Skip to content
RetirementGuide
Privacy-first
Launch Planner
Free · No account · Nothing leaves your browser

The future is uncertain.Your plan isn’t.

A free, fully-local retirement planner with a real federal tax engine — plus a current-year tax planner that keeps you clear of the IRMAA and ACA-subsidy cliffs. Monte Carlo, historical backtests back to 1871, and survivor-aware modeling. No servers. Ever.

Start PlanningCurrent-Year Tax PlannerView Demo Dashboard
100%
Client-side
1871
Data since
10,000
Futures simulated
$0
Forever free
02Where plans break

Three traps that quietly cost real money.

The widow tax jump

Filing status flips — brackets don’t wait.

When the first spouse dies, Joint becomes Single overnight. The standard deduction nearly halves and bracket edges collapse, so the same income taxes harder — in exactly the years the survivor is most vulnerable. We show those years explicitly.

Roth conversions vs ACA subsidies

A conversion has a hidden second price.

Before 65, marketplace coverage is means-tested. Every bracket you fill with a Roth conversion can also cut your premium tax credit — a marginal cost most planners quietly omit. We fold it into the optimization and warn before you cross the cliff.

The survivor step-up

The larger Social Security benefit survives.

The survivor keeps the greater of the two benefits — including delayed retirement credits and cost-of-living growth — with survivor logic that never double-counts a dollar. That changes when claiming early or late actually pays off.

03Tax

Plan the year around the cliffs.

A dedicated current-year tax planner shows exactly how much you can withdraw from an IRA/401(k), convert to Roth, or harvest in your brokerage before you trip an IRMAA tier, lose an ACA subsidy, cross a bracket, or wake the Social Security tax torpedo — and what the next dollar really costs, cliffs and all.

Avoid the IRMAA cliffProtect your ACA subsidyHarvest gains at 0%Dodge the SS tax torpedoTrue cost of the next dollar
Open the current-year tax planner
Headroom · 2026 · illustrativeLive
IRA / 401(k) withdrawal$18,400before IRMAA tier 2
Roth conversion$6,900before the ACA 400% FPL cliff
Brokerage gains$41,000harvested at 0% capital gains
Social Security torpedo$2,300before the 85% inclusion cap
You are here
Cost of your next dollar: $0.23 — bracket plus a little ACA loss
One more dollar at the cliff: $4,280 — the whole ACA subsidy
04Simulate

Run the future ten thousand times.

Parametric Monte Carlo and 12-month block-bootstrap sampling over the Shiller record — run in a Web Worker, seeded per plan, so every verdict is reproducible and the UI never drops a frame.

5k–10k paths per runSub-second computeWeb Worker · 60 fps UI
10,000possible futures, one decision at a time
Large SurplusOn TrackTightFailed
20262036204620562062
90th percentile$4.2M
Median$2.1M
10th percentile$840K
05History

We’ve already replayed every start year since 1871.

Rolling-window backtests over U.S. market history — S&P total return, aggregate bonds, and CPI from the Shiller dataset. Not one smooth average: every crash, every lost decade, every recovery.

1929The Great Crash
1966Stagflation era
1982The long bull
2000Dot-com peak
2008Global crisis
2020Pandemic shock
155 start years·S&P total return·US aggregate bonds·CPI-U · Shiller 1871–2025
06Depth

Everything you need.Nothing you don’t.

Built for people who want real planning depth — without a $150/yr subscription, bank-account linking, or 250 confusing inputs.

A current-year tax planner

How much can you withdraw from an IRA/401(k), convert to Roth, or harvest in your brokerage before the next bracket, IRMAA tier, ACA-subsidy cliff, or the Social Security tax torpedo? Enter exact income lines, watch the headroom and the true cost of your next dollar — cliff jumps included — update live, and see the whole year as a tax-flow diagram.

Open the tax planner

A real federal tax engine

Brackets, the standard deduction, Social Security provisional-income taxation, capital-gains stacking, the 3.8% investment surtax, Medicare premium cliffs, and required withdrawals — stored per year for 2024–2026 and grown with inflation by the rules the law actually indexes.

Private by construction

Zero network calls, verified in the build. Your plan lives in your browser’s localStorage and exports as a plain JSON file you own.

Power-user depth, honestly modeled

Accumulation mode with real 402(g)/IRA/415(c) limits and catch-ups, nine account types, and §409A deferred-comp payouts that are locked away from withdrawals while their guaranteed cash reduces what other accounts must supply.

Built for couples

Per-person ownership drives RMDs, Roth conversions, and survivor logic. Filing flips, the survivor benefit step-up, and the spending gap after a first death are modeled — not footnoted.

Five withdrawal strategies

01
Sequential

Draw down accounts in a set order — simple, predictable, and easy to reason about.

02
Proportional

Spread withdrawals across accounts, keeping the portfolio mix steady through retirement.

03
Tax-aware Roth bracket-fill

Fill low brackets with conversions every year, with IRMAA guardrails and ACA subsidy costs included.

04
Guyton-Klinger guardrails

Raise and trim spending by rule as markets move, instead of a fixed inflation bump.

05
VPW

A variable percentage of the remaining portfolio each year — market-driven, never runs dry in design.

Financial wellness score
A
88 / 100

Nineteen metrics — success rate, withdrawal rate, must-spend coverage, legacy trajectory and more — rolled into one grade with actionable insights.

  • Reveals which metric is holding your plan back
  • Updates as you change the plan
  • Compare grades across scenarios
Explore the score
07Privacy

Your plan never leaves this page.

The whole planner is a static site. There is no backend to breach, no account to reset, and no analytics script counting your clicks. Your numbers live in your browser until you export them.

  • No sign-up, no bank linking, no telemetry
  • Plans persist in localStorage and export as JSON
  • Ships as a static export — verifiable zero-call build
0
network requests
0
accounts required
1
JSON file you own
$0
forever free
Built on public-domain data
IRS
Brackets · RMDs
SSA
Bend points · FRA
Shiller
Markets 1871–2025
HHS
ACA FPL
Read the full methodology

Your retirement deserves better than a spreadsheet.

Start building your tax-aware plan in minutes. No sign-up, no data collection, no subscription. Just clarity.

Launch PlannerSee Demo First