About You
What You Need in Retirement
$
Housing, food, transportation, insurance, entertainment, travel — everything except healthcare (below). This is your spending need only and does not include taxes.
Taxes are separate. Different accounts have different tax treatments. Traditional IRA/401(k) withdrawals are fully taxed as ordinary income. Brokerage withdrawals are only taxed on the gain portion at capital gains rates. Roth withdrawals are tax-free. The projection below tracks which accounts you draw from and calculates the actual tax cost — so you see the gross amount you need to pull, not just the spending.
Add separate healthcare estimate
$
Medicare premiums, supplements, prescriptions, dental, vision. Average retired couple: $500–$800/mo.
Contracted Income Sources
Income you're entitled to by contract or law — Social Security, pensions, annuities. These don't depend on market performance.
$
From your statement at ssa.gov
62–70
$
Employer pension or similar
$
$
Rental income, royalties, etc. — enter only if reliably recurring and not subject to market risk (e.g., stable rental net income, not volatile business earnings).
Savings & Investments
$
Pre-tax retirement accounts
$
Tax-free accounts
$
$
Income Assumption
%
What your savings can generate annually without touching principal. Current short-term rates (money market, T-bills, short-term bonds) are a conservative baseline.
Why yield instead of the “4% rule”? The 4% rule assumes drawing down your principal over 30 years. We start with what your money can generate without touching the principal — a more conservative baseline. If there's a gap, the question becomes: are you comfortable drawing down, or do we find ways to close it? That's a conversation worth having.
Assumptions
%
Used to grow spending need each year
%
Applied to traditional IRA/401(k) withdrawals
%
Applied to gains in brokerage accounts (0%, 15%, or 20% for most)
%
Estimated % of brokerage value that is your original investment (not gain)
How taxes are handled in the projection: Not all accounts are taxed the same. The projection draws from accounts in a tax-efficient order — brokerage first (only gains are taxed, at the capital gains rate), then traditional accounts (fully taxed as ordinary income), then Roth (tax-free). This means your actual tax cost depends on which accounts are funding the gap, not a single blended rate.