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When it comes to figuring out your financial future, there are some investing tools that are invaluable. How much should you save for retirement? When should you start saving? Should you rent or buy your home? What kind of mortgage can you afford? Should you choose a Roth IRA or a Traditional IRA? How much will my children need for college? These are all questions that can be better answered using some of the many online calculators and financial planners.

Retirement savings is a great place to start and CNN Money has a retirement calculator that helps determine if you are on track for retirement. It is quite detailed and takes into account Social Security payments, portfolio, current savings, and increases in your salary from year to year. If you already know how much you will need for retirement and want a quick way to find out if you are saving enough annually, try the Bloomberg Retirement Calculator . It is more basic than the CNN Money calculator and allows you to choose your rate of return.

Along with retirement, estate planning is something that everyone needs to address, not just those with large fortunes. Fidelity Investments has several estate planning tools and calculators to help prepare for you or your spouses death. The Estate Planner allows you to see what your next steps would be to prepare your estate to be passed on to beneficiaries. It looks at all of your assets and outlines what items need to be considered to avoid as many taxes as possible when you pass away. Additionally, it offers estate planning resources that discuss topics such as wills, trusts, estate planning strategies, etc.

Do you wonder if you are loosing money paying rent? Are you unsure what size mortgage you can afford? There are several different mortgage calculators online that answer these types of questions. One of the best places for mortgage calculators is at interest.com. This website contains easy to use calculators that allow you to find out everything you need to when it comes to mortgages.

Once you already have a mortgage and are wondering about ways to pay it off quicker, a prepayment calculator is your best resource. This calculator can tell you what an additional monthly payment can do to whittle down your mortgage. It also gives you a monthly amortization schedule that maps out your payments for the life of the loan.

Does debt prevent you from buying a home right now? If you are trying to get out from under your debt, CNN Money has a great debt elimination calculator. It allows you to enter up to eight different sources of debt and then see what kind of difference additional payments would make. It can also show how much you should pay each month to reach a debt-free deadline. Probably the most interesting part of the calculator is that you can see what just paying your minimum payments will do for you. It is frightening how long it takes to pay off loans when just making the minimum payments, not to mention the interest paid over the life of the loan. If you have done your calculation but aren't sure where to go from here, try this bank software website for more information on sites and software that can help you to eliminate your debt.

There are a lot of different financial software products on the market. Some can do everything including budgeting, keeping check registries, and planning such as the Quickbooks or Microsoft Money products. Do you own a business and need software to help you manage your finances? A great resource for small business owners is the software page of the investing-partners website. It has links and explanations of numerous software products to track business expenses, payroll, etc.

The last item on our list is higher education. Domini Social Investments College Calculator allows you to choose what to calculate, whether it be the monthly amount you need to save, initial savings needed, or number of years to save to obtain your goal. It also takes into account inflation so you can indicate the current amount you would need for your child's schooling and it calculates what you would need to have that amount in future dollars.

Another college savings calculator is from Fidelity Investments. This calculator is quite a bit more detailed and conservative than the above calculator. It estimates market returns based on the past and allows you to choose your likelihood of meeting your goal. It can also lookup costs of all universities in the United States, eliminating the need for your own research. The tools mentioned here are just the beginning when it comes to online investing tools.

The internet has vast amounts of calculators, wizards and software to help you prepare for any financial future you choose. Whatever your financial goals, there are resources to assist you in setting those goals and having more confidence in being able to reach them.

About the Author
Emma Snow is a writer who specializes in financial planning. She has worked in the financial industry for over eight years. Currently Emma works on a Finance and Investing site at http://www.finance-investing.com and Investing Partners http://www.investing-partners.com