About the Retirement & Life Planner
This free planner projects your finances year by year from today to any age you choose, applying real California and federal taxes to every year along the way. Instead of a single snapshot, you build a timeline of life events — changing jobs, retiring, buying or selling a home, collecting rent, converting to Roth, taking withdrawals — and watch how your taxes and net worth evolve. You can build two or more timelines and compare them side by side to answer questions like “Can I retire at 58?” or “Should I do Roth conversions before Social Security starts?”
How to use it
- Set your starting point (left panel): your age, filing status, current account balances (taxable brokerage, traditional 401(k)/IRA, Roth, HSA, cash), any home or rental properties you own, baseline income and spending, and growth/inflation assumptions.
- Add life events to a timeline by clicking a button in the palette — salary changes, retirement, Social Security, home purchases, rentals, withdrawals, Roth conversions, margin loans, and more. Drag a chip to re-time it, or set the exact month in the editor.
- Create more timelines and pick two with the Compare selector to see them overlaid on the net-worth chart.
- Scrub through time with the green slider (or click the chart) to inspect any single year: balances, income by source, federal and California tax, and your cash flow.
- Watch for red years — when your accessible cash runs short, that year is flagged so you can add a sale or withdrawal to cover it.
What the planner models
Each simulated year aggregates your income and runs it through the same tax engine that powers our California + federal tax calculator:
- Income & jobs: wages with raises, job loss, pensions, and Social Security (with the federal taxability formula — and California’s exemption of Social Security).
- Accounts: taxable brokerage (with cost-basis tracking so only gains are taxed), pre-tax traditional 401(k)/IRA, Roth, and HSA — each growing at the rate you set.
- Withdrawals, contributions & Roth conversions, plus Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) that kick in automatically using the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table.
- Real estate: buying and selling a primary home (with the §121 capital-gains exclusion), rental properties with mortgage amortization, appreciation, straight-line depreciation, and depreciation recapture on sale, plus converting a home to a rental and back.
- Margin loans: borrow against your brokerage for tax-free cash (it’s debt, not a sale), with interest that accrues and is deducted as investment-interest expense.
- Capital gains stacked correctly on top of ordinary income, the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax, and early-withdrawal penalties before age 59½.
Key concepts
Traditional vs. Roth vs. taxable
Traditional 401(k)/IRA withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income; Roth withdrawals are tax-free; taxable brokerage sales return your cost basis tax-free and tax only the gain at long-term capital-gains rates. The order you draw from these accounts in retirement can meaningfully change your lifetime tax bill.
Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
Starting at age 73–75 (depending on birth year), the IRS requires minimum withdrawals from pre-tax accounts whether you need the money or not — which can push retirees into higher brackets. The planner adds these automatically.
Roth conversions
Converting traditional dollars to Roth is taxable today but tax-free later and not subject to future RMDs. The low-income years between retirement and the start of Social Security/RMDs are often the cheapest time to convert.
Rental depreciation & recapture
Residential rental buildings are depreciated over 27.5 years, a non-cash deduction that shelters rental income. When you sell, the depreciation you took is “recaptured” and taxed — the planner models both sides.
Assumptions & limitations
This is an educational projection, not tax or financial advice. Notable simplifications: 2025 tax brackets are held flat in future years (no future inflation indexing of brackets); living expenses inflate while wages stay nominal unless you add raises; the planner never sells assets automatically (a cash shortfall is flagged red instead); and several rules are approximated, including the net-investment-income limit on margin-interest deductions, depreciation-recapture rates, IRMAA, AMT, and passive-loss limits. Always confirm with a qualified professional before acting.
Frequently asked questions
- Is my data saved or sent anywhere?
- No. Everything stays in your browser’s local storage on your device — nothing is uploaded to a server.
- Why did a year turn red?
- Your accessible cash went negative that year. Add a brokerage sale, an account withdrawal, or adjust spending to cover the gap — the planner won’t sell assets for you.
- Does it handle states other than California?
- The tax engine is built for California + federal. You can model moving to a no-income-tax state with the “Move state” event, which drops the state tax.
- Is this financial advice?
- No — it’s an educational tool to explore scenarios. Consult a CPA or financial planner for decisions.