Dame, I visited my grandparents in Ireland for a couple of weeks. They live in a beautiful part of Donegal near three fantastic golf courses right on the coast (see inset left). My grandparents live just off Rosapenna, my favorite golf course, which is also just a few miles from St. Patrick’s Links, a top 50 course in the world. I asked my dad for some money to play a few rounds, hoping to enjoy the unique golfing experience right in my grandparents’ backyard.

My dad agreed to fund my golfing adventure on one condition: I had to earn it by working on a project he had in mind when I returned home. The task? Develop an app designed to help federal government workers navigate the complexities of retirement planning, focusing on their sources of retirement income, whether they had enough TSP savings to fund a TSP annuity and also evaluate the pros/cons of investing the TSP savings in the S&P 500 index. This can be risky as the sequence of S&P matters much more when you are pulling funds out of each year!

Understanding that while average returns can be assumed during the accumulation phase, withdrawing money introduces a new level of risk, especially if a bad year of returns occurs, potentially causing financial instability. This project was a challenge I was excited to take on.

I spent the rest of the summer diving into app development, often struggling with the intricacies of coding but learning immensely along the way. Finally, after much trial and error, I’m thrilled to present the app to you. It’s designed to guide you through the nuances of retirement planning, offering insights to help you make informed decisions about your financial future.

Tony Newell

CoFounder / Developer

Tonynewell4411@gmail.com

www.linkedin.com/in/tonyn44

Tony is a second semester sophomore at the University of Notre Dame studying finance at the Mendoza College of Business. He likes to play golf whenever he can, and understandably is a huge Fighting Irish football fan. He is actively searching for internships for summer 2025.

Inspiration

With my father – a federal government employee – approaching retirement, he was interested in learning more about the retirement finances. He had learned through classes that a general rule of thumb was that retirees should plan to pull ~4% out of their thrift savings plan each year. However, we realized that that is assuming average returns of 11% each year. While this is a good estimation, we wanted a more in depth understanding of possible returns. Through research, we learned that sequences of returns had a major effect on people's ability to retire. Therefore, we created this app with the purpose of helping federal employees understand how this may effect their finances.