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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.

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
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

The planner makes 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 your browser.

The planner is a static app that runs entirely in your browser: no backend to breach, no account to reset, no analytics script counting your clicks. Your numbers live in your browser until you export them. These promises describe the planner — the website you’re reading is a separate static site.

  • 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. The planner asks for no sign-up, sends us nothing, and has no subscription. Just clarity.

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Questions? Email support@retiretaxguide.com