Why I built RetireTaxGuide.

I recently retired early — not too early, but early enough that I had to think hard about how the pieces fit together. In other words, I joined the FIRE movement.

For most of my working life, retirement planning was really one question: how much can I save? Accumulation is simple that way — earn, invest, wait. Then you actually retire, and the questions change entirely. Which account do I draw from first? Should I convert to a Roth while my income is low? How much can I realize in gains before I trip an IRMAA surcharge or lose an ACA subsidy? When do RMDs start, and how do they collide with Social Security?

Unlike saving, those decisions are largely irreversible. A conversion or a realized gain can't be undone after December 31, and the amounts at stake are not small — one poorly timed withdrawal can cost thousands in taxes or surcharges. That seemed like a strange thing to leave to a guess.

So I went looking for a tool. I wanted something powerful enough to model the real rules, modern enough to actually enjoy using, and affordable — ideally free. The options I found each fell short in some way. Several free tools had genuinely useful features, but their interfaces felt dated. The paid tools were more polished, and some were affordable for upper-middle-class budgets, but they were still a real expense for something I mostly wanted to run myself. Spreadsheets could get closer, but they take ongoing maintenance and get harder to trust after a few years of edits.

In other words, I didn't find what I was looking for. So I built it.

RetireTaxGuide is the tool I was looking for: one that takes the tax rules seriously and treats retirement as something to be steered, not just survived. It's for people who want to understand their own plan — without a CPA on retainer or a spreadsheet held together with duct tape.